was to be anticipated from the phenomena of the fourth century, the Pre-Syrian texts in their purer forms quickly died out, and were replaced by a multitude of mixed texts. In like manner it is no wonder that the Pre-Syrian text neither Western nor Alexandrian, which already by the fourth century was apparently less popular than that of either the Western or the Alexandrian type, is afterwards found less conspicuously represented in mixed texts than its rivals.
207. The text of A stands in broad contrast to those of either Β or א, though the interval of years is probably small. The contrast is greatest in the Gospels, where A has a fundamentally Syrian text, mixed occasionally with Pre-Syrian readings, chiefly Western. In the other books the Syrian base disappears, though a Syrian occurs among the other elements. In the Acts and Epistles the Alexandrian outnumber the Western readings. All books except the Gospels, and especially the Apocalypse, have many Pre-Syrian readings not belonging to either of the aberrant types: in the Gospels these readings are of rare occurrence. By a curious and apparently unnoticed coincidence the text of A in several books agrees with the Latin Vulgate in so many peculiar readings devoid of Old Latin attestation as to leave little doubt that a Greek MS largely employed by Jerome in his revision of the Latin version must have had to a great extent a common original with A. Apart from this individual affinity, A both in the Gospels and elsewhere may serve as a fair example of the MSS that, to judge by patristic quotations, were commonest in the fourth century. Even the difference of text in the Gospels, though very possibly due only to accidental use of different exemplars for different groups of books, corresponds to a difference existing on a larger scale; for the Syrian text of the Gospels appears to have become popular before that of the rest of the New Testament.
208. In C the Syrian and all three forms of Pre-Syrian text are combined in varying proportions; distinctively Syrian readings and such distinctively Western readings as were not much adopted into eclectic texts being however comparatively infrequent.
209. With respect to the texts of extant uncial MSS of the Gospels later than the four great Bibles, a few words on some of the more important must suffice. The Greek text of the Græco-Thebaic fragments of St Luke