(i) The Western Text.—We thus find ourselves face to face with what has been called the only burning question of the textual criticism of the New Testament—the question, namely, of the place to be assigned to the so-called Western text. Our treatment of the external testimony has led us back through Lucian, Pamphilus, Hesychius, and Origen, to Marcion and Tatian, that is, into the middle of the second century. But the question is now whether we must stop here, or whether it is not possible to ascend with certainty even somewhat higher by means of an investigation of the material afforded by the manuscripts themselves. The “Higher Criticism,” e.g., seeks to get behind the Synoptic Gospels to the documents which the authors or editors used in their composition; is it not possible for the “Lower Criticism” to recover with certainty at least the primitive text of the New Testament books? And is that not most readily found in the so-called Western text? We have been obliged to make frequent reference to it already; the question for us now is, “What is the value of Codex Bezae and its associates?”

It was observed by Theodore Beza himself, the scholar whose name the Codex justly bears, that the text of this manuscript differed in so many respects from that of others, especially in Luke and Acts, that he could give no explanation of it satisfactory to himself. He was not led to suppose that the alterations were due to heretics; nevertheless, like a cautious man, he thought it more advisable to preserve the Codex than to publish it. Eight hundred years before, Bede was similarly impressed by the Codex which we now know by the name of Laudianus, E₂. He indicated “quaedam quae in Graeco sive aliter seu plus aut minus posita vidimus.” He was uncertain “utrum negligentia interpretis omissa vel aliter dicta, an incuria librariorum sint depravata sive relicta ... namque graecum exemplar fuisse falsatum suspicari non audeo.” When the manuscripts began to be more systematically collated, Bengel declared that the criticism of the text would be much simplified if one were not bound to trouble himself with these codices, which, as being written in Greek and Latin, he called vere bilingues. Old students of the Maulbronn College have told me that Ephorus Bäumlein the most distinguished philologist of our Institute in this century, and editor of Disquisitions on the Greek Particles and similar works, was always referring to the Codex Cantabrigiensis, though they themselves never rightly understood about this Codex, or indeed about such things at all. I do not know who it was from whom I myself first heard of it; certainly there was no particular importance attributed to it in my student days or at the college where I was. On the other hand, Tischendorf admitted its claims in opposition to all the other Greek manuscripts in several passages, such as Mark ii. 22; xi. 6; Luke xxiv. 52, 53, etc. In other places he did so at first, but changed his opinion afterwards—e.g., in Acts xi. 12, while in others again, like Acts xiii. 45, he was inclined to accept its testimony, asserting expressly: Ceterum D quantopere passim inter omnes testes excellat constat. One of the things for which Westcott and Hort deserve credit is the attention they have directed to Codex Bezae and its associates. Some of their remarks upon it will be found in the note below.^[237]

That peerless scholar, P. de Lagarde, has even greater claims to honourable mention in this connection, though but little regard was paid to his representations during his lifetime. As early as 1857, he said of Codex Cantabrigiensis: facile patet, quum similibus libris careamus et ultra Evangelia et Actus nondum cogitem, totius editionis meae quasi fundamentum futurum esse hunc codicem Cantabrigiensem, sed eum eis librarii vitiis purgatum quae vitia esse agnita fuerint (Gesam. Abh., p. 98). His chief merit, however, lies not in his having estimated Cantabrigiensis so highly, but in having assigned a lower value to the other manuscripts. By comparing D with the earlier versions, and particularly by relying on the testimony of Epiphanius, he recognised in it a representative of an “editio emendatorum orthodoxorum temeritate corrupta” (ibid., p. 96). Compare also his Übersicht über die Bildung der Nomina, p. 213, where he instances ἔταξαν ἀναβαίνειν of the “emendati” for παρήγγειλαν ἀναβαίνειν of D.^[238]

General attention was first directed to the question of the Western text, when Blass came forward with his view that it was quite wrong to present the problem in the shape of an alternative between D and A B, because both groups were right, D and its associates representing a first edition of the Acts and a second of Luke, and the other group conversely. I hailed this solution of the difficulty at once as a veritable Columbus Egg, and to this day I am firmly persuaded that Blass’s theory is nearer the mark than the previous estimate of the Western text. |Zahn.| Readers may, perhaps, be struck by the fact, which Zahn has since made public (Einl., ii. 348), that in his practical class at Erlangen, in the winter of 1885-6, he set as the subject of the prize essay an “Investigation of the materially important peculiarities of Codex D in the Acts,” and made a note at the time of the result which he hoped to see the investigation arrive at—viz., “either the author’s first draft before publication or his hand copy with his own marginal notes inserted afterwards.” Zahn himself got no further, but he was not surprised when Blass came forward with his clearly-defined and thoroughly-elaborated hypothesis. In one point, certainly, Zahn does not agree with Blass, and that is in the application of the hypothesis to Luke. He holds that the text which Blass restored as the Roman form or second edition of Luke is essentially nothing but a bold attempt to restore what is called the Western text; that the question to which such different answers have been made as to the value of this type of text—for it is not to be spoken of as a recension in the proper sense of that term—is by no means confined to the Third Gospel, but touches the others as well and the Pauline Epistles also; that the reason why the divergence of the Western text from that exhibited in the oldest manuscripts and the great majority of Greek witnesses is more conspicuous in Luke, is simply that we have the additional testimony of Marcion for that Gospel, but the question is essentially the same in all the cases; that whereas in Acts we have two parallel texts both possessing equal authority, in Luke the case is different, where in determining what the evangelist actually wrote, we have to choose one or the other of two mutually exclusive propositions; that this verdict on the text of Luke, however, in no way invalidates the conclusion come to as regards the text of the Acts. But further, Zahn, who even before this had avowed himself an “admirer of the Western text,” stands up determinedly for the view that this same Western text, which I shall, like Zahn and Blass, indicate henceforward as β, contains much that is original. He says that just as we must beware of a superstitious idolatry of what are styled the best manuscripts,^[239] which goes hand in hand with a disparagement of much older tradition (Marcion, Irenæus), so we have equally to be on our guard against a morbid preference for every interesting and fanciful excrescence of the riotous tradition of the second and third centuries. Such a preference would logically imply that the scholars who took in hand to revise the text about the beginning of the fourth century simply corrupted it, somewhat after the fashion of those who set themselves to “improve” our Church hymns in the age of Rationalism. More than twenty years ago, when I was a Tutor at Tübingen, I had the impression to which I frequently enough gave utterance in debate with my colleagues, that modern textual criticism is going altogether on the wrong tack. The textual study of the New Testament was out of my province at that time, and is really so still, were it not that, as Augustine says, it is necessary for everyone who devotes himself to the holy Scriptures to take up such studies. Nor am I inclined thus far to fall foul of the system to which Westcott and Hort devoted the labours of a lifetime, and in the building up of which they had at their command such an apparatus as is far beyond the reach of a German, especially of one who is not attached to any University. And as for the results of Zahn’s researches, I prefer to look upon myself here as a mere learner and admirer. In the presence of such doughty warriors I feel like a spectator upon the battlefield of New Testament textual criticism, and I would beg that what follows, as well as what has been already said, be regarded as but suggestions, the acceptance or rejection of which by others may perchance serve to bring a younger generation nearer to the goal. In this spirit I have in my Philologica Sacra (1-15th March 1896) taken as a starting-point the reading in Luke xxii. 52, λαοῦ = ναοῦ = ἱεροῦ, which is not mentioned at all by Tischendorf, and have sought by means of one or two analogous cases to show “how frequently D preserves the correct reading.” I have instanced ἑπταπλασίονα, Luke xviii. 30; φάντασμα, xxiv. 37; δέρριν καμήλου, Mark i. 6 ; ἠνοιγμένους, i. 10, which might, however, be inserted from Matt. iii. 16, Luke iii. 21 ; ὀργισθείς, Mark i. 40; ὁμοιάζει, Matt. xxvi. 73.

In the first sketch of this Introduction, written in the year 1895, I referred to the addition found in Matt. xxvii. 49, which is manifestly taken from John xix. 34, and is read by many authorities, among these being א B C.^[240] I said then: “Only two possibilities are conceivable. Either the passage stood here originally, and was removed at an early date on account of its variance with John xix. 34, or it is an interpolation. In the latter case, it must have been inserted at a very early date, and all the witnesses containing it, which elsewhere are so frequently and so widely divergent, must then go back to one and the same exemplar. Because the third possibility—viz. that the same sentence was inserted in different copies in the same place quite independently of each other, no one will consider to be at all likely. But if the second supposition is to be held as correct, then we see just what amount of importance is to be attached to the concurrence of our oldest witnesses, particularly our chief manuscripts א B C L. They are not streams flowing independently from the same fountain of Paradise: they flowed together for a good part of their course, and were considerably polluted before they parted company.”

Two years later, when the first edition was issued, I added: “This too must now be asserted with far greater emphasis, that the concurrence of B א, on which so much stress has been laid hitherto by almost all textual critics, proves nothing at all. In Sirach the common archetype of B א was younger than the origin of the Latin version, manifestly a good deal younger, because it already contained errors that had not yet made their appearance in our other manuscripts (or in their sources). Salmon (p. 52) is of opinion that the text which Westcott and Hort have restored is one that was most in favour in Alexandria in the third century, and that came there, perhaps, in the century previous. This is not far from Bousset’s view that B perhaps contains the recension of Hesychius. Salmon calls the results of Westcott and Hort ‘an elaborate locking of the stable door after the horse has been stolen.’ Burgon’s paradox, that the reason why B and א have survived is that they were the worst, seemed to Salmon at first to be a joke, but he now thinks it not improbable that they were set aside on account of their divergence from the form of text that acquired ascendancy at a later time. If that be so, then they met the same fate that they themselves prepared for the primitive form they supplanted; and just as they, with the help of Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort, dislodged the Textus Receptus of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from the hands of theologians, and made themselves the Textus Receptus of the end of the nineteenth century, so perchance will Codex D, which the builders despised, become the foundation-stone of a new structure. In Urtext, p. 54, Oscar v. Gebhardt alludes to the objections raised partly against the entire method of Westcott and Hort, partly against their particular estimate of Codex Vaticanus, and partly also against the position they have assigned to what they call the Western text, and he too says: ‘If these objections are valid, then the sure foundation which they seemed at last to have secured for the text of the New Testament begins once more to totter.’”

Since this was written, my impressions have been greatly confirmed, particularly by Zahn’s Einleitung; only I must admit that I am now less in a position than ever to make any definite proposals as to the way in which the goal of the textual criticism of the New Testament is to be reached. To follow one witness or one group of witnesses through thick and thin, which would really be the only consistent course, will seemingly not do.^[241] And the “eclectic method” to which Bousset was led in his work on the Apocalypse as the only possible one, is surely the opposite of the genealogical, which we must acknowledge to be in theory the only correct method. But first of all, a fresh application of it would require to be made. And as the task is too great for any single worker, might it not be well if, in the exegetical classes of our Theological Faculties, the separate witnesses were either examined anew, or, conversely, selected passages of the text, quite small passages—a single chapter, or a single epistle like 2 or 3 John or Philemon—were given out to different students to examine thoroughly all the witnesses for each passage, and the results then compared with one another? Furthermore, the critical apparatus would require at once to be lightened of all those manuscripts which are unmistakably recognised to be the representatives of a definite recension, and the Lucianic recension printed separately with or without an apparatus, just as was done by Lagarde himself for half of the Old Testament. Finally, the Western text would require to be much more thoroughly examined than has hitherto been the case. It is true that Weiss has given a special part of Texte und Untersuchungen to an examination of Codex D in Acts, but without prejudice one may be quite sure that a solution of the problem is not to be found in the way in which Weiss seeks it. No doubt he establishes among other things the fact, that in the Speeches of Peter β displays almost no variation, but then he makes no attempt to explain this fact or make any use of it. It is an indication of considerable progress to find Zahn going so carefully into matters of the text in an Introduction to the New Testament, and his appreciation of the Western text is most gratifying. |Luke and Acts in D.| At the same time the reader will naturally ask whether Zahn’s verdict on the β text in Luke is not fatal to his own conclusions with regard to Acts. Is it not true in this connection that “he who says A must also say B”? If you admit that there were two editions of Acts, you must make the same admission in the case of Luke. And conversely, if there was no second edition of the Gospel, must you not then look for some other explanation of the variations in Acts? For it seems quite certain that the variants in Luke xxiv. are most closely related to the text of Acts i. Or how else are the readings in Luke xxiv. 51-53 to be explained? Westcott and Hort have one way of explaining them. They say that καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν “was evidently inserted from an assumption that a separation from the disciples at the close of a Gospel must be the Ascension. The Ascension apparently did not lie within the proper scope of the Gospels, as seen in their genuine texts; its true place was at the head of the Acts of the Apostles as the preparation for the Day of Pentecost, and thus the beginning of the history of the Church.” That is all very well, and it may also be the case that προσκυνήσαντες αὐτόν in v. 52 is the natural result of the insertion of καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν. But how then are we to account for the interchange of εὐλογοῦντες and αἰνοῦντες in the next verse, which is found in precisely the same groups of witnesses?^[242]

If this explanation then is insufficient on account of verse 53, it may be confidently asserted that the omission of the Ascension and the Worship of the Exalted Lord by any later scribe is all but inconceivable from the moment that Luke was separated from Acts and placed among the Gospels. If such a thing were possible at all, it would be in the case of προσκυνήσαντες αὐτόν, as there is no express mention in Acts i. of the disciples worshipping. On the other hand, the omission becomes quite conceivable as soon as the author added a δεύτερος λόγος to the πρῶτος. So far these variants appear to me to fit in very well with Blass’s theory and with no other. Zahn, as far as I can see, has nowhere expressed any opinion regarding them, certainly he says nothing of the variation between αἰνοῦντες and εὐλογοῦντες, which is the one of most importance critically, though it is of least consequence materially.

Graefe, following on the lines of Birt and Rüegg, supposes that the shorter form was due to want of space, that Luke was glad to get the shorter form all into his roll at the foot the first time he wrote it out, and sent off the book to Theophilus in that form, hoping to deal with the Ascension in the second of his books. In the second edition he had sufficient space to admit of the insertion of καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν, then of προσκυνήσαντες αὐτόν, and finally of εὐλογοῦντες.^[243] These additions he made, feeling, rightly enough, that there could be no more fitting conclusion to his Life of Jesus than a brief allusion to the Ascension, which he had already described more particularly in the Acts. At the same time he substituted ἕως εἰς for ἔξω πρὸς. Graefe thinks that all these changes are connected with the alterations made also in the introduction to the Acts, though he omits to say what the connection is.

Weiss, father and son, omit the words καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν as “a gloss derived from Acts i.,” and “likewise” the words προσκυνήσαντες αὐτόν in verse 52 (is this also a gloss from Acts i.?). Which text they hold to be correct in verse 53 they do not say.^[244]

Αἰνεῖν^[245] is the specifically Lucan word for “to praise,” while εὐλογεῖν in this sense does not occur in Acts at all, and only in the first two chapters of Luke. Further, as any concordance will show, αἰνεῖν is the regular equivalent of הלל and εὐλογεῖν of ברך, while αἰνεῖν is rarely used for ברך or εὐλογεῖν for הלל. This confirms the supposition that αἰνοῦντες, which is preferred by Tischendorf but rejected by Westcott and Hort, is the original reading.

In order to show the full extent of the difficulty of the problem, we shall take along with this passage from the end of the Gospel a single instance from the Acts. How does the Apostolic Decree read in ch. xv.? “To judge any matter before knowing the facts of the case is inadmissible.” So Hilgenfeld says in his magazine, adding that the matter of the Apostolic Council, as it is called, and the Decree have been so judged. He himself restores the whole text in this passage to the form that Blass has adopted as the Forma Romana—i.e., to confine ourselves to this point of main importance, he omits “things strangled.”^[246] On the other hand, Harnack, in the article to which reference will be made below, comes to the conclusion that the Eastern, i.e. the common, text is the original, and the Western a later correction made subsequent to the Didache, and not earlier than the first decade of the second century.^[247] The same conclusion is reached by Zahn in his extremely careful discussion of the question (Einl., ii. 344 ff.): “The two texts are here mutually exclusive, and therefore cannot both be derived from the same author (xv. 20, 29, xxi. 25).” But he immediately adds: “The fact that Blass, in this important point, as in many another of less consequence, declares a certain thing to be an original element of the text which turns out to be simply an early corruption in no wise detracts from the correctness of his hypothesis.” That is quite true and must be borne in mind in connection with the objection raised by Wendt, that “manifest clerical errors are found in the actual β text.” The passages are also used by Corssen as an argument against Blass. The remarks of the latter in reply to the strictures of Corssen (Evang. sec. Lucam, p. xxvi) seem to me to be not without reason, but in any case it is strange that alterations should have been made in an official document like the Decree in Acts xv., no matter whether these were due to the writer himself or a later intermediary. That there was some method in the alteration is shown by its recurrence in three places. But again I must emphasise the superiority of Codex D. Whereas in ch. xv. 20, 29 the shorter text is represented by other witnesses as well, in ch. xxi. 25 it is supported by D with the sole addition of Gigas Holmiensis.^[248] I have not to decide the question here; I simply commend it to a searching investigation, in which attention must be paid to the apparently meaningless differences in the use of particles and synonyms, of simple and compound words, and such-like seeming minutiæ. I can only repeat how frequently the thought occurred to me when I was comparing Scrivener’s edition with that of v. Gebhardt for my Supplement, that here was no alteration of a later scribe, and what then? The simplest explanation was that both readings were due to the author himself, who on the one occasion purposely set down the one reading and on the other the other.

There is another question in connection with the Western text which has been even more neglected than the former—viz. the amount of importance to be attached to it in the case of the Pauline Epistles. What about Eusebius’s reference to Tatian’s work on these Epistles? I frankly confess that not till the printing of this work was begun did I become aware, mainly from Zahn’s Einleitung, how many problems are here waiting to be solved, and for this reason as well as others I must for the present forbear making any attempt in this direction.

Here I can only indicate a few of the most general rules of textual criticism, and thereafter adduce a number of New Testament passages which are of interest from a critical point of view.

(k) General Rules of Textual Criticism.—In its essence the task of the textual critic resembles that of the physician, who must first of all make a correct diagnosis of the disease before attempting its cure. Manifestly the first thing to do is to observe the injuries and the dangers to which a text transmitted by handwriting is liable to be exposed. A correct treatment must be preceded by a correct diagnosis.

The injuries which a text receives will vary according as it is multiplied by Dictation or by Copying. The fifty Bibles which Eusebius prepared at once for Constantine would be written to dictation. In the early times of the Church, copying, as has been already mentioned, would doubtless be the more usual method of multiplication. Here, however, we must make a single exception in the case of Paul, who for the most part did not write his Epistles with his own hand. He evidently dictated them. He certainly did not have them simply written out from his own rough draft.

(1) In the case of copying, errors originate first of all, though not most frequently, in a word or group of letters being illegible, or in their being read for some psychological reason otherwise than as they were intended. However attentive the copyist may be, he may still be in doubt as to the way in which a word or passage should be read, and may decide wrongly. Proper names, e.g., are often very doubtful.^[249] More frequently however the mistake will be due to inattention. The context may lead the copyist to expect a certain word; he sees one like it, and inserts the former in its place.

(2) It frequently happens, particularly in copying the old scriptio continua, that the eye of the scribe jumps from one word or group of letters to another the same or similar to it, either before or after it. In the former case the intervening words will be repeated, in the latter they will be omitted. Scholars designate these errors as dittography and elision respectively; printers know them under the name of a marriage and a funeral. The former mistake is not so serious, because it is at once detected on reading over the copy. A peep into any manuscript will show how frequently this error occurs, the repeated words being enclosed in brackets or surmounted with dots.^[250] In Codex B such passages give us an opportunity of observing the beauty of the original writing, because the painstaking man who retraced the old writing with fresh ink in the eighth, or tenth, or eleventh century, or whenever it was, adding at the same time accents and punctuation marks, left these untouched. This kind of mistake very often happens in passages where a group of characters catches the eye for any reason, such as the occurrence of the abbreviation mark, Θ̅Σ̅, Ι̅Λ̅Η̅Μ̅, Α̅Ν̅Ο̅Σ̅, etc., and at the transition to a new page or leaf. The omission of a piece of the text of various length by homoioteleuton is as common, and is more serious.^[251] Any critical apparatus will show the frequency of its occurrence. We often find there the note “a voce alterutra ... ad alterutram desunt” or “a voce 1^o ad vocem 2^o (3^o) transilit,” or “vox ... alterutra et intermedia desunt.” Compare, e.g., Codex D, Matt. xviii. 18 from γῆς to γῆς; x. 23; xxiii. 14-16. The result is worst when the mistake is not discovered till afterwards and the two fragments are patched together in some way with more or less success. Lacunæ that have not been doctored are very helpful in determining the relationship between different texts.^[252]

(3) As errors of the tongue and the memory^[253] rather than of the eye may be reckoned the Transposition and Confusion of particular combinations of letters or entire words. The former occurs so frequently in connection with a liquid, that in some cases it ceases to be a mistake. Thus we have on the one hand the confusion of κορκοδειλος with κροκοδειλος, Καρχηδων with Carthago, and on the other, εβαλον with ελαβον, βηθαραβα with βηθαβαρα, John i. 28; κιρνατω with κρινετω, ποντον with τοπον, בכרין, talent, Matt. xxv. 14-30, with כרכין, cities, Luke xix. 17, 19. Akin to this is the confusion of vowels with a similar sound, to which are to be ascribed all cases of itacism, as it is called—ἔγειρε and ἔγειραι, —εσθε and —εσθαι, ἑταίροις and ἑτέροις, χρηστὸς ὁ κύριος and χριστὸς ὁ κύριος, 2 Cor. xii. 1; φορέσωμεν and φορέσομεν, ἔχωμεν and ἔχομεν, Rom. v. 1; μετὰ διωγμῶν and μετὰ διωγμόν. Manifestly mistakes of this sort would occur more readily in dictation than in copying.

A third class of errors of a more conscious or semi-conscious description is due to the substitution of words or forms of similar meaning. Thus, for λέγει we may have εἶπε or ἔφη or ἀπεκρίνατο, or the simple form may be replaced by the compound or vice versa, or one preposition may be substituted for another.^[254] Separate words are very frequently transposed without seriously affecting the sense. Thus, in Acts iv. 12, we find nearly all the possible permutations of the three words ονομα εστιν ετερον actually represented—viz., in addition to this (2) ονομα ετερον εστιν; (3) ετερον ονομα εστιν; (4) εστιν ετερον ονομα; (5) εστιν ονομα ετερον.^[255] On Luke xvii. 10, Merx says (Die vier kanonischen Evangelien, p. 246): “Let it be observed that the position of ἀχρεῖοι fluctuates between (1) δοῦλοι ἀχρεῖοί ἐσμεν; (2) δοῦλοί ἐσμεν ἀχρεῖοι D, and (3) ἀχρεῖοι δοῦλοί ἐσμεν. Such fluctuations are due to the different arrangement of a word that did not originally belong to the text, but was appended as a note and afterwards incorporated with the text. Such fluctuations point to the interpolation of the fluctuating word.” This judgment has to be accepted with caution. For one thing, it is not at all clear which word it is that fluctuates. In this particular case, one might say that δοῦλοι fluctuates as much as ἀχρεῖοι, and the copula still more. Moreover such an interpolation becomes at once an integral part of the text, and its insertion is no longer visible. Only if several copies were made of that exemplar in which the interpolation was first introduced could fluctuation of this sort originate. Such transpositions are much more frequently of a harmless order, as each one may perceive for himself. The writer’s thoughts fly faster than his pen and anticipate a word that should not come in till later. One of the most frequent cases of transposition is that of Ἰησοῦς Χριστός and Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς in the Pauline Epistles.

(4) Akin to this last is a class of mistakes originating in the border region between the unconscious and the conscious or intentional—viz. that of Additions. One can readily understand how easy it was to insert a κύριος or ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν, a μου after πατήρ on the lips of Jesus, the subject at the beginning of a sentence, especially of the first sentence of a pericope, or the object in the form of a pronoun. Bengel proposed to omit the name of Jesus in some twenty-five places, for which he was ridiculed by Wettstein, as may be learned from my work on Bengel, p. 74. Now, everyone admits that Bengel was right. Under the head of “Interpolationes breviores,” Wordsworth and White first give examples “de nomine Jesus,” then of “Christus, Dominus, Deus,” and then of “Pronomina.” It is evident that in this way the wrong word may be supplied now and again. Perhaps one of the most interesting cases is Luke i. 46. All our present Greek witnesses make Mary the composer of the Magnificat, but Elisabeth’s name is attached to it in three Old Latin manuscripts, in the Latin version of Irenæus, according to the best manuscripts, and in some manuscripts known to Origen (or to his translator, Jerome: the passage, unfortunately, is found as yet only in the Latin).^[256]

(5) To the category of conscious alterations belong first of all grammatical corrections, then assimilations to parallel passages, liturgical changes introduced from the Evangeliaria, as, e.g., the addition at the close of a pericope of the words ὁ ἔχων ὦτα ἀκουέτω which occurs in all sorts of manuscripts in the most diverse passages, or indications of time, such as ἐν τῷ καιρῷ ἐκείνῳ at the beginning of a pericope,^[257] and lastly, alterations made for dogmatic reasons, if any such can be established. It is impossible to deny that dogmatic conceptions had some influence on the propagation of certain readings if not on their origin—as, e.g., on the form assumed by the words in Matt. xix. 17, τί με λέγεις ἀγαθόν, or on the omission of the words οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός in Mark xiii. 22; compare also above, p. 106. On the whole, however, there is no real ground for the scepticism that was for a time entertained with respect to our texts in this connection. A sober criticism will be able in most cases to restore the correct form. Its conditions will be apparent from what has been said in the foregoing.

Gerhard von Maestricht laid down forty-three Critical Canons, and Wettstein set forth in his New Testament his Animadversiones et Cautiones ad examen variarum lectionum Novi Testamenti necessariae (vol. ii. 851-874). In 1755 J. D. Michaelis added to his Curae in versionem Syriacam Act. Apost. his Consectaria critica de ... usu versionis Syriacae tabularum Novi Foederis.^[258] Bengel reduced all the rules to a single one. Quite recently Wordsworth and White comprehended the rules they followed in the preparation of the text of their Latin New Testament in four sentences. Of these the first two apply to a version only, and therefore do not concern us here;^[259] while the fourth (brevior lectio probabilior) is but another form of Bengel’s canon. The third alone may be regarded as new and deserving of attention—viz., vera lectio ad finem victoriam reportat. That is to say, if a phrase is repeated in several passages in the same or similar terms, and displays variants in the earlier passages, the reading of the later passage will, as a rule, be the correct one, the reason being that copyists are apt to consider a certain reading to be an error the first time it occurs, and therefore to alter it, but come in the end to admit it as correct.

I would once more briefly emphasize the following propositions:—

(1) The text of our manuscripts must not be regarded as homogeneous, but must be examined separately for each part of the New Testament. A manuscript that exhibits a very good text in one book does not necessarily do the same in the others. The same thing holds good of versions and quotations.

(2) The text is preserved with less alteration in the versions than in the manuscripts.^[260]

(3) In the Gospels that reading is the more probable which differs from that of the parallel passages.

(4) The influence of the ecclesiastical use of the Scriptures on the text must be more carefully attended to than heretofore.

(5) One of the most valuable aids in estimating the importance of the witnesses is the proper names, particularly those of less frequent occurrence.

(6) “Proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua.”