Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/186

148 proportions between them: most commonly there is no difficulty in recognising one text as the base on which readings of one or more other types have been inserted in greater or less number. From the component elements of the text of a document as thus empirically ascertained to be present in the illustrative variations taken into account, and also, more roughly, from their proportions, the component elements of its text generally, and their proportions, become approximately known. This knowledge supplies a key to other less simple variations, by shewing either to which ancient text a given reading must be referred, so far as its attestation by each such document is concerned, or at least to which ancient text or texts each such document gives little or no warrant for referring it. The uses of the information thus obtained, and their limitation, will appear in due time.

B.&ensp;201—212.&emsp;Texts found in Greek MSS

201. We have next to give a brief account of the relations of the principal extant documents to ancient texts as ascertained in the manner described above. Greek Uncial MSS are arranged here in the order that seems most convenient for exhibiting their textual composition, without reference to any supposed order of excellence. Some repetitions have been found unavoidable.

202. Western texts virtually unmixed survive exclusively in Græco-Latin MSS written in Western Europe. They are well represented in the Gospels and Acts by D, some leaves in different places and some whole chapters at the end of Acts being however lost. Though the MS was written in Cent. VI, the text gives no clear signs of having undergone recent degeneracy: it is, to the best of our belief, substantially a Western text of Cent. , with occasional readings probably due to Cent. . Much more numerous are readings belonging to a very early stage of the Western text, free as yet from corruptions early enough to be found in the European or even in the