It’s not uncommon today to read criticisms of past textual scholars for their overconfidence. First among the guilty in this regard is often Westcott and Hort who titled their edition The New Testament in the Original Greek. So, for example, Eldon Epp recently referred to this title as “arrogant” and one that, along with their term “Neutral” text were “soon considered overstatements and have been abandoned.”*Of course, Westcott and Hort did not think they could always attain the original Greek text of the NT and this fact explains many of their marginal readings, especially those discussed in the Appendix.
What I find interesting is that the charge of overconfidence seems to be of recent vintage. Closer to their own time, the much maligned editors were actually praised on occasion for their hesitance and uncertainty about attaining the original text. Here is Edward A. Hutton, for example, writing in 1911:
Our final text must therefore often be difficult of determination, and here Drs Westcott and Hort have shown their wisdom in giving a much larger number of alternative readings than any other critic, and thus better representing the present state of New Testament criticism. In other words, while the principles of criticism are satisfactory enough, the paucity of authorities makes it unsafe to be too confident in all cases. Hesitation is the truest wisdom, and in the New Testament best represents the present state of the case. Infallibility is the mark of the ignoramus, or of the charlatan. (An Atlas of Textual Criticism, p. 9).So which is it? Were Westcott and Hort arrogant and overstated in their edition or wise and rightfully hesitant? Whatever your answer, it can't be because they thought they could always identify the original text.
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*Eldon J. Epp, “Critical Editions and the Development of Text-critical Methods, Part 2: From Lachmann (1831) to the Present,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From 1750 to the Present, edited by John Riches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 27.