The established Septuagintal rendering of Isa. xxix. 13 in the Apostolic age proves to have been this,--[Greek: Engizei moi ho laos outos tois cheilesin auton timosi me]: the words [Greek: en to stomati auton, kai en] being omitted. This is certain. Justin Martyr[287] and Cyril of Alexandria in two places[288] so quote the passage. Procopius Gazaeus in his Commentary on Origen's Hexapla of Isaiah says expressly that the six words in question were introduced into the text of the Septuagint by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. Accordingly they are often observed to be absent from MSS.[289] They are not found, for example, in the Codex Alexandrinus. But the asyndeton resulting from the suppression of these words was felt to be intolerable. In fact, without a colon point between [Greek: outos] and [Greek: tois], the result is without meaning. When once the complementary words have been withdrawn, [Greek: engizei moi] at the beginning of the sentence is worse than superfluous. It fatally encumbers the sense. To drop those two words, after the example of the parallel place in St. Mark's Gospel, became thus an obvious proceeding. Accordingly the author of the (so-called) second Epistle of Clemens Romanus (Sec. 3), professing to quote the place in the prophet Isaiah, exhibits it thus,--[Greek: Ho laos outos tois cheilesi me tima]. Clemens Alexandrinus certainly does the same thing on at least two occasions[290]. So does Chrysostom[291]. So does Theodoret[292]. Two facts have thus emerged, which entirely change the aspect of the problem: the first, (_a_) That the words [Greek: en to stomati auton, kai en] were anciently absent from the Septuagintal rendering of Isaiah xxix. 13: the second, (_b_) that the place of Isaiah was freely quoted by the ancients without the initial words [Greek: engizei moi]. And after this discovery will any one be so perverse as to deny that on the contrary it must needs be Codexes B and [Symbol: Aleph], and not the great bulk of the MSS., which exhibit a text corrupted by the influence of the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah xxix. 13? The precise extent to which the assimilating influence of the parallel place in St. Mark's Gospel has been felt by the copyists, I presume not to determine. The essential point is that the omission from St. Matthew xv. 8 of the words [Greek: To stomati auton, kai], is certainly due in the first instance to the ascertained Septuagint omission of those very words in Isaiah xxix. 13. But that the text of St. Mark vii. 6 has exercised an assimilating influence on the quotation from Isaiah is demonstrable. For there can be no doubt that Isaiah's phrase (retained by St. Matthew) is [Greek: ho laos outos],--St. Mark's [Greek: outos ho laos]. And yet, when Clemens Romanus quotes Isaiah, he begins--[Greek: outos ho laos][293]; and so twice does Theodoret[294].