Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/272

234 of 12 to 14 letters or of multiples of the same, his exemplar was doubtless written in lines of this length. Often, but not always, an obvious cause of omission may be found in homoeoteleuton, the beginning or ending of consecutive portions of text with the same combinations of letters or of words. Reduplications due to the same cause likewise occur, but more rarely. More characteristic than these commonest of lapses is a tendency to double a single short word, syllable, or letter, or to drop one of two similar consecutive short words, syllables, or letters. The following are examples: Mark ix 25 for ; Acts xviii 17  for ; Mark xiii 13  for ; John xiv 10  for ; Luke vii 24  for ; Mark iii 5  for ; vi 22  for ; vii 21  for ; also without similarity of form, Mark vi 1 for ; vii 18 for. Occasionally we find assimilations of ending, as Mark ν 38 (for ); Rom. xiv 18 (for ); or even, but very rarely, such verbal assimilations as  in Acts x 37 for.

313. The singular readings of Β which cannot strictly be called clerical errors, and yet which appear to be individualisms of the scribe, are confined within still narrower limits. A current supposition, to which frequent repetition has given a kind of authority, that the scribe of Β was peculiarly addicted to arbitrary omissions, we believe to be entirely unfounded, except possibly in the very limited sense explained below, while the facts which have given it plausibility are everywhere conspicuous.