MS of the one and in the printed editions, founded on late MSS, of the other, together with the prevailing character of both texts, renders it highly improbable that these exceptions existed in the versions in their earlier days. The Revised Syriac is the first version to betray clearly the existence of the Greek Syrian revision, exhibiting a large proportion of the characteristically Syrian new readings and combinations of old readings. Various Latin revised texts follow, with analogous but different combinations, two alone deriving a very large share of their complexion from the Syrian text. The Egyptian texts, and especially the Memphitic, likewise sooner or later became adulterated, as we have said, with extraneous elements; but at what dates is uncertain. The only versions, besides the Italian and Vulgate Latin, in which the completed Syrian text is clearly and widely represented are definitely known to be of the fourth or later centuries, that is, the Gothic, Æthiopic, Armenian, and Harklean Syriac: the date of the Jerusalem Syriac is unknown.
D. 220—223. Texts found in Greek Fathers
220. Enough has already been said (§§
158—
162) on the texts which can be recognised in the extant remains of the several Ante-Nicene Greek Fathers. A few supplementary remarks must however be inserted here on the peculiar nature of the textual evidence furnished by Greek works preserved, wholly or in great part, only in ancient translations. In the quotations found in these works the texts of Versions and Fathers are variously blended together, so that their testimony needs to be examined with special care, while it is often too valuable to be neglected. Irenæus furnishes the most prominent example. Of his great treatise against heresies, which is extant in a Latin translation, no Greek MS is known to exist. Epiphanius however, writing about 375, has transcribed into his own principal work the greater part of the first of the five books. Other Greek writers and compilers, from Eusebius onwards, have preserved many short fragments, a few being likewise extant in a Syriac or Armenian dress. Secure knowledge of the character of the text of the New Testament used by Irenæus himself can of course be obtained only from the Greek extracts and from such readings extant only in Latin as are distinctly fixed by the
