Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/154

116 free from surprises and seemingly transparent. But when distinctively Syrian readings are minutely compared one after the other with the rival variants, their claim to be regarded as the original readings is found gradually to diminish, and at last to disappear. Often either the transcriptional or the intrinsic evidence is neutral or divided, and occasionally the two kinds of evidence appear to be in conflict. But there are, we believe, no instances where both are clearly in favour of the Syrian reading, and innumerable where both are clearly adverse to it.

164. The testimony of the simpler variations in which the other ancient texts are united against the Syrian reading is remarkably confirmed by that of many of those variations in which they are divided among themselves. Here one of the readings has to approve itself on transcriptional grounds by its fitness to give rise not to one but to two or more other readings, that is either to each independently or to one which will in like manner account naturally for the third (or the rest); and the failure of the Syrian reading to fulfil this condition is usually manifest. The clearest cases are those in which the immediate parent of the Syrian reading is seen to be itself in turn derived from another, so that the two steps of the process illustrate each other: not a few distinctively Syrian readings are in reality Western or Alexandrian readings, somewhat trimmed and modified.

165. To state in few words the results of examination of the whole body of Syrian readings, distinctive and non-distinctive, the authors of the Syrian text had before them documents representing at least three earlier forms of text. Western, Alexandrian, and a third. Where they found variation, they followed different procedures