What most are unaware of is that Westcott and Hort were first formers of the creation of a critical text of the New Testament Westcott and Hort text. Their work, published in 1881 as The New Testament in the Original Greek, became a highly influential critical edition of the Greek New Testament.
This was the first translation from the three ancient manuscripts recently discovered (19th century: Vaticanus, Sinaticua and Alexzandrinus.) Their translation from these manuscript copies are what all modern translations are derived from.
I wanted you to know that these two scholars were members of a cult group: B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort were members of a group known as the “Ghostly Gilled,” formed in 1850. This club, also referred to as the “Bogie Club”, focused on investigating paranormal phenomena, including ghosts and supernatural occurrences, as members were “disposed to believe that such things really exist”. Some sources suggest that a previous club organized by Westcott at Cambridge named “Hermes” may have been a precursor to the Ghostly Guild. The Ghostly Guild later evolved into The Society for Psychical Research, a key player in the 19th-century spiritualism movement.”
The two scholars who used Westcott and Hort’s translation were Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland (whom you’re probably familiar with). Nestle and Aland’s text is where today’s modern translations come from.
This is a highly inaccurate and flawed claim - it uses the 'guilty by association' method to frame any translation >= 19th century CE as faulty or suspicious.
First of all - Westcott & Hort's Greek text was not the first critical text - Erasmus' Greek text 'Novum Instrumentum' (1516, 1522, 1527, 1535) also was a critical text given the manuscripts available to him at that time. His text was the basis for the translations of o.a. Martin Luther (in German, 1522), William Tyndale (in English, 1526), Geneva Bible (in English, 1560), King James (in English, 1611) and the Statenvertaling (in Dutch, 1637).
Erasmus' text already used the critical method - trying to carefully distinguish what was most likely the original text - recognising modifications sometimes were made throughout history. Erasmus famously argued against the Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7-8) as non-authentic, something also confirmed by analysis of the writings of St Augustine of Hippo.
Erasmus remained a Roman Catholic all his life - and disagreed with Martin Luther on the Reformation. He also was a humanist.
Secondly, the many manuscript discoveries after Erasmus' time make his Greek NT text less accurate than what is now reconstructable using all that new evidence/witness material (the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are only two yet important elements of that evidence). Having those many more recently discovered manuscripts available simple means one has to reconstruct a new critical text; otherwise one is deluding oneself into thinking that Erasmus' text was infallible (i.e. by divine guidance). And if one does so by definition the 'Sola Scriptura' doctrine has been violated anyway.
The current Nestle-Aland critical Greek Text of the NT is not a reprint of the Westcott & Hort text (it uses many other manuscript witnesses unavailable to Westcott & Hort) but it has a strong commonality: it leans towards the Alexandrian text-tradition, but it differs with the Westcott & Hort text in hundreds of specific readings.
If Westcott and Hort had not existed as scholars in the 19th century AD other Textual Criticism scholars in our era would have arrived at the roughly the same result - and this remains on ongoing process of course. E.g. suppose the original Hebrew/Aramaic text for the Gospel of Matthew would be found, this would no doubt influence new translations.
