and St John (T, Cent. v) is entirely Pre-Syrian and almost entirely Non-Western. That of the considerable fragments of St Luke called Ξ has a similar foundation, with a larger share of Alexandrian corrections, and also a sprinkling of Western and Syrian readings: this character is the more remarkable as the date seems to be Cent. viii. Of greater general importance is L of about the same date, which contains the Gospels in approximate completeness. The foundation of the text is Non-Western Pre-Syrian. No extant MS has preserved so many Alexandrian readings in the Gospels, but the early readings neither Western nor Alexandrian are also very numerous. On the other hand the fundamental text has been largely mixed with late Western and with Syrian elements. The composition, it will be seen, has analogies with that of א, though the actual texts are entirely independent, and the much smaller proportion of Alexandrian corrections in א, the great dissimilarity of its Western element, and the absence of a Syrian element, constitute important differences. In three Gospels the St Gallen MS Δ (see above on G3 of the Pauline Epistles, § 203) has an ordinary Syrian text sprinkled thinly with Alexandrian and a few Western readings. But in St Mark this fundamental text is for the most part displaced by mixture with a Non-Western Pre-Syrian text of the same type as the fundamental text of L and Ξ, and thus full of Alexandrian corrections as well as other early Non-Western readings: traces of the process remain in conflate or intermediate readings. The numerous fragments of PQRZ of the Gospels (see § 100) are variously mixed, but all have a large proportion of Pre-Syrian readings; in such MSS as ΝΧΓ(?Σ), and still more as KM, Pre-Syrian readings are very much fewer. The smaller fragments we must pass over, with one exception: too few lines of Wd (St Mark) survive to enable us to form a trustworthy conception of its text generally; but it includes a large Western element of a very curious type.
210. The Codex Laudianus (E2) of Acts is interesting on more accounts than one. It was apparently the identical Greek MS used by Bede. As it is Græco-Latin in form, its text might be expected to be Western. A Western text it does contain, very distinctly such, though evidently later than that of D; but mixed on apparently equal terms, though in varying proportions, with a no less distinctly Alexandrian text: there are also Syrian readings, but they are fewer in number. P2 is all but purely