editions of Acts, and is said by Semler to have published his opinion, although under an assumed name (Zahn, Eznleitung, ii., p. 348; see also on the same page Zahn’s interesting acknowledgment that he was himself in 1885-6 working on much the same lines as Blass). Meanwhile Tisch., W. H., B. Weiss have sought to establish the text of Acts essentially on the basis of SABC, and it was left for Blass to startle the world of textual criticism by boldly claiming a fresh originality for Codex D. But this originality was not exclusive ; St. Luke has given us two originals, first a rough copy B, R(omana), in Blass, and then a fair copy a, and A(ntiochena), for the use of Theophilus ; the rough copy remained in Rume and became the foundation of the Western text, copies of it having reached Syria and Egypt in the second century, while the latter abridged by Luke reached Theophilus in Antioch (so Blass), and was thence propa- gated in the East.!
But Codex D is by no means the sole witness, although a very weighty one, upon which Blass depends for his B text. He derives help from Codex E (Laudianus), from the minuscule 137 (M) in Milan, especially for the last chapters in which D is deficient, and in some passages also from Codex Ephraem, C; from the Philox- enian Syriac version with the marginal annotations of Thomas Harkel (unfortunately we have no Old Syriac text as for the Gospels), the Sahidic version, the Latin text in D, d, and E, e, the Fleury palimpsest (Samuel Berger, 1889), Flor. in Blass; the so-. called ‘“‘Gigas” Latin version in Stockholm (Belsheim, 1879), Gig. in Blass; the Codex Parisinus, 321 (S. Berger, 1895), Par. in Blass; a Latin version of the N.T., fifteenth century, in Wernigerode, Wernig., w., in Blass, and a Latin version of the thirteenth century, “in linguam provinciz Gallic Romanz facta,’’ Prov. in Blass.
In addition to these MSS. and versions Blass also appeals to the
2 On the difference between the circulation of the two copies in the case of the third Gospel see Philology of the Gospels, p. 103. In England Bishop Lightfoot had previously conjectured that the Evangelist might himself have issued two separate editions of both Gospel and Acts, On a Fresh Revision of the N.T., Ρ. 20. For similar instances of the issue of a double edition in classical and other literature see Driseke, u. 5., Ῥ. 194; Zéckler, Greifswalder Studien, p. 132, and Blass, Proleg.,
92, A 2 Το these may be added fragments of an old Latin translation of Acts in the Anonymi de prophetis et prophetiis containing six passages, notably Acts xi. 27, 28, in agreement with Codex D, ¢f. Miscellanea Cassinese, 1897, and Harnack, Theol. Literaturzeitung, p. 171, No. 6, 1898; the Greek Codex Athous, derived according to Blass, Philology of the Gospels, p. 250, from an old and very valuable original, and taken into some account by Hilgenfeld, Acta Afostolorum, p. ix. (1899), and cf