Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/86

(i) L¹ L² against M¹ M², (ii) L¹ against L² M¹ M², (iii) L² against L¹ M¹ M², (iv) M¹ against L¹ L² M², and (v) M² against L¹ L² M¹ are all possible and all likely to occur; but the two distributions (vi) L¹ M¹ against L² M² and (vii) L¹ M² against L² M¹ are impossible as results of divergent genealogy. In the second distribution L² appears to desert its own primary array and join the array of M; but the truth is that in a text transmitted under these conditions L¹ must have introduced a corruption, while L² has merely remained faithful to a reading of the original which had been faithfully preserved by L and M alike. On the other hand in the sixth distribution either L¹ M¹ must have the wrong reading and L² M² the right, or vice versa: if L¹ M¹ are wrong, either L and M must have both concurred in the error, which would have rendered it impossible for either L² or M² to be right, or L¹ and M¹, transcribed from different exemplars, must have each made the same change from the true reading of L and M preserved by L² and M², which is impossible except by accidental coincidence; and mutatis mutandis the case is the same if L¹ M¹ be right and L² M² wrong, and again for the two corresponding alternatives of the seventh distribution. In this fact that the sixth and seventh combinations, that is, cross combinations, cannot exist without mixture we have at once a sufficient criterion for the presence of mixture. Where we find cross combinations associated with variations so numerous and of such a character that accidental coincidence is manifestly incompetent to explain them, we know that they must be due to mixture, and it then becomes necessary to observe within what limits the effects of mixture are discernible.

61. In so far as mixture operates, it exactly inverts the results of the simpler form of transmission, its effect being to produce convergence instead of divergence. Corruptions originating in a MS belonging to one primary array may be adopted and incorporated in transcripts from other MSS of the same or of other primary arrays. An error introduced by the scribe of L¹ in one century, and unknown to L² M¹ M² may in a later century be attested by all the then extant representatives of L¹ L² M¹, those of M² alone being free from it, the reason being that, perhaps through the instrumentality of some popular text which has adopted it, it has found its way into intermediate descendants of L² and of M¹. It follows that, whenever mixture has intervened, we have no security