Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/282

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record of the first cock-crowing; and the original absence of in v. 68 is sufficiently attested by BL lt 17 c me. Half however of this group, as we have seen, followed the alternative expedient of omitting, two of the number going on to omit the following : and thus it appears that the only consistent authorities for the true text in this series of variations are B, a lectionary, and the Memphitic.

324. Such being the results of an examination of ternary variations, it is no wonder that binary variations likewise supply us with multitudes of readings of B, slenderly supported or even alone, which have every appearance of being genuine, and thus exemplify the peculiar habitual purity of its text. Readings like these are striking illustrations of the danger of trusting absolutely to even an overwhelming plurality of early and good authorities (see § 282 f.), and the need of bearing in mind the distorting effects of mixture. For instance it is morally certain that in Gal. vi 15 B, with two good cursives and some Versions and Fathers, is right in reading for  which is borrowed from v 6; and yet the array sustaining the interpolation includes ACD2G3P2 with Versions and Fathers. Such a distribution could never have arisen except by a wide early adoption of a yet earlier aberration of some influential text, which here was evidently Western. On the other hand there are many subsingular readings of Β that cannot claim more than the secondary rank of alternative readings which may possibly be genuine, and there are many others that may be safely rejected. The claims of absolutely singular readings of Β in binary variations are naturally found to be usually of no great strength, though some among them appear to be very possibly genuine, and their genuineness would not be out of harmony with the known textual relations of B.