f has no representation in Marcion's Gospel [Endnote 233:2].
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.