Epistles, are found on the side of the later MSS, or even if similar testimony is prima facie borne by such a version as the Memphitic, the MSS of which have not yet been subjected to a critical sifting. It would be useless to attempt to lay down absolute rules of discrimination; the essential prerequisites for striking the balance are familiarity with the documents, and a habit of observing their various groupings: but the fundamental materials of judgement must be such facts and combination of facts, slightly sketched in the preceding pages, as are implied in the rough arrangement of documents just given. The doubt that must sometimes remain is not often whether a given reading is Syrian, but whether it is distinctively Syrian, that is, whether it originated with the Syrian revision, or was an older reading, of whatever type, adopted by the Syrian revisers. In the final decision, as will be seen, this doubt is very rarely of practical moment.
C. 227—232. Identification of Western and of Alexandrian readings
227. Distinctively Syrian and Post-Syrian readings being set aside, there remain only such readings as the nature of their documentary attestations marks out, often with certainty, often with high probability, as older than 250. Such readings may with substantial truth be called 'Ante-Nicene'; but the term 'Pre-Syrian', if less familiar, is not less convenient, and certainly more correct. The account which we have already given of the early history of the text must have dispelled any anticipation that textual criticism, in reaching back to the middle of the third century, would have nearly ful-
