The Caesarean Text of the Gospel of Mark

The discussion of the Caesarean text, like so much in the textual criticism of the gospels, really begins with Griesbach, who in 1811 pointed out that Origen used different texts in his commentaries on Matthew and on John. About 1896 either Hort or, more probably, Sanday made the further statement that Codex I resembled the text of Origen. This led to the editing of Codex I and its allies and their identification as part of a larger family, which included Codices 565, 28, 700, and the Ferrar group. The editor was very doubtful whether the connection with Origen and Caesarea could be maintained, and he did not discuss the point in that volume. He had mentioned it in the first edition of his “Text of the New Testament,” but dropped it in later ones, though it has now been restored, thanks to Streeter's investigations, in a new edition. The reason for his missing the facts was that he was secretly enamored of a suggestion, which he could not prove and therefore did not make, to the effect that the text of family I was a degenerate representative of the Greek which underlies the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe.