124 Andrew Wilson and flagrant departures from well-established readings”93. Thus, we would expect higher percentages of scribal improvements in such a book, with such a low number of manuscripts being studied, and one, Sinaiticus, with such a character. A final comparison study that confirms the results of the present study (albeit in a different way), is Larry Hurtado’s landmark study into Codex Washingtonianus in Mark’s Gospel94. Hurtado entitled the sixth chapter, “Scribal Purposes of Codex W” and in it he investigated 134 selected singular readings in the manuscript involving “editorial activity”. Hurtado stated the thesis he was defending in this chapter as follows: “Codex W shows conscious care to “improve” the sense of the text of Mark”95. Hurtado’s thesis obviously appears to contradict this current study in relation to lectio difficilior potior. Hurtado divided the 134 singular readings into seven categories: harmonizations, vocabulary preferences, grammatical improvements, changes toward concise expres- sion, additions for clarification, significant sense changes and word order. Categories 2, 3, 4 and 5 deal with 91 instances of stylistic change, the seventh category deals with 11 word order changes, and the first category deals with 14 cases of harmonization. Space forbids us examining all of these 116 singular readings in detail. Our interest lies in the sixth category, which Hurtado entitled significant sense changes, and of which there were 18 cases. In most of these 18 cases, Hurtado suggested a possible reason to explain why the scribe of W might have found the text of Mark objection- able or prompted him to improve upon it. Our focus lies not in scribal motivations or possible intentions but in end-results: whether the scribe actually improved the text or not. As we shall see, Hurtado’s examples are mostly harder readings. For example: • In Mark 3,3 W tells us that Jesus commanded the man with the withered hand to stand εκ του μεσου, instead of εις το μεσον. However, the idea that the man was healed outside of the gathering/ synagogue (the reading of W) is not an improvement but a harder reading; it makes Jesus’ miracle less confrontational, providing less explanation for the reaction of the Pharisees to “destroy him” (3,6). The reading thus makes the story less logically coherent. 93 Ibid., 49. 94 L. W. Hurtado, Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark (SD 43; Grand Rapids, MI 1981) 95 Hurtado, Codex W, 68