The textual question cannot here be discussed in detail. In favor of the Western text, with its omission of "things strangled," may be urged not only the general principle of textual criticism that the shorter reading is to be preferred to the longer, but also the special consideration that in this particular passage the shorter reading seems to account for the origin of the two additions; (1) the word translated "things strangled," and (2) the Golden Rule. The short text, supposing it to be the original, was ambiguous; it might be taken either as ceremonial ("blood" meaning the eating of blood) or as moral ("blood" meaning the shedding of blood or murder). Those copyists who took it as ceremonial, it is maintained, fixed the meaning by adding "things strangled" (because animals that were strangled had the blood still in them, so that the eating of them constituted a violation of the ceremonial Law); whereas those who took the Decree as moral fixed the meaning by adding the Golden Rule as the summation of the moral law.[53] [53] See Lake, _op. cit._, pp. 51-53. On the other side may be urged the connection which seems to exist between the omission of "things strangled" and the manifest gloss constituted by the Golden Rule. Documentary attestation of a short text, without the Golden Rule and without "things strangled," is exceedingly scanty if not non-existent--Kirsopp Lake can point only to the witness of Irenæus. The omission of "things strangled," therefore, may be only a part of a moralizing of the Decree (carried out also in the addition of the Golden Rule), which would be quite in accord with that habit of scribes by which they tended to ignore in the interests of moral commonplaces what was special and difficult in the text which they were copying. In reply, Lake insists that just at the time and at the place where the short text (without "things strangled") was prevalent, there was a food law for which the long text (with "things strangled") would have afforded welcome support. Why should the text have been modified just where in its original form it supported the prevailing practice of the Church? The conclusion is, Lake believes, that if the Western text prevailed, despite the welcome support which would have been afforded by the other text, it was because the Western text was correct.[54] [54] _Op. cit._, pp. 57-59.