Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/291

Rh in some Mixed Latin MSS, and also in some cursive Greek MSS. If a given cursive is observed to concur several times with the very best documents against not only all or almost all other cursives but almost all uncials in favour of a manifestly right reading, we know that it must contain an element of exceptional purity, and reasonably infer that the same element is the parent of other less certain readings in supporting which it joins with perhaps a single primary uncial only. Under these conditions the uncial may receive weighty documentary support from an apparently insignificant document.

334. On a superficial view it might seem arbitrary to assign a given cursive or other mixed document high authority in those variations which differ from the common text, and refuse it any authority where it agrees with the common text. As however has been implicitly shown in former pages (§ 197), this view derives its plausibility from neglect of the conditions on which criticism allows authority to a document on the ground that it is 'good', that is, gives it relative confidence in doubtful cases because it has been found on the right side in clear cases in which most documents are on the wrong side. If the homogeneousness of a cursive text is found to be broken by sporadic ancient readings, we know that we have virtually two distinct texts to deal with under the same name; that is, the readings discrepant from the common text proclaim themselves as derived from a second ancestor which had an ancient text. It can never indeed be positively affirmed that all the readings agreeing with the common text came distinctively from the principal or Syrian ancestor of the supposed cursive, for in regard of any one such reading