St. Paul[129] in his Epistle to Titus [ii. 5] directs that young women shall be 'keepers at home,' [Greek: oikourous]. So, (with five exceptions,) every known Codex[130], including the corrected [Symbol: Aleph] and D,--HKLP; besides 17, 37, 47. So also Clemens Alex.[131] (A.D. 180),--Theodore of Mopsuestia[132],--Basil[133],--Chrysostom[134]-- Theodoret[135],--Damascene[136]. So again the Old Latin (_domum custodientes_[137]),--the Vulgate (_domus curam habentes_[138]),--and Jerome (_habentes domus diligentiam_[139]): and so the Peshitto and the Harkleian versions,--besides the Bohairic. There evidently can be no doubt whatever about such a reading so supported. To be [Greek: oikouros] was held to be a woman's chiefest praise[140]: [Greek: kalliston ergon gyne oikouros], writes Clemens Alex.[141]; assigning to the wife [Greek: oikouria] as her proper province[142]. On the contrary, 'gadding about from house to house' is what the Apostle, writing to Timothy[143], expressly condemns. But of course the decisive consideration is not the support derived from internal evidence; but the plain fact that antiquity, variety, respectability, numbers, continuity of attestation, are all in favour of the Traditional reading. Notwithstanding this, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, because they find [Greek: oikourgous] in [Symbol: Aleph]*ACD*F-G, are for thrusting that 'barbarous and scarcely intelligible' word, if it be not even a non-existent[144], into Titus ii. 5. The Revised Version in consequence exhibits 'workers at home'--which Dr. Field may well call an 'unnecessary and most tasteless innovation.' But it is insufficiently attested as well, besides being a plain perversion of the Apostle's teaching. [And the error must have arisen from carelessness and ignorance, probably in the West where Greek was not properly understood.] So again, in the cry of the demoniacs, [Greek: ti hemin kai soi, Iesou, huie tou Theou]; (St. Matt. viii. 29) the name [Greek: Iesou] is omitted by B[Symbol: Aleph]. The reason is plain the instant an ancient MS. is inspected:--[Greek: KAISOI_IU_UIETOU_THU_]:--the recurrence of the same letters caused too great a strain to scribes, and the omission of two of them was the result of ordinary human infirmity. Indeed, to this same source are to be attributed an extraordinary number of so-called 'various readings'; but which in reality, as has already been shewn, are nothing else but a collection of mistakes,--the surviving tokens that anciently, as now, copying clerks left out words; whether misled by the fatal proximity of a like ending, or by the speedy recurrence of the like letters, or by some other phenomenon with which most men's acquaintance with books have long since made them familiar. FOOTNOTES: [96] St. Mark xi. 4. See Revision Revised, pp. 57-58. [97] St. Mark vii. 19, [Greek: katharizon] for [Greek: katharizon]. See below, pp. 61-3. [98] St. Luke ii. 14. [99] St. Luke xxiii. 42.