Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/312

274 diate sources of all our uncials not purely Syrian, except Β and, were evidently for the most part the popular eclectic texts of about the fourth century, Syrian or other, and not the various earlier and simpler Ante-Nicene texts from which the eclectic texts were compounded, and which the eclectic texts soon drove out of currency. Lastly, the verdict of internal evidence is almost always unfavourable where it is not neutral.

359. Passing backwards to Ante-Nicene times, we have to deal with the second question,—May we or may we not reasonably expect to find true readings in very limited but very ancient groups of documents in opposition to Β and ? There are many Pre-Syrian readings the antiquity of which is vouched for by Versions or Fathers, but which nevertheless are supported by no Greek MS but a stray uncial or two, or only by a few cursives, (such cursives naturally as are otherwise known to contain ancient elements of text,) or even in many cases by no Greek MS at all. The attestation of these readings, or at least of the second and third classes of them, resembles the accessory attestation of the subsingular readings of B, which we have already learned to judge on the whole favourably: it resembles also the accessory attestation of the subsingular readings of, which we have rarely found to have the stamp of genuineness. All such readings shew how plentiful a crop of variation existed in the early centuries and was swept out of sight by the eclectic texts.

360. Readings thus attested by Versions and Fathers almost without support from existing Greek MSS have as yet received from critics no attention proportionate to their historical interest. The accident of their neglect by the Greek editors of the fourth century,