548
Leaving then the Syrian text, we have to consider the relations between its predecessors. The rapid and wide propagation of the Western text is the most striking phenomenon of textual history in the three centuries following the death of the Apostles. The first clear evidence (Marcion, Justin) shews us a text containing definitely Western readings before the middle of the second century; and a similar text is predominant, to say the least, in the ample citations made towards the end of the century. Nay, the text used by all the Ante-Nicene Greek writers not connected with Alexandria, who have left considerable remains (Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Methodius), is substantially Western. Even in the two chief Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, especially in some of Origen's writings, Western quotations hold a conspicuous place, while in Eusebius they are on the whole predominant. After Eusebius they make no show in Greek theology, except so far as they were adopted into eclectic texts: a few writers offer rare traces of the expiring tradition, but nothing more. The Old Latin version in both its earlier forms was Western from the first. The Old Syriac, so far as can be judged from a single imperfect MS of the Gospels, was at least predominantly Western too. But indeed the Western influence to a certain extent affected every ancient version sooner or later: in those of Upper Egypt, Ethiopia, and Armenia it is often peculiarly well marked.
When Western readings generally are confronted with their ancient rivals in order to obtain a broad view of the relations between the texts, it would be difficult for any textual critic to doubt that the Western not merely is the less pure text, but also owes most of its differences to a perilous confusion between transcription and reproduction, and even between the preservation of a record and its supposed improvement. Its chief and constant characteristic is a love of paraphrase, not generically different from the tendency to verbal modification exhibited by many scribes, but rather an extreme form of it. Words and even clauses are changed, omitted, and inserted with surprising freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness. Another common and dangerous type of licence which is seen here in full force is the assimilation of clauses or sentences at once like and unlike, and especially the obliteration of the characteristic statements of the several Gospels in parallel
