Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/293

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the true and the Syrian texts alike; the fifth, for, remains untouched. The two Western readings which are also Syrian, for  and  for, are likewise left as they were. Lastly, the second, omitted by all Pre-Syrian authorities, is inserted in agreement with the Syrian text. Of the five changes here made E3 adopts the first three, substituting them for the original readings of D2. The last two it neglects, retaining the original readings: the correctors' omission of was apparently expressed by cancelling dots, which might easily escape the eye; the disregard of  is probably due merely to carelessness, of which the scribe gives abundant signs. It will be seen at once that, if both the later corrector of D2 and the scribe of E3 had done effectually that which they evidently proposed to do, E3 would in this place have simply represented the Syrian text; and that the combined negligence was the cause of the survival of three Western readings.

337. These instructive phenomena naturally receive little consideration now, because the exact knowledge that we possess of the original D2 renders attention to the copy E3 superfluous. Supposing however that D2 had been lost, the complex antecedents of the text of E3 would have been unknown: it would have presented itself merely as a Syrian document sprinkled with Western readings. When then we find other late MSS having a Syrian text sprinkled with Western or other Pre-Syrian readings, we may reasonably take D2 and E3, as exhibiting the manner in which the mixture has probably arisen, and indirectly illustrating other possible modes of mixture. Evidently the textual value of E3 is virtually confined to the fragments which it preserved of the original writing of D2, while in the absence of D2 there would be no way of distinguishing these fragments from the rest of the text except by their discrepance from the Syrian text: and in like manner discrepance from the Syrian text is the only safe test for the readings of the ancient element in any late mixed document, because in late times the texts which would be virtually taken as standards for assimilative correction were naturally Syrian, no others being current.

338. It is true that by attending to the discrepant readings alone we should be neglecting some readings which as a matter of fact were in the original writing of D2, namely the Western readings that became Syrian (in the passage cited these are the change of order and the