Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/263

the places in which, without difference of reading between א and B, the true text appears to be lost in all existing documents, or in all but one or two of a subsidiary character. Besides these clear or possible errors in אB there are some few variations in which their joint reading, though supported by some other testimony, is subject to more or less of doubt. But we have not found reason to make any further deduction from their united authority. In this as in all similar cases no account of course can be taken of coincidences that might be easily due to the independent origination of the same error by two different scribes. Under this head preeminently fall identical changes of an itacistic kind, as the confusion between imperatives in -ε and infinitives in -αι, and also between ἡμεῖς and ὑμεῖς: it seldom happens that both MSS go unquestionably astray together in such points, for their laxity is but comparative, but examples do occur. When these indecisive coincidences have been set aside, no readings of אB remain which we could venture to pronounce certainly or probably wrong as against other existing readings. This general immunity from substantive errors that can without room for doubt be recognised as errors in the common original of אB, in conjunction with its very high antiquity, provides in a multitude of places a safe criterion of genuineness, not to be distrusted except on very clear internal evidence. Accordingly, with the exceptions mentioned above, it is our belief (1) that readings of אB should be accepted as the true readings until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary, and (2) that no readings of אB can safely be rejected absolutely, though it is sometimes right to place them only on an alternative footing, especially where they receive no support from Versions or Fathers.
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