Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/247

283. The two former suppositions stand in so flagrant opposition to the suggestions of internal evidence, howsoever obtained, and harmonise so ill with the results furnished by other groupings, that nothing but the proved inadmissibility of the third supposition could justify their acceptance. The third supposition is however natural enough, as soon as we recognise on the one hand the wide and early prevalence of Western readings, and on the other the mixed composition of the Greek MSS which are the chief extant representatives of the Alexandrian text (compare § 269). The Alexandrian text of the Gospels for instance would have been hopelessly obscure but for the very large Alexandrian elements which אCL(Δ) 33 contain in various places and proportions: yet the presence of a Western element in these MSS is equally indubitable, and it furnishes what must be in most cases the true key to the paradox. The readings attested by the best of the primary Greek MSS are as a rule simply Non-Western readings which are extant in an exceptionally small number of existing documents because the Western corruptions of them obtained an exceptionally early and wide popularity in one or other of the eclectic texts of the third and fourth centuries. That one of these eclectic texts arose at Alexandria, the text of Hesychius (see § 249) being indeed probably of this character, is likely enough; and, if so, it might be called a late Alexandrian text: but such a fact would only serve to illustrate the conclusion just stated. This conclusion harmonises in every respect with all known facts; and we are unable to think of any other interpretation which can be consistently applied without startling incongruities alike of external and of internal evidence.
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