Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/331

Rh that appears to be genuine is not absolutely unattested, but has only insignificant authority (§§ 360, 367). Such suspicion of primitive corruption is universally indicated by an obelus (&#x2020;) in the margin or small obeli (††) in the text, and further explained by a note in the Appendix. The typical notation consists of Ap.&#x2020; in the margin, the extreme limits of the doubtful words in the text being marked by &#x231C;&#x231D;. In a single instance (Apoc. xiii 16) the reading suspected to be genuine has been prefixed to Ap.&#x2020; on account of the peculiar nature of the evidence. We have not however thought it necessary to banish to the Appendix, or even the margin, a few unquestionably genuine readings which are shown by documentary and transcriptional evidence to have been in all probability successful ancient emendations made in the process of transcription, and not to have been transmitted continuously from the autograph (§ 88). Such true readings, being at once conjectural and traditional, have been placed in the text between small obeli (††), the best attested reading being however retained in the margin with Ap. added, and an account of the evidence being given in the Appendix.

381. Both the preceding classes of notation refer exclusively to places in which in our opinion there is substantial ground for doubting which of two or more extant readings is genuine, or in which no extant reading—in a few cases no adequately attested extant reading—can be confidently accepted as genuine. The third class of notation on the other hand deals exclusively with readings which we believe to be certainly foreign to the original text of the New Testament in the strictest sense, and therefore to have no title to rank as alternative