venient to an editor in this part of the New Testament to assign to א such an authority as a consideration of the whole evidence has up to this point constrained us to assign to B. But the absolute excellence of א is neither lessened nor increased by the loss of a purer MS: the comparative excellence of its fundamental text and the deterioration of that text by mixture alike remain unchanged, while the discrimination of the different elements through grouping is deprived of one important resource. Such being the case, the text of these eighteen or nineteen chapters of the Pauline Epistles is undeniably less certain than that of the rest, though, as far as we can judge, the uncertainty is small in amount and of no real moment.
344. When at last we reach the Apocalypse, new and troublesome conditions of evidence are encountered. Not only is Β absent, but historical landmarks are obscure, and familiar documents assume a new position. Probable traces of a Western and perhaps an Alexandrian text may be discerned, with analogous relations to the extant uncials which contain other books: but they are not distinct enough to give much help, and for the most part Internal Evidence of Groups is the highest available guide of criticism. As before, א has a large neutral element; but in addition to mixture, probably Western and Alexandrian, evident individualisms of the scribe, or of one of his immediate predecessors, come forth in much greater luxuriance than before, as also they do in the Epistle of Barnabas which follows the Apocalypse in the same handwriting; this less scrupulous treatment of the text being perhaps connected with the ambiguous authority of the Apocalypse in the canonical lists of Cent. IV. Nor is internal evidence as a rule here
