ana translation

INTRODUCTION
Ixi
having preserved the original form of the text more truly than the
earlier, he invokes the support of the Arabic Version, which (as above
shown) was made not from the Greek but from the Philoxenian, of which
Version the only known copy is supposed to be of the ninth century,
older therefore than any of our manuscripts except probably Cod. 1, which
bears date A.Gr. 1 134 (A.D. 823).
This secondary Version, in many (yet
not in all) instances, proves to agree with the readings of our later copies
as embodied in the ordinary printed text ;
and Dr. Merx accepts it as
decisive in favour of that text against the evidence of our earlier copies.
In Professor Merx's view, then, the readings in which the ordinary
printed text, with the bulk of the later manuscripts of the Philoxenian,
as against the text now presented, amended after the earlier manuscripts
diverges from the Greek as read by all other authorities, are
not mere errors of transcription in the Syriac, but represent genuine
(but otherwise unattested) variants in the Greek exemplar which the
Philoxenian translator has faithfully reproduced. And on the other
hand, our earlier manuscripts present a text which, though more nearly
conformed to that of other witnesses, is not the Philoxenian as originally
issued, but as re-handled by editors who have corrected it into conformity
with the Harklensian, which adheres closely to the Greek.
These two opposite views of the facts presented by the manuscripts
of Philoxenian text admit of an easy comparative test, addressed to
the eye as well as to the understanding.
SECTION XVII. Professor Merx's Theory tested by Juxtaposition of
Examples of rival Readings.
Let us write down, side by side, some leading examples of the readings
in which the manuscripts
of our later differ from those of our
earlier group, placing under each the corresponding Greek, and judge
in each case by inspection whether of the two hypotheses is more
probable,
that the Syriac as exhibited by the later group
is a scribes'
perversion of the earlier, or, that it represents a variant which,
though found in no extant Greek manuscript and supported by no
other Version, really existed in the underlying Greek.
As above, in Section xn, we call the earlier group A the
; later, B.
It will be found that, in every case, the Syriac as given by printed
texts and the B-group represents a reading of the Greek which is not
known and which resembles none that is known to the Greek