apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE CURETONIAN LETTERS. 291
But we have other highly important data.
The Vossian letters were
certainly in the hands of Eusebius and Theodoret. We may here
waive all contested points, such as the allusions in Polycarp or the
allowed, would carry the evidence much
quotation in Origen, which, if
farther back. The references in Eusebius no one has questioned or
can question. But Eusebius wrote more than two centuries before the
date of the earliest Syriac ms of the Curetonian Epistles. Thus we are
certified of the existence of the Vossian Recension two hundred years
before we hear of the Curetonian. And from that time forward the
evidence for the former is varied and continuous, whereas the latter can
produce no credentials outside these three Syriac mss themselves.
No light stress again has been laid on another consideration,
which will not bear the strain put upon it. It is argued that in those
parts which they have in common the special readings of the Curetonian
letters bear the stamp of greater antiquity than those of the Vossian, and
hence it is inferred that the Curetonian Recension itself must be older
than the Vossian.
Here two wholly different things are confounded together. In the
comparison of two recensions so wide apart
as the Curetonian and the
Vossian, two classes of variations must be considered. There are first
the deliberate additions or omissions or alterations which are due to the
author of that recension which is later in time and founded on the
earlier. These variations are directly literary or doctrinal in their
character.
They are also for the most part intentional. There are
secondly those divergences which are due to the separate and successive
transmission of each recension, owing to the caprice or carelessness of
the scribes. These are chiefly clerical or transcriptional. They are
commonly accidental, but may be deliberate. Thus a and / are two
recensions of the same author ; ^ being a Uterary recension, whether by
abridgment or expansion or otherwise, of a. The state of the text of
a and /3 respectively in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth
centuries after ^ was produced from a, and the two recensions began to
be transmitted separately, are represented by a^ a^ a^ a^ a, ag, ^^ /S, ^^
(S^ 185 (3^, respectively. Suppose that of a we have only a^ extant, while
of /3 we have /S^.
It is quite plain that in the parts common to both
the only readings of /3
which are known to us must show greater
antiquity than the only readings of a which are known to us, though (as
a recension) (3 is the offspring of a and not conversely. This is a
rough representation of the relation of our actual authorities for the
texts of the Vossian and Curetonian letters respectively. For the
former our chief authority may be said to be represented by a„,
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for the