Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/146

108 all we obtain some valuable geographical and historical data from the patristic quotations which in many cases give clear additional attestation to the several groups.

153. It will be convenient from this point to designate two of the primary groups of documents no longer by Greek letters but by names. We shall call the β group 'Western', an appellation which has for more than a century been applied to its leading members. It was given at a time when the patristic evidence was very imperfectly known, and its bearing ill understood; and was suggested by the fact that the prominent representatives of the group were Græco-Latin MSS, certainly written in the West, and the Old Latin version, which throughout its range from Carthage to Britain is obviously Western. The fitness is more open to question since it has become evident that readings of this class were current in ancient times in the East as well as the West, and probably to a great extent originated there. On the whole we are disposed to suspect that the 'Western' text took its rise in North-western Syria or Asia Minor, and that it was soon carried to Rome, and thence spread in different directions to North Africa and most of the countries of Europe. From North-western Syria it would easily pass through Palestine and Egypt to Ethiopia. But this is at present hardly more than a speculation; nor do any critical results depend upon it. Whatever may have been the original home of the 'Western' text, a change of designation would now cause more confusion than it would remove, and it remains true that the only continuous and approximately pure monuments of the 'Western' texts now surviving have every right to the name. The δ group we propose to call 'Syrian', for