Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/311

Rh dence of two extremely ancient independent lines is absent: for, where they differ from each other, the true reading may differ from that of either, and may have survived in an independent line to a somewhat later time, and so have found its way into other uncials. But the theoretical possibility holds good likewise where Β and agree, though reduced within much narrower limits. Near as the divergence of the respective ancestries of Β and must have been to the autographs, there must have been an appreciable interval of transcription (§§ 241, 301 ff.); and it is a priori conceivable that relics of a line of transmission starting from a yet earlier point should find their way into one or another uncial of the fifth or following centuries, and further that such relics should include genuine readings which disappeared in the writing of an intermediate ancestor of Β and.

358. When however the readings of secondary or even primary uncials in opposition to Β and are consecutively examined, they present no such phenomena, whether of accessory attestation or of internal character, as might have been expected were the supposition true. The singular readings with rare and unimportant exceptions have all the appearance of being individualisms. The scanty subsingular readings having some attestation by early Versions or Fathers will be noticed under the next head. The readings attested by two or more of these uncials, which make up by far the greater part of the whole number of these readings, can be recognised at once as distinctively Syrian or Alexandrian or Western, or as obvious modifications of extant readings having one or other such attestation and character. Among all the endless varieties of mixture there is a striking sameness in the elements mixed. The imme-

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