Vineyard), 'come I seeking fruit on this
fig-tree, and find none; cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?'
'Spare it for this year also' (is the rejoinder), 'and if it bear
fruit,--well: but if not, next year thou shalt cut it down.' But on the
strength of [Symbol: Aleph]BLT^{w}, some recent Critics would have us
read,--'And if it bear fruit next year,--well: but if not, thou shalt
cut it down':--which clearly would add a year to the season of the
probation of the Jewish race. The limit assigned in the genuine text is
the fourth year: in the corrupt text of [Symbol: Aleph]BLT^{w}, two bad
Cursives, and the two chief Egyptian versions, this period becomes
extended to the fifth.

To reason about such transpositions of words, a wearisome proceeding at
best, soon degenerates into the veriest trifling. Sometimes, the order
of the words is really immaterial to the sense. Even when a different
shade of meaning is the result of a different collocation, that will
seem the better order to one man which seems not to be so to another.
The best order of course is that which most accurately exhibits the
Author's precise shade of meaning: but of this the Author is probably
the only competent judge. On our side, an appeal to actual evidence is
obviously the only resource: since in no other way can we reasonably
expect to ascertain what was the order of the words in the original
document. And surely such an appeal can be attended with only one
result: viz. the unconditional rejection of the peculiar and often
varying order advocated by the very few Codexes,--a cordial acceptance
of the order exhibited by every document in the world besides.

I will content myself with inviting attention to one or two samples of
my meaning. It has been made a question whether St. Luke (xxiv. 7)
wrote,--[Greek: legon, Hoti dei ton huion tou anthropou paradothenai],
as all the MSS. in the world but four, all the Versions, and all the
available Fathers'[340] evidence from A.D. 150 downwards attest: or
whether he wrote,--[Greek: legon ton huion tou anthropou hoti dei
paradothenai], as [Symbol: Aleph]BCL,--and those four documents
only--would have us believe? [The point which first strikes a scholar is
that there is in this reading a familiar classicism which is alien to
the style of the Gospels, and which may be a symptom of an attempt on
the part of some early critic who was seeking to bring them into
agreement with ancient Greek models.] But surely als