by an enormously increased exhibition of alternative readings.
374. For scepticism as to the possibility of obtaining a trustworthy genealogical interpretation of documentary phenomena in the New Testament there is, we are persuaded, no justification either in antecedent probability or in experience; and, if this be so, the range of uncertainty is brought at once within narrow limits. When it is clearly understood that coincidence of reading infallibly implies identity of ancestry wherever accidental coincidence is out of the question, all documents assume their proper character as sources of historical evidence, first respecting the antecedent lines of textual transmission, and then respecting the relation of each reading to these antecedent texts. Nearly a century and a half ago the more important ancient texts were clearly recognised, and the great subsequent accession of materials has but added certainty to this first generalisation, while it has opened the way for further generalisations of the same kind. Again, when it is seen that the variations in which decision is free from difficulty supply a trustworthy basis for ascertaining the prevalent character of documents and groups of documents, and thus for estimating rightly the value of their testimony in other places, little room is left for difference of estimate. Whatever may be the ambiguity of the whole evidence in particular passages, the general course of future criticism must be shaped by the happy circumstance that the fourth century has bequeathed to us two MSS of which even the less incorrupt must have been of exceptional purity among its own contemporaries, and which rise into greater preeminence of character the better the early history of the text becomes known.
