Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/187

African form of the Old Latin version, and indeed elsewhere. In spite of the prodigious amount of error which D contains, these readings, in which it sustains and is sustained by other documents derived from very ancient texts of other types, render it often invaluable for the secure recovery of the true text: and, apart from this direct applicability, no other single source of evidence except the quotations of Origen surpasses it in value on the equally important ground of historical or indirect instructiveness. To what extent its unique readings are due to licence on the part of the scribe rather than to faithful reproduction of an antecedent text now otherwise lost, it is impossible to say: but it is remarkable how frequently the discovery of fresh evidence, especially Old Latin evidence, supplies a second authority for readings in which D had hitherto stood alone. At all events, when every allowance has been made for possible individual licence, the text of D presents a truer image of the form in which the Gospels and Acts were most widely read in the third and probably a great part of the second century than any other extant Greek MS.

203. Western texts of the Pauline Epistles are preserved in two independent uncials, D₂ and G₃, in G₃ to the exclusion of Hebrews. What has been said of D of the Gospels may be applied with little deduction to the Pauline D₂, allowance being made for the inferior interest of all Western texts of St Paul. The text of G₃, to a great extent coincident, apparently represents a later type, but still probably not later than Cent. IV. It is to be observed that though many readings of D₂ in opposition to G₃ are supported by other very ancient texts, others receive no such confirmation, and are shown by Latin evidence to be no less Western than those of G₃. But this is merely an example of the variety of Western texts. Since G₃ was apparently written late in Cent. IX, probably at St Gallen by an Irish scribe (though it may possibly have been brought to St Gallen from Ireland), the nature of its text may be due either to the preservative power of the seclusion of Greek learning in the West or to direct transcription from a very much older copy. The text of the Gospels in what was originally part of the same MS is, we shall see, entirely different. Two of the uncial Græco-Latin copies of the Pauline Epistles, E₃ and F₂, cannot count as independent sources of evidence: E₃ has long been recognised as a transcript of D₂, and we believe