ix.
34 (from the parallel place in St.Luke viii.

53) the clause [Greek: eidotes hoti apethanen], it is of course conceivable that the authors of those copies were merely the victims of excessive familiarity with the third Gospel.

But then,--although we are ready to make every allowance that we possibly can for memories so singularly constituted, and to imagine a set of inattentive scribes open to inducements to recollect or imagine instead of copying, and possessed of an inconvenient familiarity with one particular Gospel,--it is clear that our complaisance must stop somewhere.

Instances of this kind of licence at last breed suspicion.
Systematic 'assimilation' cannot be the effect of accident.

Considerable interpolations must of course be intentional.