Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/64

26 tionable to be implicitly trusted by any one who wishes to ascertain his author's true text, and not merely to follow a generally sound rule. Hence it is only in well marked and unambiguous cases that the unsupported verdict of Transcriptional Probability for detached readings can be safely followed.

32. But the insufficiency of Transcriptional Probability as an independent guide is most signally shown by its liability to stand in apparent antagonism to Intrinsic Probability; since the legitimate force of Intrinsic Probability, where its drift is clear and unambiguous, is not touched by the fact that in many other places it bears a divided or ambiguous testimony. The area of final antagonism, it is already evident, is very much smaller than might seem to be implied in the first crude impression that scribes are not likely to desert a better reading for a worse; but it is sufficiently large to create serious difficulty. The true nature of the difficulty will be best explained by a few words on the mutual relations of the two classes of Internal Evidence, by which it will likewise be seen what a valuable ancillary office they discharge in combination.

33. All conflicts between Intrinsic and Transcriptional Probability arise from the imperfection of our knowledge: in both fields criticism consists of inferences from more or less incomplete data. Every change not purely mechanical made by a transcriber is, in some sense, of the nature of a correction. Corrections in such external matters as orthography and the like may be passed over, since they arise merely out of the comparative familiarity of different forms, and here Intrinsic Probability has nothing to do with what can properly be called excellence or easiness. All other corrections,