Catholic Epistles, as also in the subsequent books, an appreciable but varying element of the text of P2 has the same character. For the Pauline Epistles there is little that can be definitely added to אBAC except 17 and P2: the best marked neutral readings are due to the second hand of 67.
E. 236—239. Suspiciousness of Western and of Alexandrian readings
236. Nearly all that has been said in the preceding pages respecting the documentary attestation of the three leading types of Pre-Syrian text remains equally true whatever be the historical relation of these types to each other. On the other hand, it was necessary at an earlier stage (§§ 173 ff., 183), in describing the characteristics of the Western and Alexandrian texts, to state at once the general conclusions on this head to which we are irresistibly led by Internal Evidence of Texts, alike on that more restricted study of Western and Alexandrian readings which is limited to variations in which their characteristic attestation is least disguised by extraneous evidence, and on the more comprehensive study of all readings that can be ultimately recognised as Western or Alexandrian. In a vast majority of instances the result is identical: in binary variations the Non-Western reading approves itself more original than the Western, the Non-Alexandrian than the Alexandrian: in ternary variations the neutral reading, if supported by such documents as stand most frequently on the Non-Western and Non-Alexandrian sides in binary variations, approves itself more original than the Western and also more original than the Alexandrian. The Western and Alex-
