The Textual Principles of Kane’s A Text.

Kane assumed in his A-text edition that only one of the variants at any one instance in the text could be authorial and that, as a rule, majority attestation of a variant (with due allowance for genetic affiliations of MSS.) constituted a prima facie indication of originality. But what Kane recognized as the characteristically scribal tendencies of substitution that allowed him to deduce the latter editorial principle occasionally led him to accept the minority reading. Furthermore, the unanimous reading of the B MSS. is often emended by K-D to the reading of Kane’s A Text as determined on such circular principles; and K-D established their B Text on a principle rejected by Kane in editing the A Text, i.e., the acceptability of evidence from one textual tradition to determine originality in another. Argues that Kane did not take into account the possibility that A MSS. may retain signs of authorial variation.