Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - 1881.djvu/651

553 less simple matter to determine the antecedent probability or improbability of readings ascertained to be evidently or probably Pre-Syrian. A more precise definition of origin has in all cases to be sought, since the most important divergences of text took place in Pre-Syrian times.

Here the Syrian text comes in again from another point of view, as disguising the relative attestation of two or more Pre-Syrian readings. In the numberless cases in which the Syrian revisers adopted unchanged one or other of the earlier readings a necessary result was the doubling, so to speak, of the attestation of that reading: it cannot but have the combined support of all the extant documents which in these variations have a Syrian origin and of all the extant documents which in these variations have a Pre-Syrian origin of a particular type. It will thus present the appearance of being much more fully attested than its rival, though in reality a large part of its attestation is merely equivalent to the single Syrian text. The importance of this consideration is especially exemplified by the numerous Western readings which owe a deceptive amplitude of apparent authority to the accident that they found favour with the Syrian revisers when numerous other readings of identical origin and not inferior character were refused.

Allowance being made for this possible cause of erroneous estimation of evidence, a large proportion of Pre-Syrian readings can be confidently referred to one or other of the chief Pre-Syrian lines of attestation. When these lines of attestation are compared with each other as wholes by examination of the internal evidence for and against the whole body of their respective readings, it becomes manifest that as wholes the Western and Alexandrian texts arc aberrant texts. Where there are but two readings, the Non-Western approves itself to be more original than the Western, the Non-Alexandrian than the Alexandrian: where there are three readings, the neutral reading, if supported by such documents as stand most frequently on both the Non-Western and the Non-Alexandrian sides in the preceding cases, approves itself more original than either the Western or the Alexandrian.

There are some scattered Western and Alexandrian readings which in the present state of knowledge it would he imprudent to reject altogether. Nay, there are a few places in the Gospels, marked in this edition with a special nutation, in which we believe