is description, a possibility which was again anticipated by Streeter when he said, “there is a certain amount of evidence that in the second century the text used at Ephesus was akin to that found in ... the European Latin.”  Whether the Old Latins go back to a particular geographical location or locations is unknown, and it may be that a study which applies multivariate analysis to the Latin manuscript tradition will throw light on the subject.
 Perhaps P46 preserves an Italian text? This manuscript is almost unique in placing the Letter to the Hebrews immediately after the Letter to the Romans. Trobisch explains the unusual placement by reference to the lengths of the writings in the Pauline corpus. However, if the Letter to the Hebrews was originally addressed to Rome and was subsequently broadcast from there, one can imagine that an Italian copyist would give Hebrews pride of place in a copy which eventually gave rise to descendants such as P46.
 The MDS maps are food for thought. A geographical interpretation, which is inherently two-dimensional, cannot be pressed too far given that two- or even three-dimensional representations account for less than half of the distance information contained in a typical apparatus. Furthermore, it may be that another factor such as organizational structure within the early church was more influential in determining which channels of textual transmission would predominate. Even so, these MDS maps provide a clue that the textual space occupied by New Testament witnesses has been shaped by geographical forces.
 A final question remains. Where would the “original” text be located? Epp warns that the term “original” is multivalent (i.e. has multiple meanings) when used in relation to the New Testament text:
The issue of “original text” is, for example, more complex than the issue of canon, because the former includes questions of both canon and authority. It is more complex than possessing Greek gospels when Jesus spoke primarily Aramaic, because the transmission of traditions in different languages and their translation from one to another are relevant factors in what is “original.” It is more complex than matters of oral tradition and form criticism, because “original text” encompasses aspects of the formation and transmission of pre-literary New Testament tradition. It is more complex than the Synoptic problem and other questions of compositional stages within and behind the New Testament, because such matters affect definitions of authorship, and of the origin and unity of writings. More directly, it is more complex than making a textual decision in a variation unit containing multiple readings when no “original” is readily discernible, because the issue is broader and richer than merely choosing a single “original” and even allows making no choice at all. Finally, what “original text” signifies is more complex than Hermann von Soden's, or Westcott-Hort's, or any other system of text types, or B. H. Streeter's theory of local texts, or various current text-critical methodologies, including the criteria for originality of readings, or “rigorous” versus “reasoned” eclecticisms, or claims of theological tendencies or idealogical alterations of readings and manuscripts, because the question of “original text” encompasses all of these and much more.
 In a more recent article, Epp advocates a “variant-conscious” edition of the Greek New Testament where the variants are “in your face” instead of hidden in the apparatus. Rather than this treasury of readings approach, the INTF still seeks to reconstruct a single entity called the “initial” text which Mink describes in the following terms:
The initial text is a hypothetical, reconstructed text, as it presumably existed, according to the hypothesis, before the beginning of its copying. In a hypothesis, which wants to establish the genealogical relationship between the witnesses, the initial text corresponds to a hypothetical witness A ('Ausgangstext'). The initial text is not identical with the original, the text of the author. Between the a