Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/277

Rh thought to be individualisms were really at least several generations older than the age when Β was written. Thus in 1 Cor. xiii 5 it has with Clem. Paed. 252 for, retained by Clem. Strom. 956; both readings being shown by the respective contexts to have been actually used by Clement, and both making excellent sense. But, wherever there is no such accessory authority, clear internal evidence is needed to justify the acceptance of singular readings of B, since the possibility that they are no more than individualisms is constantly present.

318. The special excellence of Β displays itself best perhaps in ternary or more than ternary variations. This has been already noticed (§ 315) in reference to collocations of words; but the statement is equally true as regards readings of all kinds. Where the documents fall into more than two arrays, the readings of Β are usually found to be such as will account for the rival readings, and such as cannot easily be derived from any one of them, or any combination of them. Not the least instructive are what may be termed composite ternary variations, which easily escape notice in the cursory use of an ordinary apparatus criticus. They arise when two independent aberrant texts have removed a stumbling-block due to the original form of a phrase or sentence by altering different parts of the phrase, not by altering the whole or the same part in a different manner. If, as is usual, the evidence affecting each alteration is presented separately, we have in form not a single ternary variation but two or more successive binary variations. Now in such cases it is of frequent occurrence to find Β nearly or even quite alone in supporting what is evidently the genuine variant