Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/283

Rh 325. The existence of numerous genuine subsingular readings of Β in binary variations gives the key to the origin of another class of variations, fundamentally the same but different in appearance, which, though rare in the Gospels, are not uncommon in the other books preserved in B. The peculiarity of these variations consists in the agreement of Β with the Syrian text against the great mass of documents representing the more ancient texts. How is this distribution to be explained? Are these readings of Β corruptions of its fundamental text from a Syrian source, or do they belong to its fundamental text, so that they must have stood in the purest of the texts out of which the Syrian text was constructed? Internal evidence is decisively favourable to the second answer for at least the larger number of passages, and thus affords a strong presumption for the rest. Perhaps the most striking example is the well known variation in 1 Cor. xv 51, where there can be no doubt that the peculiar form of St Paul's words, together with forgetfulness of the language of the apostolic age (1 Thess. iv 15, 17), led to a transposition of the negative from the first clause to the second, and the introduction of a seemingly easy but fallacious antithesis. Here the wrong position of the negative is supported by (A)CG3 17 with some Versions and Fathers, and also, with a verbal change, which probably formed part of the corruption in its earliest shape, by D2 with other Versions and Fathers. Thus Β alone of primary uncials, sustained however by the Memphitic and apparently by Origen and other good Fathers, as also by lost MSS mentioned by Fathers, upholds the true position in company with the Syrian text. The only difference of distribution between such cases and those noticed in the last paragraph is the