utograph and the initial text, considerable changes may have taken place which may not have left a single trace in the surviving textual tradition. Even if this is not the case, differences between the original and the initial text must be taken into account.
On the other hand, the initial text is not simply a reconstruction on the basis of surviving variants, which best explains the emergence of the variants and thus represents the archetype of the tradition. Instead, several hypotheses are possible about the beginnings of the tradition. The simplest working hypothesis must be that there are no differences between the original and the initial text (except for inevitable scribal slips). In that case, the reconstruction of the initial text is not only determined by the subsequent tradition (which text form could have been derived from which?), but also by the author's intentions as they come to light in the totality of what we know about him (is a variant more likely to come from the pen of the author or from a copyist?). Another possible hypothesis might involve an editor in-between the author and the initial text, who might possibly have merged several writings of an author into one. Or there may have been more than one initial text, possibly even going back to more than one autograph if, for example, the author issued several versions of his work.
 In the case of the Letter to the Hebrews, we have a text that does not show any signs of major textual dislocation as far as the extant witnesses are concerned. It seems to descend from a single exemplar, a copy of which was incorporated into a collection of Paul's letters. If the Letter to the Hebrews was sent to Rome then broadcast from there as part of a collection, the initial copy could have been made directly from the original. What is more, the collection could have been in codex form from the outset. Zuntz dates publication of the collection around the end of the first century. By this time, according to Bagnall, the codex form was already being used for books in Rome:
Many authors have in fact noticed that the case for the Roman origin of the codex is strong, even decisive. Our first good evidence of its use for books (as opposed to private notes and memoranda, written on wooden tablets strung together) comes from first-century Rome.
 Returning to the analogy of a firework, the initial text rocketing up and about to explode is, then, a copy of Hebrews carried in a collection of Paul's letters, perhaps launched from Rome around the end of the first century in codex form. If the picture we now see represents primordial copies dispersed to early Christian population centres at that time, how should we seek to recover the initial text? It may be that the best approach is to remain agnostic concerning where the initial text came from and to distill the text represented by each cluster then use these “hyparchetypes” to approach the initial text. Alternatively, we could choose one place as the most likely initial distribution centre for the collection of Paul's letters then seek the initial text from those witnesses which preserve its local text. If that place was Rome then the MDS maps taken together with a geographical interpretation hint that the texts of P46 and B are the closest surviving relatives of the initial text of Hebrews.
 Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger, eds, The Greek New Testament, (4th rev. ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993).
 Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger, eds, Novum Testamentum Graece (27th rev. ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993).
 These represent a summary of the readings. One manuscript (P46) has αὐτοῦ instead of ἑαυτοῦ for the second reading while some witnesses have αὑτοῦ or αὐτοῦ instead of ἑαυτοῦ for the third.
 A comparison on the basis of order might be meaningful for a data matrix constructed from the UBS4 apparatus because the editors always place their preferred reading first.
 Provided that cert