Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/159

Rh on transcriptional and to a great extent insufficient grounds; and in Tischendorf's last edition their number has been augmented, owing to the misinterpreted accession of the Sinai MS to the attesting documents. To one small and peculiar class of Western readings, exclusively omissions, we shall ourselves have to call attention as having exceptional claims to adoption. But when the Western readings are confronted with their ancient rivals in order to obtain a broad comparative view of the two texts, few scholars could long hesitate to pronounce the Western not merely to be the less pure text, but also to owe its differences in a great measure to a perilous confusion between transcription and reproduction, and even between the preservation of a record and its supposed improvement; and the distrust thus generated is only increased by further acquaintance.

171. What has been here said is equally true whether we confine ourselves to Western readings having only a Western attestation or include with them those Western readings which, having been adopted into the Syrian text, have a combination of Western and Syrian attestation. When once the historical relations of the texts have been ascertained, it would be arbitrary to refuse the evidence of the latter class in studying the general character of Western readings apart from attestation, for the accident of their appropriation by the Syrian text when the other Western readings were neglected can have no bearing on the antecedent relations of the whole class to the apostolic originals. But as a matter of fact the general conclusions would be the same in either case: throughout both classes of Western readings there is no diversity of salient characteristics.