Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/67

Rh been said above (§ 33), is that each reading should shew some excellence of its own, apparent or real, provided that we on our part are qualified to recognise it. If any reading fails to do so, clerical errors being of course excepted, the fault must lie in our knowledge or our perception; for if it be a scribe's correction, it must have some at least apparent excellence, and if it be original, it must have the highest real excellence. Contrast of real and apparent excellence is in any given variation an indispensable criterion as to the adequacy of the evidence for justifying reliance on Transcriptional Probability.

36. Fortunately variations conforming to this normal type are of frequent occurrence; variations, that is, in which a critic is able to arrive at a strong and clear conviction that one reading is intrinsically much the most probable, and yet to see with equal clearness how the rival reading or readings could not but be attractive to average transcribers. In these cases Internal Evidence of Readings attains the highest degree of certainty which its nature admits, this relative trustworthiness being due to the coincidence of the two independent Probabilities, Intrinsic and Transcriptional. Readings thus certified are of the utmost value in the application of other methods of criticism, as we shall see hereafter.

37. But a vast proportion of variations do not fulfil these conditions. Where one reading (a) appears intrinsically preferable, and its excellence is of a kind that we might expect to be recognised by scribes, while its rival (b) shews no characteristic likely to be attractive to them. Intrinsic and Transcriptional Probability are practically in conflict. In such a case either b must be wrong, and therefore must, as compared with