fuisse.' But this modest inference of his, subsequent Critics have
represented as an ascertained fact, Tischendorf announces it as
'certissimum.' Let me be allowed to investigate the problem for myself.
Woide's calculation,--(which has passed unchallenged for nearly a
hundred years, and on the strength of which it is now-a-days assumed
that Cod. A must have exactly resembled Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]B in
_omitting_ the _pericope de adultera_,)--was far too roughly made to be
of any critical use[594].

Two leaves of Cod. A have been here lost: viz. from the word [Greek:
katabainon] in vi. 50 to the word [Greek: legeis] in viii. 52: a
_lacuna_ (as I find by counting the letters in a copy of the ordinary
text) of as nearly as possible 8,805 letters,--allowing for
contractions, and of course not reckoning St. John vii. 53 to viii. 11.
Now, in order to estimate fairly how many letters the two lost leaves
actually contained, I have inquired for the sums of the letters on the
leaf immediately preceding, and also on the leaf immediately succeeding
the hiatus; and I find them to be respectively 4,337 and 4,303:
together, 8,640 letters. But this, it will be seen, is insufficient by
165 letters, or eight lines, for the assumed contents of these two
missing leaves. Are we then to suppose that one leaf exhibited somewhere
a blank space equivalent to eight lines? Impossible, I answer. There
existed, on the contrary, a considerable redundancy of matter in at
least the second of those two lost leaves. This is proved by the
circumstance that the first column on the next ensuing leaf exhibits the
unique phenomenon of being encumbered, at its summit, by two very long
lines (containing together fifty-eight letters), for which evidently no
room could be found on the page which immediately preceded. But why
should there have been any redundancy of matter at all? Something
extraordinary must have produced it. What if the _Pericope de adultera_,
without being actually inserted in full, was recognized by Cod. A? What
if the scribe had proceeded as far as the fourth word of St. John viii.
3, and then had suddenly checked himself? We cannot tell what appearance
St. John vii. 53-viii. 11 presented in Codex A, simply because the
entire leaf which should have contained it is lost. Enough however has
been said already to prove that it is incorrect and unfair to throw
[Symbol: Aleph]AB into one and the same category,--with a
'certissimum,'--as Tischendorf