Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/106

68

has perished. What an editor ought to print in such a case, supposing he has satisfied himself that the best attested reading is really impossible, may vary according to circumstances. But it is clearly his duty in some way to notify the presumed fact of corruption, whether he can offer any suggestion for its removal or not.

88. In the cases just mentioned, while the best attested reading is found to be impossible, the other reading or readings shown by evidence not Intrinsic to be corruptions of it are or may be found quite possible, but not more: they derive their prima facie probability only from an assumed necessity of rejecting their better attested rival. In other cases the reading (or one of the readings) shown to be of later origin has very strong Intrinsic Evidence in its own favour; that is, we have a combination of positive clear Intrinsic Evidence for the worse attested reading with negative clear Intrinsic Evidence against the better attested reading. So complete an inversion of the ordinary and natural distributions of evidence always demands, it need hardly be said, a thorough verification before it can be accepted as certain. It does however without doubt occasionally occur, and it arises from a state of things fundamentally the same as in the former cases, with the difference that here a transcriber has happened to make that alteration which was needed to bring back the reading of the autograph, that is, has in the course of transcription made a successful Conjectural Emendation. No sharp line can in fact be drawn between the deliberate conjectural emendations of a modern scholar and many of the half or wholly unconscious changes more or less due to mental action which have arisen in the ordinary course of transcription, more especially at times when minute textual accuracy has not been specially cultivated. An overwhelming proportion of the cursory emendations thus made and silently embodied in transcribed texts are of course wrong: but it is no wonder that under favourable circumstances they should sometimes be right. It may, once more, be a matter of doubt what form of printed text it will here be most expedient under given circumstances to adopt. The essential fact remains under all circumstances, that the conjectural origin of these readings is not altered by the necessity of formally including them in the sum of attested readings; and that an editor is bound to indicate in some manner the conjectural character of any attested reading