nvenience may be called) a 'clerical
error,' and you are supplied with an effectual answer to a form of
inquiry which else is sometimes very perplexing: viz. If the true
meaning of this passage be what you suppose, for what conceivable reason
should the scribe have misrepresented it in this strange way,--made
nonsense, in short, of the place?... I will further remark, that it is
always interesting, sometimes instructive, after detecting the remote
origin of an ancient blunder, to note what has been its subsequent
history and progress.

Some specimens of the thing referred to I have already given in another
place. The reader is invited to acquaint himself with the strange
process by which the '276 souls' who suffered shipwreck with St. Paul
(Acts xxvii. 37), have since dwindled down to 'about 76[27].'--He is
further requested to note how 'a certain man' who in the time of St.
Paul bore the name of 'Justus' (Acts xviii. 7), has been since
transformed into '_Titus_,' '_Titus Justus_,' and even '_Titius
Justus_[28].'--But for a far sadder travestie of sacred words, the
reader is referred to what has happened in St. Matt. xi. 23 and St. Luke
x. 15,--where our Saviour is made to ask an unmeaning question--instead
of being permitted to announce a solemn fact--concerning
Capernaum[29].--The newly-discovered ancient name of the Island of
Malta, _Melitene_[30], (for which geographers are indebted to the
adventurous spirit of Westcott and Hort), may also be profitably
considered in connexion with what is to be the subject of the present
chapter. And now to break up fresh ground.

Attention is therefore invited to a case of attraction in Acts xx. 24.
It is but the change of a single letter ([Greek: logoU] for [Greek:
logoN]), yet has that minute deflection from the truth led to a complete
mangling of the most affecting perhaps of St. Paul's utterances. I refer
to the famous words [Greek: all' oudenos logon poioumai, oude echo ten
psuchen mou timian emauto, hos teleiosai ton dromon mou meta charas]:
excellently, because idiomatically, rendered by our Translators of
1611,--'But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear
unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy.'

For [Greek: oudenos loGON], (the accusative after [Greek: poioumai]),
some one having substituted [Greek: oudenos loGOU],--a reading which
survives to this hour in B and C[31],--it became necessary to find
something else for the verb to gover