Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/289

Rh a very ancient text, but a very pure line of very ancient text, and that with comparatively small depravation either by scattered ancient corruptions otherwise attested or by individualisms of the scribe himself. On the other hand to take it as the sole authority except where it contains self-betraying errors, as some have done, is an unwarrantable abandonment of criticism, and in our opinion inevitably leads to erroneous results. A text so formed would be incomparably nearer the truth than a text similarly taken from any other Greek MS or other single document: but it would contain many errors by no means obvious, which could with more or less certainty have been avoided by the free use of all existing evidence.

331. Enough has already been said on the determination of the text where Β is supported by. A few words must be added here on the mode of dealing with the numerous variations in which these two preeminent MSS differ from each other. Setting aside ternary variations, most of the distributions in which the conflict of and Β requires notice belong to one or other of the three following types: (1) Β with a small group against the rest; (2)  and Β each with a large group dividing the array; and (3), much less important,  with a small group against the rest. The characteristics and twofold genealogical antecedents of the first and third have been already considered (§§ 324, 326 ff.). In the first two cases, and also to a limited extent in the third, Genealogy and Internal Evidence of Groups have brought us to the point of having two readings before us, with so real a conflict of authority that, notwithstanding the habitually greater integrity of text in Β than in, the normal relations between the different kinds of evidence are to