Egypt, and that there is no evidence preserved from any early Antiochian Father—thus with regard to Patristic evidence there is a gap just where one would expect to find the Byzantine text.24 But this only meets an argument from silence with the same, and this line of reasoning cannot bear the weight placed upon it.25 Thus Pickering’s approach becomes the critical one. He asserts two points: many Majority readings are early, and early Fathers do support the Majority text. For this second point he