Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/241

Rh mind; and, if the difference struck him, he was not unlikely to treat the written exemplar as having blundered. But since the text familiar to nearly all transcribers after the earlier ages, to say nothing of editors, was assuredly the Syrian text, this doubleness of original could arise only where the true patristic reading was Non-Syrian. For the converse supposition there is no similar justification: for the only known causes that can be assigned for the appearance of a Non-Syrian reading in a patristic quotation are faithful transmission and accidental error; and where the reading is independently known to be of high antiquity, the chance of accidental coincidence in error is in an immense preponderance of cases too minute to come into account.

277. Even where there is no obvious positive internal ground for doubting whether the words written by a Father have been faithfully preserved, some slight uncertainty must always rest on a patristic attestation of a variant adopted by the Syrian text, since the supposed doubleness of original remains equally possible, and equally likely, whether the circumstances of the individual quotation do or do not happen to contain suspicious indications. This uncertainty ceases to be slight when the apparent position of the patristic testimony creates a grouping unlike any of the groupings into which it habitually enters, and when if transferred to the other side it would find itself in accustomed company.

278. Again, there is often reason to doubt whether what a Father wrote was identical with what he read: positive grounds may be found for distrusting a free quotation as faithfully representing the biblical text used, provided that the difference between one variant and another is such as might readily be reproduced accident-