Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/179

Rh trast to the previous state of things, is the sudden collapse of the Western text after Eusebius: a few writers offer rare traces of the expiring tradition in occasional purely Western readings which subsequently vanish; but even this slight and sporadic testimony is exceptional. On the other hand elements derived from Western texts entered largely into most of the mixtures which encounter us on every side. A similar diffusion of large elements derived from the Alexandrian text, discernible in the patristic evidence, is still better attested by versions or revisions of versions in this and the next following period, and apparently by the phenomena of subsequent Greek MSS. At Alexandria itself the Alexandrian tradition lives on through the fourth century, more or less disguised with foreign accretions, and then in the early part of the fifth century reappears comparatively pure in Cyril. On the growing influence of the Syrian texts throughout this time enough has already been said.

C.&ensp;194, 195.&emsp;Final supremacy of the Syrian text

194. The history of the text of the New Testament in the following centuries is obscure in details; but the facts which stand out clearly are sufficient for the purposes of criticism. The multiplicity of texts bequeathed by the fourth century was of long continuance. If, passing over the four great early Bibles BAC, and also the Græco-Latin and Græco-Egyptian MSS, we fix our attention on what remains to us of purely Greek MSS down to the seventh or eighth century, we cannot but be struck by the considerable though unequal and on the whole decreasing proportion in which Pre-Syrian readings