Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/238

200 forms of paraphrase is a change of order; and a large proportion of the readings in which the primary Greek MSS stand alone differ from the rival readings in order only. How little reliance can be placed on the adverse testimony of versions in such a matter is indeed proved by the absence of Greek or any other authority for numberless scattered inversions of order, to be found in MSS of so literal a version as the Old Latin. Other changes of a paraphrastic kind, in which versions may have the appearance of supplying attestation in another language to similar Greek readings, but which doubtless were often in fact made by the translators and the Greek scribes independently, are the insertion of expletives, more especially pronouns (very liberally added as suffixes by Syriac translators), after, and the like; the resolution or introduction of participial constructions; and permutations of conjunctions, and introductory language generally. In some of these cases a peculiarity of form in one Greek reading renders it probable that versions which attest it are faithfully reproducing their original, while it remains uncertain which original underlies any or all of the versions on the opposite side: in other cases either Greek reading might so easily be paraphrased by the other, either in Greek or in any other language, that no single version can be safely taken to represent exactly its original; though it is usually probable that some only of the versions have disguised their fundamental reading.

273. But, when allowance has been made for all these cases in which the apparent isolation of the primary Greek MSS is possibly or probably delusive, a certain number of variations remain in which the isolation must in the present state of our evidence be counted as