Note 189 — Chapter III · THEORY AND PRAXIS OF THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.[129]

At the same time it must be pointed out here that not only in Luke and Acts, but in all the books of the N. T., it is wrong in principle to present the alternative “original or later alteration” or even forgery. The dilemma can be wrongly stated. Blass was not the first to express the opinion, “Lucam bis edidisse Actus.” De Dieu did so before him, and by an examination of those passages of the Gospels in which the original text has been preserved in purely “Western” witnesses Hort (§ 241) was led to suppose that the Western and non-Western texts may have “started respectively from a first and a second edition of the Gospels, both conceivably apostolic.” Similarly Wordsworth and White are unable to explain the origin and propagation of several readings in the manuscripts of the Vulgate otherwise than by supposing that the primitive document itself contained certain variants (corrections) in the passages in question.