Note 254 — Chapter III · THEORY AND PRAXIS OF THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.[129] (continued 2)

Scrivener would explain the “remarkable confusion” of the two prepositions προ and προσ, when compounded with verbs, which we meet e.g. in Matt. xxvi. 39; Mark xiv. 35; Acts xii. 6; xvii. 5, 26; xx. 5, 13; xxii. 25, by saying that the symbol [Symbol: an abbreviation made of a rho character written on top of a block with three lines.] is used indifferently for προ and προσ in the Herculanean rolls, and here and there in Codex Sinaiticus. Seeing that it has become a bad habit in Hebrew Grammars to speak of Aleph prostheticum instead of protheticum, and that the practice is still defended (Gesenius-Kautzsch26, p. 64, n. 3, “rightly so”) after my notice of it (Marginalien, p. 67), I have given some little attention to this confusion, and could cite dozens of examples. Others, of course, have noticed it as well as myself. In his N.T., i. 20, B. Weiss says: “The compounds with προ and προσ are interchanged quite heedlessly,” and he cites in proof of this eight passages from the Acts. He writes similarly in ii. 34. I shall instance only one or two cases in connection with this same word πρόθεσις. Pitra on Apost. Const., 5, 17 (p. 325): πρόθεσιν restituimus cum Vatican. 2, 3, 4, 5, vulgo πρόσθεσιν; Excerpta Περὶ Παθῶν, ed. R. Schneider (Programme of Duisburg, 1895), where the manuscripts deviate in five passages, pp. 5, 14. 20; 6, 5; 13, 7. 13, and we read in § 10, ἀντίκειται δὲ πρόσθεσις μὲν ἀφαιρέσει, etc., and in § 11, πρόσθεσις μὲν οὖν ἐστὶ προσθήκη στοιχείου κατ’ ἀρχήν, οἷον σταφίς, ἀσταφίς καὶ ὀσταφίς. Both times, of course, it should be πρόθεσις, as the better manuscripts have it. Wherever mention is made of the “shewbread,” D invariably turns it into “extra bread,” by reading προσθέσεως instead of προθέσεως. Tischendorf first called attention to this in Luke vi. 4, but it occurs also in Matt. xii. 4. I have no doubt myself that in the case of verbal forms, the σ was inserted in order to avoid the hiatus before the augment. Compare προσέθηκεν for προέθηκεν, Ex. xxiv. 23; προσέθηκας, Ps. lxxxix. 8, Symmachus; προανεθέμην or προσανεθέμην, Gal. i. 16. In Wisdom, vii. 27, the first hand of Sinaiticus even writes προσφήτας for prophets. It is disputed whether the title of one of Philo’s books is προπαιδεύματα or πρὸς [τὰ] παιδεύματα. Etc. etc. Sapienti sat.