maintained that if α is original we can understand the smoothness of β, but not vice versd, and it must always be remembered that this love of paraphrase and simplification has been urged on high authority as a marked characteristic of the Western readings in general, cf. W. Η., p. 122 ff., and B. Weiss, Der Codex D in der Abpostelge- schichte, pp. 52, 105: 1897. There are, moreover, other passages in which Blass seems to assimilate a and β, although the witnesses would differentiate them, cf. v. 28, 34, xv. 33, or in which there is a manifest blunder, not only in D but in other Western witnesses, which Blass corrects by a, although such blunders really belong to the B text, cf. v. 31, xiii. 48, xv. 15. There are cases in which D affords weighty support to readings otherwise testified to only by B, ε.σ., xix. 8, xxi. 25, or only by &, cf. Π. 20 (Wendt).
But a careful consideration of the whole of the instances justi- fies the attachment of far greater importance to the Western text than formerly (c/., e.g., Holtzmann’s review of Blass’s edit. min. of Acts, Theol. Literaturzeitung, p. 350, 1897, No. 13), and goes some way to break down the former prejudice against Codex Bezz: not only is it allowed that one revising hand of the second century may be the main source of the most important readings, but that these readings may contain original elements, since they must be based upon a text which carries us back very near to the date of the composition of the book of Acts (Wendt, 4. s., p. 52; Bousset, Theol. Rundschau, p. 414, 1898). The same tendency to attach more importance to the Western text is observable in Professor Ramsay, for although he regards the most vivid additions of the Western text in Acts as for the most part nothing but a second-century commentary, and while he refuses to introduce xi. 27, 28, D, into his own text, yet he speaks of the high value of D in that it preserves with corruptions a second-century witness to the text, and he places the home of the revision on the line of intercourse between the Syrian Antioch and Ephesus, arguing from xi. 28 that the reviser was acquainted with Antioch (Church in the Roman Empire, p. 151; St. Paul, p. 27, and review of Professor Blass, Expositor, 1895, and cf. Zéckler, Greifswalder Studien, pp. 131, 140).
On the other hand the most thorough advocates of Dr. Blass’s theory support his view of the priority and originality of B by reference to three classes of passages: (1) those in which the later a has abbreviated the reading of β, cf. iii. 1, iv. 1, 3, 24, 32, vii. 29, ix. 5-8, x. 23, xi. 2, xiv. 1-20, xvi. 19, xvii. 12, 15, xxi. 39, xxii. 26 ; (2) those in which B contains exact and specific notices of time which are wanting ina, cf. xv. 30, xvi. 11, xvii. 19, xviii. 19, xix. 9,