Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/178

140 192. The confusion was naturally most extensive in the Greek texts; but the versions did not altogether escape it. Enough is already known of the Latin texts to enable us to see what kind of processes were at work. Along with the old Western licence as to diction, in which Latin scribes must have long continued to indulge, we find not only indigenous mixture, the combination of diverging or possibly of independent Latin types, but also mixture with Greek texts. Combinations of this latter kind were in fact more or less rude revisions, not differing in essential character from the Hieronymic revision to which the Vulgate is due. As in that better known case, they proceeded from a true feeling that a Greek MS as such was more authentic than a Latin MS as such, uncontrolled by any adequate sense of the difference between one Greek MS and another. As was to be expected, the new Greek elements of these revised Latin MSS came from various sources, now Pre-Syrian with or without the specially Alexandrian corruptions, now distinctly Syrian, Greek readings of this last type being however almost confined to the Italian and Hieronymic revisions. How far the mixture perceptible in Egyptian texts should be referred to this time, it is not as yet possible to say.

193. Exact knowledge of the patristic texts of the fourth century is much impeded by the uncritical manner in which the works of most of the Greek Fathers have been edited. But wherever firm ground can be reached, we find essentially the same characteristics; almost total absence of all the ancient texts in approximate integrity, and infinitely varying combinations of them, together with an increasing infusion of the later Syrian readings. The most remarkable fact, standing out in striking con-