Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/302

Rh I.&emsp;347—355.&emsp;Supplementary details on the birthplace and the composition of leading MSS

347. In all that we have hitherto said we have taken no account of the supposed locality in which MSS were written, except in certain definite cases. The reason is because we do not believe anything certain to be as yet known. Up to a certain point the bilingual MSS (Græco-Latin and Græco-Thebaic) tell their own tale: about no other important early MS is it as yet possible to make any geographical assertion with confidence. It is indeed usually taken for granted that the chief uncials of the New Testament were written at Alexandria. This floating impression appears to be founded on vague associations derived from two undoubted facts; (1) that the translations of the Old Testament which form the LXX were made at Alexandria, while the chief uncials of the New Testament agree in some prominent points of orthography and grammatical form (by no means in all) with the chief uncials of the LXX, the four oldest being moreover parts of the same manuscript Bibles, and (2) that A was at some unknown time, not necessarily earlier than the eleventh century, preserved at Alexandria, and is hence called the Codex Alexandrinus. The supposition cannot be pronounced incredible; but it is at present hardly more than a blind and on the whole improbable conjecture. An Alexandrian origin, much more an exclusively Alexandrian or Egyptian use, cannot be reasonably maintained for most of the unclassical orthographies and grammatical forms found in MSS of the New Testament, as we shall have to explain more at length in Part IV. The character of the substantive