Recensional

While the variations for large communities, however, exhibit only a trifling range from recensional epoch to another; those for their several component groups or departments when compared with each other, or each with its correlative issue in different years, become both unsteady and wide […]

The Greek position of "the priests," chaps. xxvii. 16; xxviii. 5; is evidently recensional, as the two passages are so similar and stand so near to each other.

The recensional variation found in some tractates suggests the possibility that at an early stage of the – oral (?) – transmission there was no urtext, or that passages not stemming from the urtext entered into the text at this time.