of a considerable group; and the principle is not affected by the size of the groups. But when the number of members is nearly or quite reduced to two, it is of consequence to find out what can be known respecting the antecedents of each, and especially respecting their mutual relations.
288. The first point that arises for examination is the independence of their testimony. The numerous readings in which they stand alone against all or nearly all extant Greek MSS suggests at once the enquiry whether they had separate ancestries or were, to a greater or less extent, copies of a single exemplar. The enquiry is the more necessary because the two MSS are really brought together as to their transcription in a singular manner by the fact observed by Tischendorf, that six leaves of the New Testament in א, together with the opening verses of the Apocalypse, besides corrections, headings, and in two cases subscriptions, to other parts, are from the hand of the same scribe that wrote the New Testament in B. The fact appears to be sufficiently established by concurrent peculiarities in the form of one letter, punctuation, avoidance of contractions, and some points of orthography. As the six leaves are found on computation to form three pairs of conjugate leaves, holding different places in three distant quires, it seems probable that they are new or clean copies of corresponding leaves executed by the scribe who wrote the rest of the New Testament, but so disfigured, either by an unusual number of corrections of clerical errors or from some unknown cause, that they appeared unworthy to be retained, and were therefore cancelled and transcribed by the 'corrector'. However this may be, their internal character of text differs in no respect from that of their neighbours.
