Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/284

246 shifting of the Syrian documents from the one side to the other; and such a shifting is the natural result of the eclecticism of the Syrian revisers ( see §§ 185 f.). Two causes have doubtless contributed to the unequal occurrence of the readings here described, genuine readings attested by Β almost alone in addition to the Syrian documents, so that if the Syrian attestation were removed they would be subsingular readings of Β; their greater abundance in the Acts and Epistles than in the Gospels being partly due to the more rapid and more widely current corruption of the Gospels, and partly to the relative paucity of extant uncials containing the Acts and Epistles. The former cause belongs to the actual history of the text; the latter is a mere accident in the preservation of documents to this day.

F.&ensp;326—329.&emsp;Singular and subsingular readings of and other MSS

326. Turning from Β to, we find ourselves dealing with the handiwork of a scribe of different character. The omissions and repetitions of small groups of letters are rarely to be seen; but on the other hand all the ordinary lapses due to rapid and careless transcription are more numerous, including substitutions of one word for another, as when replaces  in Apoc. vii 15. Some of these substitutions have a kind of sense of their own which is out of all relation to the context, as (from Acts xxiii 31) for  in Matt. xiii 54; and (for )  in John xiii 1. The singular readings are very numerous, especially in the Apocalypse, and scarcely ever com-