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materials scattered through Mill's notes; and it is chiefly to his earnest if somewhat crude advocacy that Transcriptional Probabilities under the name of 'the harder reading' owe their subsequent full recognition.

B.&ensp;247—249.&emsp;Development of historical criticism by Griesbach, in contrast with Hug's theory of recensions

247. Bengel was succeeded in Germany by Semler, and under his influence by a group of acute and diligent textual critics, stimulated to fresh researches both by Bengel's writings and by the rich accession of new materials from Wetstein's edition of 1751-2, and from the various explorations and collations which were vigorously carried on in the later years of the century. What Bengel had sketched tentatively was verified and worked out with admirable patience, sagacity, and candour by Griesbach, who was equally great in independent investigation and in his power of estimating the results arrived at by others. Bengel's 'Asiatic' text he called 'Constantinopolitan': the two more ancient texts, which he clearly defined, he called 'Western' and 'Alexandrian'. Unfortunately he often followed Semler in designating the ancient texts by the term 'recension', and thus gave occasion to a not yet extinct confusion between his historical analysis of the text of existing documents and the conjectural theory of his contemporary Hug, a biblical scholar of considerable merit, but wanting in sobriety of judgement.

248. Hug started from what was in itself on the whole a true conception of the Western text and its manifold licence. He called it the, or 'Vulgate Edition', taking the name from the text of the LXX as it was in its confusion before the reform attempted by Origen in his Hexapla. But further he conjectured that the disorderly state of this popular text led to its being formally revised in three different lands, the product of each revision being a 'recension' in the strict sense of the word. The alleged evidence consists in two well known passages of Jerome. In the first he speaks of the diversity of copies of the LXX in different regions; Alexandria and Egypt appeal, he says, to the authority of Hesychius; Constantinople and Antioch approve of the copies of Lucian the Martyr; the intermediate provinces read the Palestinian volumes, wrought out by Origen and published by Eusebius and