Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/307

Rh in a single volume in Ante-Nicene times. On the other hand the average conditions to which different volumes of the sacred writings would be exposed in the same place were not likely to differ much, in so far as they were likely to affect the text. It is therefore not surprising that we find great fundamental similarity of text throughout MSS which probably derived different groups of books from different exemplars, and that definite evidence of separate origins is sometimes present, sometimes wanting.

353. A word may be added here respecting the different 'hands' of MSS. It sometimes happened that the original scribe ('first hand') of a MS discovered that he had begun to transcribe wrongly, and accordingly corrected himself before going further: in such cases what he first wrote may have been either a mere blunder or the unconsciously remembered reading of another copy. After the completion of a MS it was often revised by a 'corrector' with a view to the removal of clerical errors. The thoroughness with which this laborious process was carried out must however have varied to a singular extent: and moreover the revision appears sometimes to have included the occasional introduction of readings from a different exemplar. Changes made by a hand apparently contemporary with the original hand may usually be set down to the 'corrector'. Additional changes might be made subsequently at any date on account of observed difference of reading from another MS simultaneously read or another current text. Sometimes these changes were confined to a small portion of text, or were sprinkled very thinly over the whole, sometimes they were comparatively systematic: but it is hardly ever safe to assume that a reading left unchanged is to be taken as ratified by the copy or text from which neighbouring changes were derived. Since corrections in previously written MSS, as distinguished from corrections made in the process of transcription, are not likely to be conjectures, they may be treated as virtually particles of other lost MSS at least as early as the time of correction: the textual value of the lost MSS can of course be ascertained only by successive examination