Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/90

52 the two groups habitually preserving the separate factors of mixture.

64. It is true that variability in the margin of attestation, if we may for brevity repeat a phrase employed above (§ 62), may render it uncertain with which portion of the composite array certain documents should be classed, thus weakening but not destroying the force, whatever it may be, of their opposition to the reading of the single array. It is true also that the authority of the portion of documents which belongs to the mixed text does not become actually nothing: it is strictly the authority of a single lost document, one of the sources of the mixture, belonging to the same line of transmission as the earlier group of documents supporting the same reading independently of mixture, and thus adding another approximately similar member to their company. These qualifications do not however affect the substantial certainty and efficacy of the process here described, as enabling us in a large number of variations to disentangle the confusion wrought by mixture. It is independent of any external evidence as to dates, being founded solely on the analysis and comparison of the extant texts: but of course its value for purposes of criticism is much enhanced by any chronological evidence which may exist.

65. On the other hand there is much mixture of texts for which the extant documentary evidence antecedent to mixture is too small or uncertain to be detached from the rest, and therefore to yield materials for the application of this process. In such cases we have to fall back on the principle of Internal Evidence of Groups, to be explained presently, which is applicable to mixed and unmixed texts alike.