the contingency contains no improbability; and the recognition of it prescribes special watchfulness where there is no sufficient accessory Non-Western attestation, this being in fact another of the cases in which secondary documentary evidence of the better sort acquires a high interpretative value. But Internal Evidence is so favourable to the group אBD2G3 that except in a very few cases, as οὗ Rom. iv 8, αἰχμαλωτίζοντά με ἐν τῷ νόμῳ vii 23, ἡ omitted after τοῦ θεοῦ 1 Cor. xv 10, ἁγίοις omitted 1 Thes. ν 27, and καὶ τῆς ἁγνότητος added 2 Cor. xi 3, we have not found reason to treat their readings as doubtful.
343. We come next to the analogous difficulties which arise where Β totally fails us as regards direct evidence, but still affords some indirect aid in the interpretation of groupings, namely in the latter part (ix 14—end) of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the Pastoral Epistles, and in the Epistle to Philemon. Here too the main distinctive problem is how to distinguish oppositions of Western and Non-Western from oppositions of Non-Alexandrian and Alexandrian readings; and it has to be dealt with in the same manner as in the former case. Another uncertainty is suggested by a recollection of the excellence of subsingular readings of Β in those parts of the Pauline Epistles which are preserved in it, and of the similar excellence of readings differing in attestation from these by the mere addition of the Syrian documents (§§ 324 f). Evidently the only resource here is to allow an alternative place to readings slenderly supported, or supported chiefly by Syrian documents, provided that the attestation includes such documents as are often associated with Β in its subsingular readings, and that the local internal evidence is favourable. It would be con-
