Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/158

Rh A.&ensp;170—176.&emsp;Western characteristics

170. On all accounts the Western text claims our attention first. The earliest readings which can be fixed chronologically belong to it. As far as we can judge from extant evidence, it was the most widely spread text of Ante-Nicene times; and sooner or later every version directly or indirectly felt its influence. But any prepossessions in its favour that might be created by this imposing early ascendancy are for the most part soon dissipated by continuous study of its internal character. The eccentric Whiston's translation of the Gospels and Acts from the Codex Bezae, and of the Pauline Epistles from the Codex Claromontanus, and Bornemann's edition of the Acts, in which the Codex Bezae was taken as the standard authority, are probably the only attempts which have ever been made in modern times to set up an exclusively or even predominantly Western Greek text as the purest reproduction of what the apostles wrote. This all but universal rejection is doubtless partly owing to the persistent influence of a whimsical theory of the last century, which, ignoring all Non-Latin Western documentary evidence except the handful of extant bilingual uncials, maintained that the Western Greek text owed its peculiarities to translation from the Latin; partly to an imperfect apprehension of the antiquity and extension of the Western text as revealed by patristic quotations and by versions. Yet, even with the aid of a true perception of the facts of Ante-Nicene textual history, it would have been strange if this text as a whole had found much favour. A few scattered Western readings have long been approved by good textual critics