Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/166

128 They are the same facts that were mentioned above (§ 172) in speaking of the progressiveness of Western changes, only seen from the other side. When we find that those very Western documents or witnesses which attest some of the most widely spread and therefore ancient Western corruptions attest likewise ancient Non-Western readings in opposition to most Western documents, we know that they must represent a text in process of transition from such a text as we find at Alexandria to a more highly developed Western text, and consequently presuppose a relatively pure Non-Western text. This early evidence is sometimes at once Greek, Latin, and Syriac, sometimes confined to one or two of the languages. It shews that at least in remote antiquity the Non-Western text was by no means confined to Alexandria.

179. As regards the other facts of the Ante-Nicene period, the negative evidence is not of a trustworthy kind. If we deduct from the extant Ante-Nicene Greek patristic quotations those of the Alexandrian Fathers, the remainder, though sufficient to shew the wide range of the Western text, is by no means sufficient by itself to disprove the existence of other texts. What we have urged in a former page (§ 162) respecting the absence of patristic evidence for the Syrian text before the middle of the third century at earliest was founded on the whole evidence, including that of Clement and Origen, Origen's evidence being in amount more than equal to all the rest put together, and in probable variety of sources and actual variety of texts exceptionally comprehensive: and moreover this negative argument was confirmed by the internal phenomena of the Syrian text itself. But further, much positive evidence for the persistence of Non-West-