insecure to admit of reliable inferences being drawn from their contents (cf. Bebb in Studia Biblica, ti. 195-240). Yet, even with these drawbacks, one need not despair of utilising either. Thus the Latin versions! and patristic citations—which are of special moment, since the Apocalypse was never absent from the Latin N.T., and since the fourth century version did not affect it seriously— reveal a fairly distinctive Greek text behind the type of African text preserved by Cyprian (third century, citations in his Testimonia), Primasius, the sixth century African commentator, and the frag- mentary Fleury palimpsest (sixth or seventh century).* Critical opinion is still unse:tled upon the precise connexion of this text with the uncials, or even with the citations of Latin fathers like Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine, to say nothing of Ticonius, Beatus (eighth century), Haymo (ninth century) and Cassiodorus (sixth century). Thus it is quite uncertain whether the idiosyncrasies of Tertullian’s quotations reflect a private recension (so Haussleiter) or some eccles- iastical version, if they are not made directly from the Greek (cf. Nestle’s Einfiikrung, 94, 227 f., E. Tr. 119-20). Nevertheless, it is in this direction that the most promising outlook of textual criticism upon the Apocalypse lies. It has unique aid in the Latin versions. The greater respect shown by the ecclesiastical West to the Apo- calypse must have conspired upon the whole to give its text a better chance of preservation than in the East. Certainly, the fragments of the so-called African text carry us back to a Greek text of the Apocalypse which was current in the middle of the third century, prior to the origin of any extant uncial, while the evidence of Dr. Gwynn’s Syriac text comes only second in importance. The Greek citations of Clem. Alex. and Origen also echo a text which hardly corresponds to that of any of the uncials ; but, where the latter writer agrees with N, some early Alexandrian text may probably be discerned, which might be termed Western. His citations have also affinities with the text of S (cf. Gwynn, pp. lv. f.). As for the more important of the cursives, so far as they have been collated (cf. Gregory, i. 316-326, Scrivener’s Introd., 1894, i. 321-326), they seem mainly to corroborate other lines
1Dr. Armitage Robinson (Cambridge Texts and Studies, i. 2, pp. 73, 97 19, followed by Dr. Salmon (Introd. to N.T., pp. 567 f.), even argues from the Ep. Lugd., (Eus., Η. E., v. 1) that the Gallican churches must have had a Latin version of the N.T. (including the Apocalypse) by the middle of the second century, akin to the African old Latin.
2 Cf. Gregory, 609, and Mr. E. S. Buchanan’s collation in Fourn. Theol. Studies Viii., pp. 96 {.