Here is a good explanation on Hort and Westcott I came across:
"Westcott, an Anglican Bishop and professor at Cambridge University,and Hort – also an ordained Anglican priest and professor at Cambridge
– came to participate on the 1881 Revision Committee of the King James Bible under the guise of being Protestant scholars. Actually, they were very Roman Catholic in doctrine, belief, and practice. Both conservative and liberal branches of Christendom hold Westcott and Hort in high esteem as if God had greatly used these men to reestablish and restore the text of the Bible. However, it is most difficult to believe that God would use two men to perform such a task who did not believe that the Bible was the verbal Word of God.
Westcott and Hort maintained that they had raised New Testament textual criticism to the level of an exact science. Thus when they
concluded that the Traditional Text was late and a composite reading resulting from combining older text-types, they affirmed that this should be regarded as the true explanation with the same degree of reliance as one would esteem a Newtonian theorem.1 Indeed, they asserted that their work had been so scientifically and carefully executed that there could never be more than one change per thousand words.2 Nevertheless, today most liberal (or lost) modern scholars say that they no longer agree completely with the Westcott-Hort theory. Kurt Aland, a foremost leader of the modern school, is representative when he admits to this in saying:3
"We still live in the world of Westcott and Hort with our
conception of different recensions and text-types although this
conception has lost its raison d' être, or, it needs at least to be
newly and convincingly demonstrated. For the increase of the
documentary evidence and the entirely new areas of research
which were opened to us on the discovery of the papyri, mean the
end of Westcott and Hort's conception."
Still, these same liberals always begin their own investigations with the acceptance of most of the basic W-H tenants. Sadly, most conservative scholars have accepted the W-H theory of textual history – largely because most Christian scholars fear scholastic and intellectual ridicule...."
http://www.standardbearers.net/uplo...Is_The_Bible_Dr_Floyd_Nolen_Jones_PhD_ThD.pdf
And more on the Alexandrian manucripts:
"Bible scholarship of the past 150 years has placed much attention on a very small number of manuscripts. While there are over 5000 known New Testament manuscripts, attention has been placed on less than ten. Of these, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus have been exalted as the “oldest and best” manuscripts. The oldest claim has been disproved elsewhere. This document will focus on the nature of these two favored manuscripts. Sinaiticus has been recently made available to all on the internet by the Codex Sinaiticus Project, with the mainstream media and general Christians fawning over this “world’s oldest Bible.” This manuscript, in conjunction with Codex Vaticanus, form the basis for most modern Bible translations. However, these two manuscripts differ substantially from the text of the bulk of the manuscripts. Thus, the public needs to know the truth about these manuscripts.
Contrary to what has been taught in most seminaries, these two manuscripts are worthless, and hopelessly corrupt. Dean John Burgon, a highly respected Bible scholar of the mid to late 1800’s, wrote of these manuscripts, “The impurity of the Texts exhibited by Codices B and Aleph [Vaticanus and Sinaiticus] is not a matter of opinion but a matter of fact.”1 These documents are both of dubious origin. It has been speculated by some scholars that one or both were produced by Eusebius of Caesarea on orders of Emperor Constantine2. If this is true, then these manuscripts are linked to Eusibus’s teacher Origen of Alexandria, both known for interpreting Scripture allegorically as opposed to literally. Scholars have designated these manuscripts as Alexandrian, linking them with Alexandria, Egypt, the region responsible for early heresies such as Gnosticism and Arianism. Both are dated in the mid to late fourth century.
Vaticanus is the sole property of the Vatican; it has been a part of the Vatican library since at least 1475. It’s history previous is unknown. It was written by three scribes, and has been corrected by at least two more3. Vaticanus adds to the Old Testament the apocryphal books of Baruch, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, and the Epistle of Jeremiah. Dean Burgon describes the poor workmanship of Vaticanus:
Codex B [Vaticanus] comes to us without a history: without recommendation of any kind, except that of its antiquity. It bears traces of careless transcription in every page. The mistakes which the original transcriber made are of perpetual recurrence.4
The New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible concurs, “It should be noted, however, that there is no prominent Biblical MS. in which there occur such gross cases of misspelling, faulty grammar, and omission, as in B [Vaticanus].”5 Vaticanus omits Mark 16:9-20, yet there is a significant blank space here for these verses.6 Sinaiticus also lacks these verses, but has a blank space for them.7 These two manuscripts are the only Greek manuscripts that omit these verses!
The Sinaiticus was discovered by Constantine Tischendorf in the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine, on the Sinai peninsula. Monasteries are known for exceptional libraries, and scholars would often visit to conduct research. St. Catherine’s is no exception. From the monastery’s website:
When Egeria visited the Sinai around the year 380, she wrote approvingly of the way the monks read to her the scriptural accounts concerning the various events that had taken place there. Thus we can speak of manuscripts at Sinai in the fourth century. It is written of Saint John Climacus that, while living as a hermit, he spent much time in prayer and in the copying of books. This is evidence of manuscript production at Sinai in the sixth century. The library at the Holy Monastery of Sinai is thus the inheritor of texts and of traditions that date to the earliest years of a monastic presence in the Sinai. In earlier times, manuscripts were kept in three different places: in the north wall of the monastery, in the vicinity of the church, and in a central location where the texts were accessible.8
This monastery has a library full of old manuscripts. One would then assume that Tischendorf found the prized Sinaiticus one a library shelf, hidden among other manuscripts. Well, this is not exactly the case. He found it in a trash can, waiting to be burnt!"...
https://www.preservedword.com/content/the-unreliablitity-of-the-alexandrian-manuscripts/
