Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/231

Rh the Old Syriac, the Egyptian versions, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers should be added to the list: we venture however to omit them here for the sake of simplicity, the practical effect of omitting them being extremely small, as will be explained further on.

263. Now if each of the Greek MSS singled out as primary is individually entitled to this exceptional distinction as a representative of Pre-Syrian texts, we should naturally expect the complete combinations of them to attest a specially pure text; the text thus attested being certified by the concurrence of all the great lines of transmission known to have existed in the earliest times, since undoubtedly all known Pre-Syrian forms of text are sufficiently represented among the primary MSS except the Western texts of the Catholic Epistles (in so far as they have a Western text) and of part of the Acts, and these exceptions are shown by the analogies of other books to affect little beyond degrees of certainty. And this is precisely what we do find: the groups formed by the complete combinations of these primary documents attest clearly the purity of their ancestry by the prevailing internal excellence of their readings. The number of their readings which can with any show of reason be pronounced to be apparently corruptions of other existing readings is exceedingly small; and in our opinion the claim is in all these cases unfounded.

264. When these groups lose their most distinctively Western members, D in the Gospels and Acts and D2G3 in the Pauline Epistles, and with them, as usually happens, one or more of the predominantly Western versions, totally different because less comprehensive groups come into view, BCL 33 in the Gospels, ABC and the one or two cursives in the other books; but