Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/181

Rh perished entirely, leaving no successors to contribute readings to other living texts or to transmit their own texts to the present day. On the other hand Greek Christendom became centralised, and the centre, looked up to increasingly as such while time went on, was Constantinople. Now Antioch is the true ecclesiastical parent of Constantinople; so that it is no wonder that the traditional Constantinopolitan text, whether formally official or not, was the Antiochian text of the fourth century. It was equally natural that the text recognised at Constantinople should eventually become in practice the standard New Testament of the East.

D.&ensp;196, 197.&emsp;Relics of Ρre-Syrian texts in cursives

196. We have hitherto treated the Greek text of the Middle Ages as a single text. This mode of representation, strictly true in itself, does not convey the whole truth. An overwhelming proportion of the text in all known cursive MSS except a few is as a matter of fact identical, more especially in the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, however we may account for the identity. Further, the identity of readings implies identity of origin; the evidence already given has shown many of the characteristic readings to have originated about 250—350, assigning them at the same time a definite single origin, for we need not here distinguish stages in the Syrian revision; and there are no reasons whatever for assigning a different origin to the rest. If an editor were for any purpose to make it his aim to restore by itself as completely as possible the New Testament of Antioch in 350, he could not help taking the approximate consent of the cursives as equivalent to a primary documentary