ana translation

Ix
INTRODUCTION
twofold result of this process has been that (chiefly on the authority
of the older manuscripts)
(1) The weight of our Version as a textual authority, in many cases
of dispute as to the reading of the Greek, is transferred from one side
to the other :
(2) The greater part of the readings which deviated most widely
from the consensus of the Greek authorities disappear.
Connected with head (2), another result appears :
that
(3) The text of the Philoxenian is brought closer to that of the
Harklensian.
Every instance of such approximation
is to be accounted as a confirmation,
by the authority of the Harklensian, of the textual evidence
on which our emendation of the Philoxenian has been made, the
evidence (that is) of our earlier group of Philoxenian manuscripts.
Or, to state the case more justly, in each such instance the Harklensian
is to be recognised as the earliest witness to the true text of its Philoxenian
prototype its testimony, which is that of a careful scholar,
riot of a mere transcriber, reaching back to a date (614) long prior to
that of any extant copy, little more than a century later than the date
(508) when the Philoxenian was given to the Syriac-speaking Church.
SECTION XVI.
The Text of the Later MSS upheld ty Professor Merx.
Another view of the facts disclosed by the collation of our manuscripts
is, however, possible. It may be said that in these earlier
manuscripts of the Philoxenian we have it, not in its genuine and
original form, but as re-handled by some editor or editors in order to
bring it into conformity with the Harklensian revision while the later
;
manuscripts preserve the text as derived by them from copies that had
escaped such meddling of correctors. Such a view has in fact been
put forward by Professor Merx. This eminent scholar holds that the
true text of the Philoxenian is on the whole correctly exhibited by our
later manuscripts and the printed
editions based on them.
The readings
of our earlier manuscripts he rejects as corruptions
editorial corrections :
in the form of
the agreement of the Harklensian with these he
sets down not as testimony in their favour but as indications that it
is
the source whence they have been derived. In confirmation of this
judgment, and to meet the prima facie improbability of the later copies