Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - 1881.djvu/647

549 passages through the natural impulse to harmonise and to complete. More peculiar to the Western text is the readiness to adopt alterations or additions from sources extraneous to the books which ultimately became canonical. These various tendencies must have been in action for some time. The Western text is not to be thought of as a single recension, complete from the first. However its parent copy or copies may have differed from the originals, there must have been no little subsequent and progressive change.

Meanwhile the Western licence did not prevail everywhere, and MSS unaffected by its results were still copied. The perpetuation of the purer text may in great measure be laid to the credit of the watchful scholars of Alexandria: its best representatives among the versions are the Egyptian, and especially that of Lower Egypt; and the quotations which follow it are most abundant in Clement, Origen, (Dionysius, Peter,) Didymus, and the younger Cyril, all Alexandrians. On the other hand there are many textual facts which it would be difficult to reconcile with an exclusive limitation of the Non- Western text to Alexandria in early times; and, as might have been anticipated, there is sufficient evidence that here and there elsewhere it held its ground with more or less success against the triumphant popularity of Western readings. Hut further, as was indirectly noticed above, a group of extant documents bears witness to the early existence of independent corruptions, apparently Alexandrian in origin. They are in all respects much less important, as well as less numerous, than the Western readings, and betray no inclination to introduce extraneous matter, or to have recourse to the bolder forms of change. They often shew care and skill, more especially in the use of language, and sometimes present a deceptive appearance of originality.

The unfortunate loss of nearly all the Christian literature of the second half of the third century makes a partial chasm in textual history; but it is evident that increasing intercourse between churches led to much mixture of texts in that interval of comparative peace. Apart from miscellaneous and accidental mixture, it is probable that more than one eclectic text was deliberately formed. One such at all events, to which reference has been already made, must belong either to this time or to the years which follow. The Syrian text has all the appearance of being a careful attempt to supersede the chaos of rival texts by a judicious selection from them