With regard to the title, Westcott and Hort say (_Introduction_, § 423, p. 321): “In prefixing the name ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ in the singular to the quaternion of ‘the Gospels,’ we have wished to supply the antecedent which alone gives an adequate sense to the preposition ΚΑΤΑ in the several titles. The idea, if not the name, of a collective ‘Gospel’ is implied throughout the well-known passage in the third book of Irenæus, who doubtless received it from earlier generations. It evidently preceded and produced the commoner usage by which the term Gospel denotes a single written representation of the one fundamental Gospel.” Compare Zahn, _GK._, i. 106 ff.; _Einleitung_, ii. 172 ff., 178 f.: “Of recent editors, Westcott and Hort have most faithfully interpreted the original idea by setting Εὐαγγέλιον on the fly-leaf, and κατὰ Μαθθαῖον, etc., over the separate books.” I have followed the same principle in the Table of Contents prefixed to the Stuttgart edition of the New Testament. Compare above, pp. 164, 165. On the spelling Μαθθαῖος, instead of Ματθαῖος, compare on the one hand the LXX. manuscripts, which exhibit the forms Μαθανιά, Μαθθανιά, Ματθανιά; Ματταθίας, Ματθαθίας, Μαθθαθίας (see Supplement I. to Hatch and Redpath’s _Concordance to the Septuagint_), and on the other, Blass’s _Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch_, § 3, 11 (English Trans. by Thackeray, 1898, p. 11). i. 16. There are three forms of the text here— (1) Ἰωσὴφ τὸν ἄνδρα Μαρίας, ἐξ ἧς ἐγεννήθη Ἰησοῦς ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός: all our Greek uncials and almost all the minuscules. (2) Ἰωσήφ, ᾧ μνηστευθεῖσα παρθένος Μαρία ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰησοῦν (τὸν λεγόμενον) Χριστόν: most of the Old Latin (a d g_{1} k q, with b c similarly), Curetonian Syriac, Armenian, and four minuscules—viz., 346, 556, 624, 626, with slight divergencies. (3) Ἰωσήφ· Ἰωσὴφ δὲ, ᾧ μνηστευθεῖσα (or μεμνηστευμένη?) ἦν παρθένος Μαρία, ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν: the form underlying the newly-discovered Sinai-Syriac.[265] These readings are discussed in the “Additional Note” to _Notes on Select Readings_, Westcott and Hort, _Introduction_ (1896), p. 140 ff. Reading (2) is dismissed on external grounds as displaying the characteristic features of the “Western” type of text. Reading (3) is regarded as independent of (2), neither confirming it nor confirmed by it. Taken therefore on its own merits, it must yield to the received text (1), as it is easier to suppose that (3) is derived from (1) than _vice versa_.