167. The same facts lead to another conclusion of equal or even greater importance respecting non-distinctive Syrian readings, which hold a conspicuous place by their number and often by their intrinsic interest. Since the Syrian text is only a modified eclectic combination of earlier texts independently attested, existing documents descended from it can attest nothing but itself: the only authority which they can give to readings having other documentary attestation, that is to readings Syrian but not distinctively Syrian, is the authority of the Syrian text itself, which resolves itself into that of a lost ancient MS of one or possibly more of those older texts from which the Syrian text was in any given variation derived. Accordingly a reading supported both by the documents belonging to the Syrian group and by those belonging to e.g. the Western group has no appreciably greater presumption in its favour than if it were supported by the Western group alone: the only accession is that of a lost Western MS not later in date than the time when the Syrian text was formed; and in almost all cases this fact would add nothing to our knowledge of the ancestry of the reading as furnished by the Non-Syrian documents attesting it.
168. If our documents were free from all mixture except that contained in the Syrian text, that is, if no document of later origin itself combined elements from different texts, the application of this principle would be always clear and certain. Since however most of the more important documents are as a matter of fact affected by later mixture, the origin of any given reading in them can only be determined by grouping; and since grouping is sometimes obscure, a greater or less degree of doubt about the antecedents of a non-distinctive Syrian reading
