Gospels such a sentence as the first part of Luke xxiii 34 condemns itself, though the concurrence of the best texts, Latin and Egyptian as well as Greek, shews the sentence to be a later insertion. Yet single sayings or details cannot be effectually preserved for use except as parts of a continuous text: and there is no serious violation of the integrity of the proper evangelic texts in allowing them to yield a lodgement to these stray relics surviving from the apostolic or subapostolic age, provided that the accessory character of the insertions is clearly marked. Double brackets ⟦ ⟧ have therefore been adopted not only for the eight interpolations omitted by Western documents and by no other extant Pre-Syrian evidence, but also for five interpolations omitted on authority other than Western, where the omitted words appeared to be derived from an external written or unwritten source, and had likewise exceptional claims to retention in the body of the text (Matt. xvi 2 f.; Luke xxii 43 f.; xxiii 34), or as separate portions of it (Mark xvi 9—20; John vii 53—viii 11).
385. In addition to the specially important interpolations thus printed in the same type as the true text but with double brackets, there are many Western additions and substitutions which stand on a somewhat different footing from ordinary rejected readings; not to speak of the very few which, being possibly genuine, there was no need to separate from ordinary alternative readings. It was not so easy to decide whether any notice should be taken of any others. The influence of extraneous records or traditions of one kind or another is clearly perceptible in some cases, and its presence may with more or less probability be suspected in others. On the other hand the great mass of these readings can have no other source
