Conversely, when the early faithfully copied manuscripts of the autographs arrived in regions distant from their sources (in which the Hebrew mind-set regarding Sacred Writ was greatly diminished and the Gentile frame of reference prevailed), far less constraint would have existed against altering their wording in such locales. This proposal is substantiated by that which prevails even today. The Rabbis continue to safeguard the wording of the Hebrew text; yet, from the days of Marcion and Origen through those of Westcott and Hort unto the present, Gentile scholars - whether unregenerate or Christian conservative - continue to alter the wording of the New Testament, producing edition after edition.

Regardless of motives, over time "popular" alterations and regional as well as personal "corrections" would have been combined in a continual process of scribal corruption. As the various altered mss were cross-corrected with others possessing differing readings, an admixture of texts would have resulted. Thus, in the first few centuries some localities experienced uncontrolled non-church types of copies which were widely distributed throughout those areas. These circumstances would have been further complicated due to ever increasing persecution to which the Church was subjected. This persecution would have effectively served as a barrier, hindering movement from region to region thereby cutting off vital controlling and correcting factors.

The reversal of such an uncontrolled process could only have been due to the existence of a protected original autographic text. Otherwise the result would have been that of a patch-work quilt of variant readings created by the individualistic scribes with no prevailing "majority" text ever coming to the fore. Such in fact was the very situation when Jerome was commissioned to attempt to make sense out of the Old Latin translation and produce a "standard text" in order to unify the Latin tradition.62 Apart from a similar Byzantine revision (of which there is no historical evidence), the dominance of this textform cannot be satisfactorily explained by those who reject the TR as representing the original readings. Only the persisting existence of the autographic text for comparison against these corrupted manuscripts would have ever allowed order to have come out of such chaos.

Thus the proposed theory is that, due to the events and circumstances in which the New Testament documents were copied over the time span of the first three centuries, the original Text rapidly deteriorated into the various uncontrolled popular texts which prevailed in differing localities that were removed from the general Greek speaking Syrian area. Over the normal process of copying and re-copying during which scribal "improvements", "corrections", blunders, and cross-correlation changes from other exemplars added to the corruption process, these "popular" texts eventually would have developed into the distinctive local text forms which centered around the metropolitan regions. These became the birthplaces of differing "texttypes" such as the Western, Alexandrian, and Caesarean (if such an entity actually exists) as well as others which may have been produced but have long since vanished due to a moist climate hostile to their preservation.

The foregoing would have dramatically changed with the advent of Constantine (288-337 A.D.). Upon his granting the Church official endorsement and acceptance, the predominantly "local" nature of the scattered churches became permanently altered. Approval from the throne precipitated greater freedom to the individual Christians resulting in wider travel with greater communication and intercourse between the churches from region to region all across the Empire.