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Rh andrian texts as wholes are therefore in the strictest sense, as we have called them partly by anticipation, aberrant texts.

237. It does not follow however that none of their distinctive readings are original. If it could be shown with reasonable certainty that the three lines diverged simultaneously from the apostolic autographs, or from a common original derived almost immediately from the autographs, the chance that one line alone has preserved true readings where the two others agree, that is, that two transcribers have independently made the same changes, would be infinitesimal (see § 75), except as regards changes of a very obvious and tempting kind. No such presupposition is however imposed by the actual evidence: we have no right to affirm that the two great divergences were simultaneous, not successive. Both are indeed of such extreme antiquity that a strong presumption must always lie against an exclusively Western or exclusively Alexandrian reading; since, apart from accidental coincidence, its genuineness would presuppose as a necessary condition, not only that the two divergences were not simultaneous, but that the rival reading came into existence either at the first divergence or between the first and the second.

238. Of the unfavourable presumptions arising out of the internal character of distinctive Western and distinctive Alexandrian readings generally we have said enough already (§§ 170 ff., 181 ff.). A certain number might on purely internal grounds be received or rejected with equally or almost equally good reason: it is however, we believe, quite safe to dismiss them along with their much more numerous associates that are condemned by individual internal evidence no less than by the pre-