Scribal Habits in Greek New Testament Manuscripts 101 Griesbach’s canon fares better when we look at possible mechanical explanations for omissions (like homoeoteleuton and homoeoarcton, as seen in the last three rows of the table). These were found to be the pri- mary possible cause among longer omissions (i.e. three words or longer), although they were a minority among shorter omissions. Even so, there were 124 omissions that were not attributable to homoeoteleuton or ho- moeoarcton among the 323 longer singular omissions. Thus, for 38% of longer omissions, there was no mechanical explanation which presented itself. This result will not surprise those familiar with early MSS like