The list, however limited, contains a sufficient variety of strictly or approximately direct historical evidence to enable us at once to refer to the fourth century at latest the original of nearly every considerable group of extant documents which frequently recurs in the apparatus criticus, and indeed to carry back some to the third, and others to the second century. In each case the genealogical process here employed can of course do no more than supply an inferior limit of age: a lost original thus proved to be as old as the fourth century may, for all that we have thus far seen, be in reality as old as the other lost originals which can be positively referred to earlier times. What we have gained is the limitation of enquiry by the knowledge that all the important ramifications of transmission preceded the fifth century.
B. 132—151. Posteriority of Syrian (δ) to 'Western' (β) and other (neutral, α) readings shown (1) by analysis of Conflate Readings
132. Within this comparatively restricted field we have next to investigate the genealogical relations of the principal groups of documents, or, what is virtually the same thing, of their respective lost originals, following partly, as before, external evidence, partly the indications of sequence obtained by Internal Evidence of the Groups as wholes. The presence of early and extensive mixture betrays itself at once in the number and intricacy of cross distributions of attestation (see § 60), and thus it becomes important to ascertain at the outset whether any whole groups have been affected by it; and if such can be found, to determine the contributory groups which are thereby proved not merely to be of earlier date, but to have been the actual parents of the groups of mixed origin.
