Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/344

398. Accordingly in orthographical variations we have followed essentially the same principles as in the rest of the text; allowance being made in their application for the much smaller amount of documentary evidence, and for the facility with which all experience shews that accustomed spellings flow from the pens of otherwise careful transcribers. Possibly we may here and there have erred in adopting an unclassical form or spelling. It is still more probable that the writers of the New Testament employed unclassical forms or spellings in many places where no trace of them now exists, and where therefore their present use could not be justified. Yet we have taken much pains as to individual details, and given perhaps only too much time to what are after all trifles, though in not a few cases there was little hope of arriving at more than provisional results without a disproportionate extension of the field of labour. Fortunately in this matter the individual details are of less consequence than the general colouring which they collectively produce, and about the truth of the general colouring here given we have no misgiving. Even in details a liberal indication of alternative readings (see § 403) goes far towards suggesting the probable limits of uncertainty.

399. The course of orthographical change during the centuries known to us from extant MSS coincided approximately with that of verbal or substantive change. But ancient spellings died out much more quickly than ancient substantive readings; so that the proportion of MSS containing them is considerably smaller. The evidence as to some of these spellings is complicated by coincidence with the range of itacism: that is, some of the rival forms differ from each other only by permutation of such vowels, including diphthongs, as are also liable to be exchanged for each other in mere error. Throughout the uncial period, of which alone it is necessary to speak here, some licence as to itacism is always present, and in a few late uncials the licence is gross and extensive: yet the confusion of vowels, especially in the more ancient copies, is found to lie within constant limits, which are rarely transgressed. Thus א shews a remarkable inclination to change ει into ι, and Β to change ι into ει, alike in places where either form is possible and in places where the form actually employed in the MS is completely discredited by the want of any other sufficient evidence or analogy; the converse confusions being very rare in both, and particu-