But the instructive feature of the case is that it is in the four oldest of the uncials that this palpable blunder is found.
Sec.

6.
I have reserved for the last a specimen which is second to none in suggestiveness.

'Whom will ye that I release unto you ?' asked Pilate on a memorable occasion[92]: and we all remember how his enquiry proceeds.
But the discovery is made that, in an early age there existed copies of the Gospel which proceeded thus,--'Jesus [who is called[93]] Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ ?' Origen so quotes the place, but 'In many copies,' he proceeds, 'mention is not made that Barabbas was also called Jesus: and those copies may perhaps be right,--else would the name of Jesus belong to one of the wicked,--of which no instance occurs in any part of the Bible: nor is it fitting that the name of Jesus should like Judas have been borne by saint and sinner alike.

I think,' Origen adds, 'something of this sort must have been an interpolation of the heretics[94].' From this we are clearly intended to infer that 'Jesus Barabbas' was the prevailing reading of St.Matt.xxvii.

17 in the time of Origen, a circumstance which--besides that a multitude of copies existed as well as those of Origen--for the best of reasons, we take leave to pronounce incredible[95].
The sum of the matter is probably this:--Some inattentive second century copyist [probably a Western Translator into Syriac who was an indifferent Greek scholar] mistook the final syllable of '_unto you_' ([Greek: UMIN]) for the word '_Jesus_' ([Greek: IN]): in other words, carelessly reduplicated the last two letters of [Greek: UMIN],--from which, strange to say, results the form of inquiry noticed at the outset.