Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/301

Rh having been adopted by Erasmus in the first instance, and never afterwards removed. The foundation of the 'Received Text' of the Apocalypse on the other hand was a transcript of the single cursive numbered 1: Erasmus had in his earlier editions no other Greek MS to follow, though eventually he introduced almost at random a certain number of corrections from the Complutensian text. Now 1 is by no means an average cursive of the common sort. On the one hand it has many individualisms and readings with small and evidently unimportant attestation: on the other it has a large and good ancient element, chiefly it would seem of Western origin, and ought certainly (with the somewhat similar 38) to stand high among secondary documents. While therefore the text of 1 differs very widely from the true text by its Western readings, its individualisms, and the large late or Constantinopolitan element which it possesses in common with other cursives, a text formed in the way that the 'Received Text' is formed in other books would probably have differed from the true text on the whole much more. Thus the 'Received Text' of the Apocalypse has a curiously anomalous position. Besides containing a small portion of text which, like some single words in other books with less excuse, was fabricated from the Latin by Erasmus without any Greek authority to supply a defect in his one MS, it abounds in readings which cannot be justified on any possible view of documentary evidence, and are as a matter of fact abandoned by all textual critics: and yet the proportion of cases in which it has adopted the readings most current in the degenerate popular Greek texts of the Middle Ages, though large, is probably smaller than in any other book of the New Testament.