Jump To ECM Entry Online Commentary Introduction
GC: The earliest A-related witnesses are distributed between a and b. Variant a has a relatively large coherent strand of them. The attestations of both a and b show incoherencies, but the A-related part is considerably broader for a. The majority variant, c, deriving from a or b according to the TFD, has one small A-related strand and a large, coherent second strand. As d probably derives from a, 02 may be seen as an indirect witness to a.
TP: Variants c and d are probably shortened due to homoioteleuton. According to TP, a>b could be explained by dittography, and a<b by haplography of τι. It is an argument for a<b that Τίτος is the name more commonly used than Τίτιος in the NT and elsewhere.[1] The incoherencies in the b attestation, however, suggest that the longer form occasionally arose from a. In this situation, the ECM committee adopted the reading with the stronger A-related core.
[1] Metzger (410), Barrett (868), Pervo (453), follow this argument, justifying or accepting the decision for variant b in NA26 and GNT3. Ropes (173) opts for the single form Ἰούστου, explaining b as a form of dittography of ΤΙΙΟΥ in the original ΟΝΟΜΑΤΙΙΟΥΣΤΟΥ and a as normalization of the rare name in b. This is, however, just a possibility with small likelihood given the incoherent attestation of c and d.