(4) That in weighing conflicting evidence we must assign the highest value not to those readings which are attested by the greatest number of witnesses, but to those which come to us from several remote and independent sources, and which bear the least likeness to each other in respect to genius and general character.
Appendix To Chapter X.
Matt. vi. 8. The transparent gloss ὁ θεός is inserted before ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν by Codd. א*B and the Sahidic version[309].
Ver. 22. Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου B, a b c ff1 n1.2 h l, the printed Vulgate, some Latin writers, and the Ethiopic. The addition of σου is more strongly attested in Luke xi. 34 by א*ABCDM, but is intolerable in either place.
Matt. xvi. 21. Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο ἰησοῦς χριστός: so the first hands of א and B, with the Bohairic version only, their very frequent companion.
Matt. xxvii. 28. On the impossible reading of אcBD, a b c ff2 q, and a few others, enough has been said in Chap. VII. p. [234].
Ver. 49. We are here brought face to face with the gravest interpolation yet laid to the charge of B, whose tendency is usually in the opposite direction. Westcott and Hort alone among the editors feel constrained to insert in the text, though enclosed in their double brackets and regarded as “most probably an interpolation,” a sentence which neither they nor any other competent scholar can easily believe that the Evangelist ever wrote[310]. After σώσων αὐτόν are set the following words borrowed from John xix. 34, with a slight verbal change, and representing that the Saviour was pierced before his death: ἄλλος δὲ λαβὼν λόγχην ἔνυξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν πλευράν, καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ὕδωρ καὶ ἁῖμα. Thus we read in אBCLU (which has εὐθέως before ἐξῆλθεν αἷμα καὶ ὕδωρ) Γ, 5, 48, 67, 115, 127*, five good manuscripts of the Vulgate, Kells, gat., mm., chad., mac-regol., and Oxon., C. C. (not in Bodl.), Harl. 1023 and 1802*, and the margin of 1 E. vi, the Jerusalem Syriac once when the Lesson occurs, and the Ethiopic. Chrysostom thus read in his copy, but used the clause with so little reflection that he regarded the Lord as dead already. Severus of Antioch [d. 539], who himself protested against this gross corruption, tells us that Cyril of Alexandria as well as Chrysostom received it. A scholion found in Cod. 72 refers this addition εἰς τὸ καθ᾽ ἱστορίαν εὐαγγέλιον Διοδώρου καὶ Τατιάνου καὶ ἄλλων διαφόρων ἁγίων πατέρων, on the authority of Chrysostom; and from the unintentional blunders of Harmonists like Tatian such an insertion might very well have crept in. The marvel is that it found favour so widely as it did[311].
Matt. xxviii. 19. βαπτίσαντες occurs only in BD (whose Latin has baptizantes), as though Baptism were to precede instruction in the faith. Tregelles alone dares to place this reading in the text: Westcott and Hort have it in their margin.