Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/275

Rh whatever of a similar tendency in B. Omissions due to clerical error, and especially to homoeoteleuton, naturally take place sometimes without destruction of sense: and all the analogies suggest that this is the real cause of the very few substantial omissions in Β which could possibly be referred to a love of abbreviation. As far as readings of any interest are concerned, we believe the text of Β to be as free from curtailment as that of any other important document.

315. The chief feature of the few remaining individualisms of B, so far as they can be recognised with fair certainty as such, is their simple and inartificial character. Nearly all of them are due to easy assimilation, chiefly between neighbouring clauses or verses, occasionally between parallel passages. Consecutive words are perhaps occasionally transposed: but here on the other hand account has to be taken of the peculiar habitual purity of the text of Β in respect of the order of words; a purity which is specially exhibited in numerous ternary or more composite variations, in which Β is the sole or almost the sole authority for the one collocation which will account for the other variants. Of paraphrastic change there is little or nothing. The final impression produced by a review of all the trustworthy signs is of a patient and rather dull or mechanical type of transcription, subject now and then to the ordinary lapses which come from flagging watchfulness, but happily guiltless of ingenuity or other untimely activity of brain, and indeed unaffected by mental influences except of the most limited and unconscious kind.

316. This examination of the tolerably certain individualisms of B, of all kinds, prepares the way for an