In order to show the full extent of the difficulty of the problem, we shall take along with this passage from the end of the Gospel a single instance from the Acts. How does the Apostolic Decree read in ch. xv.? “To judge any matter before knowing the facts of the case is inadmissible.” So Hilgenfeld says in his magazine, adding that the matter of the Apostolic Council, as it is called, and the Decree have been so judged. He himself restores the whole text in this passage to the form that Blass has adopted as the _Forma Romana_—_i.e._, to confine ourselves to this point of main importance, he omits “things strangled.”[246] On the other hand, Harnack, in the article to which reference will be made below, comes to the conclusion that the Eastern, _i.e._ the common, text is the original, and the Western a later correction made subsequent to the _Didache_, and not earlier than the first decade of the second century.[247] The same conclusion is reached by Zahn in his extremely careful discussion of the question (_Einl._, ii. 344 ff.): “The two texts are here mutually exclusive, and therefore cannot both be derived from the same author (xv. 20, 29, xxi. 25).” But he immediately adds: “The fact that Blass, in this important point, as in many another of less consequence, declares a certain thing to be an original element of the text which turns out to be simply an early corruption in no wise detracts from the correctness of his hypothesis.” That is quite true and must be borne in mind in connection with the objection raised by Wendt, that “manifest clerical errors are found in the actual β text.” The passages are also used by Corssen as an argument against Blass. The remarks of the latter in reply to the strictures of Corssen (_Evang. sec. Lucam_, p. xxvi) seem to me to be not without reason, but in any case it is strange that alterations should have been made in an official document like the Decree in Acts xv., no matter whether these were due to the writer himself or a later intermediary. That there was some method in the alteration is shown by its recurrence in three places. But again I must emphasise the superiority of Codex D. Whereas in ch. xv. 20, 29 the shorter text is represented by other witnesses as well, in ch. xxi. 25 it is supported by D with the sole addition of Gigas Holmiensis.[248] I have not to decide the question here; I simply commend it to a searching investigation, in which attention must be paid to the apparently meaningless differences in the use of particles and synonyms, of simple and compound words, and such-like seeming minutiæ. I can only repeat how frequently the thought occurred to me when I was comparing Scrivener’s edition with that of v. Gebhardt for my _Supplement_, that here was no alteration of a later scribe, and what then? The simplest explanation was that both readings were due to the author himself, who on the one occasion purposely set down the one reading and on the other the other.