xxvii. 16. Zahn (_Einl._, ii. 294) points out that Origen also found _Jesus_ given as the prenomen of Barabbas “in very ancient manuscripts,” but that in all probability Tatian did not have it, seeing that Bar-Bahlul cites it expressly as the reading of the “Distinct” (_i.e._, not harmonised) Gospel. Jerome says that in the Gospel of the Hebrews he was called by a name meaning “filius magistri eorum,” so that he must have been thinking not of _Bar-’abbam_ but of _Bar-rabbam_. xxvii. 49. See above, p. 227, and compare Burkitt, _Texts and Studies_, v. 5, p. xix. xxviii. 18. Compare Dan. vii. 14_b_ (LXX), καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῷ ἐξουσία, and also Dan. vii. 13 (= Matt. xxvi. 64), vii. 14 f. (= Matt. xxviii. 18). See the _English Revised Version with marginal References_ (Oxford, 1899). According to the subscriptions found in various minuscules, the Hebrew Matthew was translated into Greek “by John,” or “by James,” to which some add “the Brother of the Lord,” or “by Bartholomew, the celebrated Apostle (πανευφήμου), but as others say by John the Theologian, οἳ καὶ ἀληθῶς εἰρήκασιν.” See Tischendorf, and Zahn, _Einl._, ii. 267. Mark. As if to enforce the desire to which I have given expression above (p. 246), there has come into my hands Blass’s _Textkritische Bemerkungen zu Markus_. If the statements contained in the introductory remarks are correct, and scarcely any other view is possible in the circumstances described, then the textual criticism of the first and second Gospels is a hopeless matter. “An evangelist or teacher who obtained possession of the originally anonymous Commentarius could not feel bound to respect the external form, but considered himself justified in correcting it if it seemed to him to be defective, and even felt called to correct or complete its subject matter.” Blass reminds us that we have whole classes of documents, legends of saints _e.g._, which were treated with the utmost possible freedom by the copyists, who in fact were in this case editors and revisers. But he says that no one has treated Mark quite so drastically as all this. His summing up of the matter is, that the critic can often do no more than recognise and admit the early multiplicity, and that in such a case it were best to print the text in parallel columns. At the same time he is able to distinguish some of the variants as later falsifications or corruptions. Universally trustworthy authorities there are none; here one group is right, there another, and we no sooner give them credence than they mislead us with some fresh error.