omissions as to indicate a characteristic habit of the scribe. It is a conceivable hypothesis that the scribe of B, besides inheriting a text unusually free from interpolations, was one of the very few transcribers addicted to curtailment, and thus corrupted the inherited text in a direction opposite to the usual course of transcription: the question is whether such a hypothesis is borne out by a comprehensive examination of the facts. What has been said above (§ 312) as to omissions due to purely clerical error need not be repeated. The only readings of Β which can with any plausibility be urged on behalf of the hypothesis are the instances in which it omits slight and apparently non-essential words found in all other documents, such as pronouns and articles. It is on the one hand to be remembered that such words are peculiarly liable to be inserted, especially in Versions and quotations by Fathers; and still more that we find numerous similar omissions in good groups containing B, with every gradation in the amount of support which it receives, so that these omissions in Β alone might be taken as genuine non-interpolations without incongruity as to the attestation, as well as consistently with the general character of the text of B. In our opinion this is the most probable account of the matter in some cases, and possibly in all: but it is on the whole safer for the present to allow for a proneness on the part of the scribe of Β to drop petty words not evidently required by the sense, and therefore to neglect this class of omissions in Β alone, where good confirmatory external or internal evidence is wanting. If however a like scrutiny is applied to important words or clauses, such as are sometimes dropped in the Western texts for the sake of apparent directness or simplicity, we find no traces
