304. Sufficient examples of important or interesting readings attested by אB, but lost from the texts of all other extant uncials, will be found in the Appendix, as in the notes on Matt. ν 22; x 3; xi 19; xvi 21; xvii 20; xxviii 6; Mark ix 29; xvi 9—20; Acts xx. 5, 28; 1 Pet. ν 2; Eph. i 1. Two or three additional places may be noticed here, in which there is reason to think that the bearing of the internal evidence is liable to be misunderstood.
Mark iv 8 καὶ ἄλλα ἔπεσεν κ. τ. λ., καὶ ἐδίδου καρπὸν ἀναβαίνοντα καὶ αὐξανόμενα אΒ (αὐξανόμενον ADLΔ cu1, αὐξάνοντα C and most documents). Here the true force of the parable requires that not the fruit, but the plants into which the seeds have expanded, be said to mount up and grow. The temptations to corruption were peculiarly strong; ἀναβαίνοντα, immediately following καρπόν, had an ambiguous termination readily assumed to belong to the masculine accusative, and thus drew after it the other participle, one text adopting the middle form, which involved least change, the other the neuter form, which coincided with ἀναβαίνοντα: an additional motive for alteration would be the apparent paradox of seeds being said to 'mount up', a paradox which St Mark apparently intended to soften by means of the order of words. Finally the Western and Syrian texts completed the corruption by changing ἄλλα to the ἄλλο of vv. 5, 7.
John iv 15 ἵνα μὴ διψῶ μηδὲ διέρχωμαι (or -ομαι) ἐνθάδε ἀντλεῖν א*Β Orig5 (ἔρχωμαι most documents). Διέρχομαι is here used in its idiomatic sense 'come all the way', which expresses the woman's sense of her often repeated toil. Being commonly used in other senses, the word was easily misunderstood and assumed to be inappropriate; and the change would be helped by the facility with which one of two similar consecutive syllables drops out.
Acts xxviii 13 καταχθέντες εἰς Συρακούσας ἐπεμείναμεν ἡμέρας τρεῖς ὅθεν περιελόντες κατηντήσαμεν εἰς Ῥήγιον א*B g (tulimus et [='weighed anchor,' as vg cum sustulissent de Asso for ἄραντες ἆσσον in xxvii 13]) memph ('going forth'); where most documents have περιελθόντες. Περιελόντες here is explained by the use of the same verb in xxvii 40, καὶ τὰς ἀγκύρας περιελόντες εἴων εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, where it clearly means the casting loose (literally 'stripping off') of the anchors (with their cables) in order to set the vessel free to drive, though it is otherwise unknown as a nautical term. By analogy it must here mean the casting loose of the cables which attached the vessel to the shore in harbour (called in ampler phrase τὰ ἀπόγεια λύσασθαι,