No genuine reading has ever yet sustained injury from any such slip of memory.
20. The Fathers also very frequently quote passages, which are not anywhere to he found.
Let your reliance in each case depend upon the quoter.1
21. Those which are considered as real Various Readings by the Critics, and which alter the sense, — are not to be examined or decided by these Canons : but their origin, then' cause, and their character are to be examined and discovered : to which investigation the reader is directed by the twenty-third Canon.
This is a methodical scholium, not a Canon.
22. A Reading which is absurd, and which is convicted of absurdity by the context, either immediately preceding or fol lowing, must be rejected.
A Reading, which is manifestly absurd, has seldom the sup port of more than one MS. : so that this Canon is superfluous. Sometimes the absurdity is not in the MS. itself, but in the misquotation from it (e.g. Matt, xviii. 20, collated by Mill), or in the mistranslation of a various reading, as in Matt. xxi. 32, where according to the Cambridge MS.,2 in opposition to the interpretation of others, the Pharisees repented of believing. — Often also that Reading is really absurd, which does not appear so ; that Reading not really absurd, which does appear so. Amongst the twelve Canons, with which Pfaff3 concludes his dissertation on the Various Readings of the New Testament, the eighth is remarkable, " A Reading, which appears at first sight
1 " Fides semper esto penes citantem" — a similar phrase to that of Pliny, " Penes auctores sit fides" — which Cooperi Thesaurus renders, " I reporte mee to the authoures whether it be true or no. As for the truth thereof I refer you to the authoures." — (I. B.)
2 The CODEX BEZ.E, or CODEX CANTABRIGIENSIS, is a Greek and Latin MS., containing the greater part of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. It is deposited in the Public Library of the University of Cam bridge, to which it was presented by the celebrated Theodore Beza, in 1581. It is conjectured to have been written in the sixth or seventh century. A fac simile was published in folio by Kipling, at Cambridge, in 1793. -(I. B.)
3 Christopher Matthew Pfaff, D.D., a learned Lutheran divine, was born at Stuttgard in 1686, Professor of Divinity at Tubingen in 1717, and died in 1760.— (I B.)
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. as
absurd, is not to be immediately rejected, nor one, which carries with it an obscurity of style : for such Readings are not wont to be manufactured."
23. See the Notes.
See the xlpparatus Criticus ; for there we have considered these Notes, as far as was necessary.
24. Whenever the origin of the Various Reading is known, the Various Reading itself generally falls to the ground : as for instance, when an expression or a sentence has been introduced from one Gospel into the parallel passage of another, which was not an uncommon practice, with the view of making the accounts of the different Evangelists consistent with each other.
A remarkable Canon. It should have been adduced in favour of the marginal reading in Luke iii. 19, etc., and also in other parts of the New Testament as well as the Gospels, as e. g. in Eph. v. 9.
25. A gloss.1
This is contained in Canon 35, to which the Reader is there fore referred.
26. Transcribers have, frequently, for the sake of brevity omitted words, which they considered as superfluous, or un necessary, especially where the omission did not change or disturb the sense. Such omissions must not be admitted as Various Readings, but imputed to the audacity of the trans cribers.
Omission is generally the result of chance, seldom of design, as Hauber2 rightly judges, whose criticism in other respects agrees with the spirit of this Canon, as we have observed on Acts xv. 34. By what means, however, omissions are to be dis tinguished from additions, the author of the Crisis does not indicate : so that the matter is left still in uncertainty.