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similar proper name preceded by a hard consonant, so as to give opportunity for aspiration. The improbability of a clerical error is shown by the reading in Susan. 56, attested by at least three out of the four extant uncials (ABQ), the reading of the fourth (V) being unknown; combined with the fact that this is the only other place in the Greek Bible where an opportunity for aspiration occurs before a similar proper name. It seems to follow that, where at the beginning of proper names was transliterated by  (and by analogy  by, the aspirate sound coalesced in pronunciation with the semi-vowel. On this view  and all derivatives of , together with  and , should always carry the rough breathing. We have however refrained from abandoning the common usage in the present text.

410. The Iota adscript is found in no early MSS of the New Testament. As the best MSS make the infinitive of verbs in to end in  ( Matt. xiii 32 and Mark iv 32;  1 Pet. ii 15;  Heb. vii 5), analogy is distinctly in favour of allowing the Iota subscript of  and infinitives in. Indeed even in ordinary Greek the practice of withholding it, which Wolf brought into fashion, has been questioned by some high authorities, is well supported by inscriptions, and manifestly right: of course its derivatives follow it. It seems morally certain that the Greeks wrote not only, but ; and we had good precedents for accepting these forms. Almost as much may be said for (see K.H.A.Lipsius Gramm. Unters. 9; Curtius Das Verb. d. griech. Spr. ed. 2. ii 401): but it had found no favour with modern editors when our text was printed, and we did not care to innovate on its behalf then, or to alter the plates in more than a hundred passages on its behalf now. Once more, authority has seemed to prescribe.

411. Details of Accents need not be discussed here. The prevalent tendency of most modern grammarians, with some notable exceptions, has been to work out a consistent system of accentuation on paper rather than to recover the record of ancient Greek intonations of voice, with all their inevitable anomalies: but we have not ventured on any wide departures from custom. With some recent editors we have taken account of the well attested fact that certain vowels which were originally long became short in the less deliberate speech of later