Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/244

206 from which they all derive their authority preceded our earliest extant MSS in several cases by long periods eventful in textual history, and thus at least rescue any reading of our MSS which they undoubtedly attest from the suspicion of having come into existence at any recent stage of transcription, in the century, we may say, preceding 350. This ancillary aid of Versions and Fathers in individual variations is invaluable, notwithstanding their unfitness to supply a primary and continuous standard of text as compared with our best Greek MSS. But, though the security of verification is withdrawn where Versions and Fathers are both absent, it by no means follows that a positive insecurity takes its place. Every version, so far as it is at present known to us, contains so many readings which it is morally impossible to believe to be right, and a certain proportion of these readings are scattered in such apparent irregularity, that we have no right to assume either that the deficiencies of one version, as the Memphitic, would in every case be made up by some other version, or that deficiencies of all versions and deficiencies of all extant patristic evidence would never happen to coincide. Moreover the transition to total absence of Versions and Fathers is bridged over by the many places in which a secondary version, as the Æthiopic or Armenian, supplies the only accessory authority. The whole number of cases where the primary Greek MSS stand alone is extremely small, when the deceptive variations mentioned above (§§ 271, 272), have been set aside: and neither in their internal character nor in their external relations to other documents have we found reason to deny to such readings the favourable presumption which their attestation by the better of the extant Greek MSS would confer.