St. Mark vii.
6 should be permitted to dictate to us against the great heap of copies
in respect of their exhibition of St. Matt. xv. 8?

And yet, if the discrepancy between Codd. B and [Symbol: Aleph] and the
great bulk of the copies in this place did not originate in the way
insisted on by the critics, how is it to be accounted for? Now, on
ordinary occasions, we do not feel ourselves called upon to institute
any such inquiry,--as indeed very seldom would it be practicable to do.
Unbounded licence of transcription, flagrant carelessness, arbitrary
interpolations, omissions without number, disfigure those two ancient
MSS. in every page. We seldom trouble ourselves to inquire into the
history of their obliquities. But the case is of course materially
changed when so many of the oldest of the Fathers and all the oldest
Versions seem to be at one with Codexes B and [Symbol: Aleph]. Let then
the student favour me with his undivided attention for a few moments,
and I will explain to him how the misapprehension of Griesbach,
Tischendorf, Tregelles and the rest, has arisen. About the MSS. and the
Versions these critics are sufficiently accurate: but they have fatally
misapprehended the import of the Patristic evidence; as I proceed to
explain.

The established Septuagintal rendering of Isa. xxix. 13 in the Apostolic
age proves to have been this,--[Greek: Engizei moi ho laos outos tois
cheilesin auton timosi me]: the words [Greek: en to stomati auton, kai
en] being omitted. This is certain. Justin Martyr[287] and Cyril of
Alexandria in two places[288] so quote the passage. Procopius Gazaeus in
his Commentary on Origen's Hexapla of Isaiah says expressly that the six
words in question were introduced into the text of the Septuagint by
Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. Accordingly they are often observed
to be absent from MSS.[289] They are not found, for example, in the
Codex Alexandrinus.

But the asyndeton resulting from the suppression of these words was felt
to be intolerable. In fact, without a colon point between [Greek: outos]
and [Greek: tois], the result is without meaning. When once the
complementary words have been withdrawn, [Greek: engizei moi] at the
beginning of the sentence is worse than superfluous. It fatally
encumbers the sense. To drop those two words, after the example of the
parallel place in St. Mark's Gospel, became thus an obvious proceeding.
Accordingly the author of the (so-called) second Epistle