28. It would be difficult to devise a more scrupu- lously colourless name than the last on our list— the name ‘ Neutral.’ It was chosen to express the fact that the authorities supporting it were habitu- ally found in opposition to the ‘distinctive’ read- ings of both the ‘ Western’ and the ‘ Alexandrian’ groups. It is true that these ‘distinctive’ read- ings are, from the nature of the case, in the great majority of instances corruptions that have affected one particular line of transmission; so a group that has escaped them must be, so far as these corruptions are concerned, a relatively pase text. But there is nothing in the name to imply that all the readings attested by it must necessarily be genuine, or to exclude the possibility that the rival authorities may in any individual case have preserved the genuine text. To adopt the name ‘Early Alexandrian’ for this group, as Dr. Salmon suggests, on the strength of the number of names connected with Alexandria which appear among its most prominent constituents, would obscure the fact, to which attention must be called later, that the attestation to it is by no means confined to Alexandria, besides obscuring the clearly marked distinction between this group and the one last deseribed. It is difficult, therefore, to see what question any one of these names as defined by Dr. Hort can be supposed to beg.
29, It will be noticed that the points suggested for consideration in the notes, as likely to afford a pre- sumption either for or against the genuineness of the different variants, are exclusively of an internal
222 TEXTUAL CRITICISM (OF NT) TEXTUAL CRITICISM (OF NT)
Miller points out, that the analogy with human relationship which the word suggests is not com- plete. There is a variability in the transmission of acquired characteristics’ in human heredity which is lacking under normal conditions in derivation by a process of copying. But. this difference is all in favour of the textual critic, and enables him to tread securely even in cases where the normal conditions of transmission are disturbed by the presence of ‘ mixture,’ i.c. when the scribe at work on a particular MS embodies either constantly or occasionally readings derived from more than one exemplar. For the process depends on the principle, which it is encouraging to notice that Mr. Miller accepts without reserve, that ‘identity of reading implies identity of origin.’
31. The consequences that follow from the accept- ance of this principle and the careful application of this method are far-reaching. Its chief import- ance lies in this, that it opens a field for strictly historical investigation into facts which can be brought to definite tests. These tests no doubt require the greatest delicacy and skill in their application, but the facts are in themselves con- crete and quite independent of subjective con- siderations.
It has, however, one or two subsidiary conse- quences to which we may call attention before we pass on. We may notice, first, that it justifies at once the treatment of groups of documents, which are found constantly associated in the support of the same variants, as approximately constant units: to this point attention has already been called. It also suggests the explanation of one of the paradoxes of Textual Criticism which has puzzled Dr. Salmon (p. 55). Itis certainly strange that the evidence of two witnesses should be lowered in value by being associated with, rather than opposed by, a third; that, for instance, more weight should be assigned by Dr. Hort in the Pauline Epistles to B+D,-G,, than to B+D,+ G;. As long as each document is regarded as an independent witness, it is clearly impossible to assign a negative value to its evidence. But when we realize that each document has a com- posite character determined by its ancestry, and that in consequence we have to determine in each case which strain is represented in any particular reading before we can estimate the value to be assigned to its evidence, the paradox disappears. The value of any group is simply the value of the element common to all the members composing it. Thus B in the Pauline Epistles is largely ‘ Neutral’ with a decided ‘Western’ element : D, is Western with a decided ‘Neutral’ element : Gs is almost purely ‘Western’ with a Syrian admixture. The combination B + D, may therefore be either Neutral or Western, both elements being present, though in different proportions, in each document. And the reading attested by G; can be either Western or Syrian. But a reading supported by B+ D,+G, in opposition to all other authorities must be dis: tinctively ‘ Western.’
32. One further remark may be allowed before we leave this paradox. It is, no doubt, tempting to illustrate different stages in the critical process by comparison with the everyday procedure of the Law Courts, especially when one’s object is to interest Englishmen in the minutive ofa dry and technical study. But the habit is a dangerous one. The legal and the scientific methods are fundamentally distinct, and, in consequence, seri- ous fallacies, as this paradox shows, may lurk even in the most specious analogy. But the worst effect of yielding to it is that it tends insensibly to merge the critic himself in the advocate, and to make him ‘the champion of an opinion,’ for whom