Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/129

Rh in accordance with the principles of criticism explained in the preceding section. We have already seen, first, that decision upon readings requires previous knowledge of documents, and secondly that the most valuable part of the knowledge of individual documents implies a previous knowledge of the genealogical history of the text as a whole. The first step therefore towards fixing the places of the existing documents relatively to each other is to employ them conjointly as evidence for discovering the more ancient ramifications of transmission; and for this purpose the whole mass of documents of all dates and all kinds must at the outset be taken into account.

130. A glance at any tolerably complete apparatus criticus of the Acts or Pauline Epistles reveals the striking fact that an overwhelming proportion of the variants common to the great mass of cursive and late uncial Greek MSS are identical with the readings followed by Chrysostom (ob. 407) in the composition of his Homilies. The coincidence furnishes evidence as to place as well as time; for the whole of Chrysostom's life, the last ten years excepted, was spent at Antioch or in its neighbourhood. Little research is needed to shew that this is no isolated phenomenon: the same testimony, subject to minor qualifications unimportant for the present purpose, is borne by the scattered quotations from these and other books of the New Testament found in his voluminous works generally, and in the fragments of his fellow-pupil Theodorus of Antioch and Mopsuestia, and in those of their teacher Diodorus of Antioch and Tarsus.