The passage is very instructive. We learn that copies of the writings of these heretics were to be found in abundance, because their disciples eagerly inserted their emendations in their texts, “each one’s emendations, as they style them, but in reality they are corruptions,” as the Syriac has it. At the same time, it is not quite certain that κατωρθωμένα really means corrected manuscripts of the Bible, and not the heretics’ own works—_i.e._, whether we should understand ἀντίγραφα τῶν θείων γραφῶν after τὰ Ἀσκληπιάδου, τὰ Θεοδότου, τὰ Ἑρμοφίλου, τὰ Ἀπολλωνίδου and not rather γράμματα or συντάγματα. In the former case we shall have to search for a recension of Asclepiades, of Theodotus, of Hermophilus, and in the case of Apollonides for a double recension, an earlier and a later. This interpretation of the words does certainly receive support from the positive way in which the historian argues from the conduct of these heretics, that they either did not believe in any inspiration of the holy Scriptures, or thought they could write better themselves, and also from his remark that they did not receive τὰς γραφάς in that form (τοιαύτας) from their (Christian) instructors, and were not able to show any older copies from which their own were transcribed. From the mention of the Law and the Prophets, we may conclude that the reference is mainly to the O. T. Epiphanius mentions the Theodotians as appealing to Deut. xviii. 15, Jer. xvii. 9, Isa. liii. 3, Matt. xii. 31, Luke i. 35, John viii. 40, Acts ii. 22, 1 Tim. ii. 5; while Hippolytus argues against them on the ground that in John i. 14, it is not τὸ πνεῦμα but ὁ λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο. No sure traces, however, can be discovered in any of these N. T. passages of their supposed trenchant criticism of the text. The most probable instance is Luke i. 35. “If we may trust the statement of Epiphanius,” says Harnack (_Monarchianismus_, PRE^3, x. 188), “Theodotus wished to separate the second half of the sentence from the first (διὸ καὶ τὸ γεννώμενον ἐκ σοῦ ἅγιον κληθήσεται, υἱὸς Θεοῦ),[199] as if the words διὸ καὶ were wanting, which makes the sentence imply that the divine Sonship of Christ rests on his approving himself. But perhaps Theodotus omitted διὸ καὶ altogether, just as he seems to have read πνεῦμα κυρίου instead of πνεῦμα ἅγιον, in order to obviate all ambiguity.” The latter reading is not mentioned in Tischendorf, and the remark of Epiphanius in my opinion amounts to this, that whereas he understood ἅγιον to be the subject of the sentence, Theodotus made it the predicate and separated it from γεννώμενον.[200] [Sidenote: Marcosians.]