Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/306

268 of the whole volume would really represent two different exemplars (see § 46): and for a different reason a similar diversity of sources must often have been disguised by transcription in the fourth and fifth centuries. The transition from small portable MSS of limited contents is strikingly illustrated by a fortunate accident in the transcription of one of the four great comprehensive MSS which are the earliest now extant. In the MS of the Apocalypse from which C was taken some leaves had been displaced, and the scribe of C did not discover the displacement. It thus becomes easy to compute that each leaf of the exemplar contained only about as much as 10 lines of the text of the present edition; so that this one book must have made up nearly 120 small leaves of parchment, and accordingly formed a volume either to itself or without considerable additions. The distinctive character of text exhibited by A in the Gospels, by in St Mark, and by Β in the Pauline Epistles, as also the orthography of Β  peculiar to the Acts, are instances of indications which equally shew the precariousness of assuming with respect to any one MS of the New Testament that all the books in it were copied from a single volume. In some cases, as we have suggested above (§ 320) with reference to Β in the Pauline Epistles, the discrepant character of text in particular books or groups of books was doubtless introduced not by the immediate exemplar but by previous interlinear or marginal corrections made in its predecessor: but in most cases the range of the corrections would be limited by the contents of the accessory copy which furnished them; so that the cause of the discrepancy of text would be ultimately the same. It is indeed quite uncertain to what extent the whole New Testament was ever included