These textual phenomena are highly interesting, but at the same time an exact analysis of them is difficult.  No simple hypothesis will account for them.  There can be no doubt that Marcion’s readings are, in the technical sense, false; they are a deviation from the type of the pure and unadulterated text.  At a certain point, evidently of the remotest antiquity, in the history of transcription, there was a branching off which gave rise to those varieties of reading which, though they are not confined to Western manuscripts, still, from their preponderance in these, are called by the general name of ‘Western.’  But when we come to consider the relations among those Western documents themselves, no regular descent or filiation seems traceable.  Certain broad lines indeed we can mark off as between the earlier and later forms of the Old Latin, though even here the outline is in places confused; but at what point are we to insert that most remarkable document of antiquity, the Curetonian Syriac?  For instance, there are cases (e.g. xvii. 2, xxiii. 2) where Marcion and the Old Latin are opposed to the Old Syriac, where the latter has undoubtedly preserved the correct reading.  To judge from these alone, we should naturally conclude that the Syriac was simply an older and purer type than Marcion’s Gospel and the Latin.  But then again, on the other hand, there are cases (such as the omission of xxi. 18) where Marcion and the Syriac are combined, and the Old Latin adheres to the truer type.  This will tend to show that, even at that early period, there must have been some comparison and correction—­a convergence as well as a divergence—­ of manuscripts, and not always a mere reproduction of the particular copy which the scribe had before him; at the same time it will also show that Marcion’s Gospel, so far from being an original document, has behind it a deep historical background, and stands at the head of a series of copies which have already passed through a number of hands, and been exposed to a proportionate amount of corruption.  Our author is inclined to lay stress upon the ‘slow multiplication and dissemination of MSS.’  Perhaps he may somewhat exaggerate this, as antiquarians give us a surprising account of the case and rapidity with which books were produced by the aid of slave-labour [Endnote 235:1].  But even at Rome the publishing trade upon this large scale was a novelty dating back no further than to Atticus, the friend of Cicero, and we should naturally expect that among the Christians—­a poor and widely scattered body, whose tenets would cut them off from the use of such public machinery—­the multiplication of MSS. would be slower and more attended with difficulty.  But the slower it was the more certainly do such phenomena as these of Marcion’s text throw back the origin of the prototype from which that text was derived.  In the year 140 A.D.  Marcion possesses a Gospel which is already in an advanced stage of transcription—­which has