[Glosses, or _scholia_, or comments, or interpretations, are of various kinds, but are generally confined to Additions or Substitutions, since of course we do not omit in order to explain, and transposition of words already placed in lucid order, such as the sacred Text may be reasonably supposed to have observed, would confuse rather than illustrate the meaning. A clause, added in Hebrew fashion[354], which may perhaps appear to modern taste to be hardly wanted, must not therefore be taken to be a gloss.] Sometimes a 'various reading' is nothing else but a gratuitous gloss;--the unauthorized substitution of a common for an uncommon word. This phenomenon is of frequent occurrence, but only in Codexes of a remarkable type like B[Symbol: Aleph]CD. A few instances follow:-- 1. The disciples on a certain occasion (St. Matt. xiii. 36), requested our Lord to 'explain' to them ([Greek: PHRASON hemin], 'they said') the parable of the tares. So every known copy, except two: so, all the Fathers who quote the place,--viz. Origen, five times[355],-- Basil[356],--J. Damascene[357]. And so _all_ the Versions[358]. But because B-[Symbol: Aleph], instead of [Greek: phrason], exhibit [Greek: DIASAPHESON] ('make clear to us'),--which is also _once_ the reading of Origen[359], who was but too well acquainted with Codexes of the same depraved character as the archetype of B and [Symbol: Aleph],--Lachmann, Tregelles (not Tischendorf), Westcott and Hort, and the Revisers of 1881, assume that [Greek: diasapheson] (a palpable gloss) stood in the inspired autograph of the Evangelist. They therefore thrust out [Greek: phrason] and thrust in [Greek: diasapheson]. I am wholly unable to discern any connexion between the premisses of these critics and their conclusions[360]. 2. Take another instance. [Greek: Pygme],--the obscure expression ([Symbol: Delta] leaves it out) which St. Mark employs in vii. 3 to denote the strenuous frequency of the Pharisees' ceremonial washings,--is exchanged by Cod. [Symbol: Aleph], but by no other known copy of the Gospels, for [Greek: pykna], which last word is of course nothing else but a sorry gloss. Yet Tischendorf degrades [Greek: pygme] and promotes [Greek: pykna] to honour,--happily standing alone in his infatuation. Strange, that the most industrious of modern accumulators of evidence should not have been aware that by such extravagances he marred his pretension to critical discernment! Origen and Epiphanius--the only Fathers who quote the place--both read [Greek: pygme]. It ought to be universally admitted that it is a mere waste of time that we should argue out a point like this[361]. Sec. 2.