even to the Greek of Codex Bezz, since it has in Corssen’s opinion an internal unity and sequence wanting in the latter, although it agrees in many peculiarities with the Greek of that Codex (Harris, u. S., p. 53; Salmon, Introd., p. 594). Corssen thus helps materially to prove the antiquity of the Western Latin.
But Dr. Blass further acknowledges that Corssen has done most valuable service in proving the composite nature of Codex D, and that in it we have not β in its purity, but in a state of frequent mixture and conflation with a. Whilst, however, Blass regards the β text as the older, Corssen regards a in that light, and β as reveal- ing the character of a later revision (Géttingische gelehrie Anzeigen, pp. 433, 436, 446: 1896); in B he somewhat strangely maintains that we have the hand of a Montanist reviser at work (cf. Blass’s strictures, Evang. secundum Lucam, p. xxiv. ff.), a theory formerly adopted by Professor Harris, but afterwards abandoned by him.
But how far do the variations between the two forms of text justify the hypothesis of Blass that both may be referred to one author, B as the primary, a as the secondary text?!
In the apparatus criticus of the following pages, in which the variations for the most part in the two texts are stated and examined, it cannot be claimed for a moment that any definite conclusion is reached, simply because the matter is one which may be said to call for suspension of judgment. - Certainly there are many difficulties in the way of accepting the theory of Blass in its entirety. There are passages, ¢.g., of which it may be said that the more detailed form is the original, which was afterwards shortened, while it may be main- tained often with equal force that the shortened form may well have been the original; there are passages where a local knowledge or an exact knowledge of circumstances is shown, ¢.g., xii. 10, xix. 9, xx. 15, xxi. 1, but such passages do not prove the priority of the B text, for if both a and β are referred to the same author, the same hand which omitted in a revision could also have added, although such instances may be cited for the originality of the B text in comparison with a (see notes in loco for each passage). To these may be added the famous addition in xi. 28 (see zm loco), which Blass makes the starting-point for his inquiry, and to which Hilgenfeld, Zahn, Zockler, Salmon, as against Harnack and B. Weiss, attach so much importance. There are again other passages in which it may be
1 Blass still maintains, as against Corssen, that the language of the additions, and generally in the variants of β, is Lucan, Philology of the Gospels, p. 113 ff., and Evangelium secundum Lucam, p. xxvii. ff.