Scribal Habits in Greek New Testament Manuscripts 97 common vowel interchanges (αι-ε, ε-η, ει-η-υ-ι-οι, ο-ω), differences in accentuation, movable nu, nomina sacra abbreviations, other standard contractions and elisions, and the doubling and singling of consonants. Spelling variants in proper nouns (including the genealogy in Matthew 1 in its entirety) were also excluded. Nonsense readings and readings later corrected were included. The lists of readings can be found at www. TyndaleArchive.com/NTVariants. In the study, all four of the main transcriptional canons were investi- gated17: Prefer the Shorter, Harder, Harsher and Non-Harmonised Read- ings. Prefer the Shorter Reading? There were 2800 singular readings that added to or omitted from the text. Book Additions (%) Omissions (%) Total Matthew 253 (39) 393 (61) 646 Mark 174 (43) 233 (57) 407 Luke 140 (32) 287 (68) 427 John 110 (36) 191 (64) 301 Acts 147 (42) 204 (58) 351 Paul’s Letters 63 (40) 93 (60) 156 Catholic Letters 119 (41) 168 (59) 287 Revelation 82 (36) 143 (64) 225 Totals 1088 (39) 1712 (61) 2800 Among the singular additions and omissions, scribes omitted 1712 times and added 1088 times. Scribes tended to omit about 60% of the time and add about 40%. They did so in all of the NT chapters studied. This, of course, is the exact opposite of what the traditional canon sug- gests. When singular additions and omissions were analysed according to the type of manuscript in which they were found, the results showed that papyri, majuscules, minuscules and lectionaries all tend to omit rather than add. The table below shows the results for additions/omissions, comparing them with the earlier studies of Royse, Head and Hernández. Contrary to Royse’s expectation18, later manuscripts tend to omit just like earlier ones, although not as frequently. 17 See B.M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London – New York 1994) xxii-xxiii. 18 Royse, Scribal Habits, 2008, 22-31, 732-6