Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/281

Rh

and the common ancestor of L another, while Β alone held fast the true text throughout.

323. Once more, the unique character of Β in a series of separate but mutually related variations, making up as it were an extended composite variation, is illustrated by St Mark's account of the denials of St Peter. Alone of the evangelists St Mark notices two crowings of a cock. According to the true text he follows the same lines as St Matthew and St Luke, while he makes the requisite additions in three places: that is, he inserts the word 'twice' in both the prediction (xiv 30) and St Peter's recollection of the prediction (xiv 72 b), and the phrase 'a second time'  in the statement that 'a cock crew' immediately after the third denial (xiv 72 a). Thus all the points are tersely but sufficiently given. The text however, as it thus stood, presented more than one temptation to correction. At the first of the four places (v. 30) the direct harmonistic influence from the other Gospels was naturally strong and unchecked, and thus the first is largely omitted (by C* aeth arm as well as the Westerns, D cu2 lat.afr-eur). When v. 72 a was reached, was as naturally a stumbling-block for a different reason, because there had been no mention of a previous cock-crowing. The supposed difficulty was met in two ways: a text now represented by a small group (L c vg.cod), doubtless Alexandrian, assimilated v. 72 to v. 68 and the parallel narratives by striking out ; while the Western text boldly adapted v. 68 to v. 72 by inserting after. Lastly v. 72 b was affected by the various texts both of the preceding words and of the original prediction (v. 30), here expressly repeated and thereby brought into strict parallelism, and accordingly is omitted by more documents than. The Syrian text makes the whole uniformly symmetrical and complete by accepting the Western interpolation in v. 68, while it retains in both places. The confusion of attestation introduced by these several cross currents of change is so great that of the seven principal MSS ABCDL no two have the same text in all four places. Neither of the two extreme arrangements, the Syrian (with A), which recognises the double cock-crowing in all four places, and that of c, which recognises it nowhere but simply follows the other Gospels, could have given rise to the other readings. The chief cause of disturbance is manifestly the attempt to supply an explicit