This study led them to recognize (1) that the text of Chrysostom and other Syrian Fathers of the 4th cent, is substantially icientical with the common lat<j text (§ 130). This text must be due to a ' recension^ in the strict sen.se, with an elabor- ateness which implies deliberate criticism (§ 185). This part of their theory is very generally accepted, except by the defenders of the traditional text, like Burgon and Ed. Miller. But, further, WH believed theuLselves able to distinguish (2) an Alexandrian text, the chief characteristics of w hich are said to be temperate forms of incipient paraphrase and of skilful assimilation, with careful attention to language, and without bold para- phrase or interpolation from extraneous sources (SS 181-184) ; (3) a Western text, not limited to the AVest, but widely used ; not single and created at once, but various and progressive, with its two chief characteristics, boldness of paraphrase and readiness to adopt extraneous matter ; represented, e.specially by codex D, Old Latin AISS, but also the Old Synac (§§ 170-176) ; finally (4) the neutral and comparatively pure text, to be discovered, especially by comparison of N and B, the ancestries of which \\ H believe to have been separate from a remote antiquity, so that an exceptional purity ol text would be found in readings common to NB.*
5 297 : one of three alternatives must be true ; either the respective ancestries of K and B must have diverged from a common parent extremely near the apostolic autographs ;
Or, if tneir concordant readings were really derived from a sin;:le not remote MS, that MS must itself iiave been of the very highest antiquity ;
or, la.stly, such single not remote MS must have inherited its te\I from an ancestry which, at each of its stages, tlad enjoyed a singular imnumity from cormptiou.
This is the most elaborate theory about the text of the NT put forward in the 19th cent, as the
* As examples of important or interesting readings attested hy nB, but lost from the texts of alt other extant uncials, Wil quote (5 304), (.a., Mt 5'^ omission of Cx^, IIP Betolctioi (see art. TllAliDJjus), ll'» i^*v tor Ti«n,>, Mk 92» omission of ««;' mm,a, l(i»-20 omission, Kph 1' omission of iv 'Ejiff-w.
WH do not, of course, deny the presence of wrong readings In KB (see % 303), still less in N or B, but they are slow to acknow- ledge them. Cf. their note on Mt 27-*o, which is, to all appeJir. ance, an intrusion from tlie Cospel of John. 'Two supiwsi- tions alone are compatible with the whole evi<lence. First, the words may belong to the genuine text of the extjuit form of MU . . . Or, secondly, they may be a very early interpolation.* They are extant in kUCL, etc. WH Included them within double brackets, but did not feel justified in removing them from the text altogether, and were not prepared to reject altogether the alternative supposition. Dean Burgon, on the other hand. Last VeTsen, p. so: 'There does not exist In the whole compass of the NT a more monstrous instance of inter- I'tilation . . . in deflanee of reason as well as of authority,* cf. pp. 313-318. Though the verse is not attested by Kphraein's Com- mentary on the Diatessaron or the Aralilc revision of it, we see no rea.son why we should doubt the statement of the scholion that the sentence was present lit « ttaO' Irroput* ivtiyyiytov j^itiia/fiov, xeti TxTtectou Ka) aXAAf* iia^e/Mtt ityitit vari'^r (cod. 72, where ^laHpeu may have arisen from iiit h\ i.e. ii^rw ffxfmi). Comp., further, Mk 4''" Ciri rr* ^t>x*t*; attested by KB* 13-69-340 33 : 'the concurrence of four such documentary authorities, all Independent, implies the highest antiquity, the number rendering accidental eoinddence very unlikely.* "To the four authorities quoted by W'H is to be added a fifth," 2, and just on that account it becomes more likely that the coincidence is aocldentiil: comp. He 7' •«, rejected In spite of NAIiC^n ; 93 the [ulditiOD of ««J ri x/v#«vi» SvfMmr^^t io B and its omission in v.-*.
738 TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
result of its study during tliirty years. Fifteen years after its first publication the then surviv- ing editor brought out a new edition with some Supiilementary Notes, required by the discovery of fresh documents, espuoiafly the Syriac paliiiijisest from Sinai ; at the same time declaring that no arguments had been advanced against their general principles which were not fully considered by themselves in the long course of tlieir work, and, in their judgment, dealt with accurately. And in their Introduction itself it is declared (§ 105) : ' Nothing can well be less probable than the dis- covery of cursive evidence suUieiently important to ati'ect present conclusions in more than a handful of passages, much less to alter present interpreta- tions of relations between the existing documents.' Again, in the concluding paragraphs on the ' Con- ditions of further improvement of the text' (371- 374) they wTote : ' It would be an illusion to anti- cipate important changes of te.\t from any acquisi- tion of new documents,' and did not hesitate to express the conviction that no trustworthy improve- ment can be effected except in accordance with the leading principles of their method ; further, ' that the general course of future criticism nuist be shaped by the happy circumstance tliat the fourth century has bequeathed to us two MSS, of which even the less incorrupt must have been of exceptional purity among its own contemporaries, and which rise into greater prominence of char- acter the better the early history of that text be- comes known.'