Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/176

138 would be promoted by the increase of converts and new security of religious use, and confusion of texts by more frequent intercourse of churches. Such a state of things would at least render textual revision desirable; and a desire for it might easily arise in a place where a critical spirit was alive. The harmony between the characteristics of the Syrian revision and the well known temper of the Antiochian school of critical theology in the fourth century, at least on its weaker side, is obvious; and Lucianus the reputed founder of the school, himself educated at Edessa, lived in the latter part of the third century, and suffered martyrdom in 312. Of known names his has a better claim than any other to be associated with the early Syrian revision; and the conjecture derives some little support from a passage of Jerome, which is not itself discredited by the precariousness of modern theories which have been suggested by it. When he says in his preface to the Gospels "Praetermitto eos codices quos a Luciano et Hesychio nuncupatos paucorum hominum adserit perversa contentio", he must have had in view some definite text or texts of the Gospels or the New Testament generally, appealed to by some definite set or sets of men as deriving authority from names honoured by them. Jerome's antagonism to Antiochian theology would readily explain his language, if some Antiochian Father had quoted in controversy a passage of the New Testament according to the text familiar to him, had been accused of falsifying Scripture, and had then claimed for his text the sanction of Lucianus. Whether however Lucianus took a leading part in the earlier stage of the Syrian revision or not, it may be assigned with more probability either to his generation or to that which immediately followed than to any other;