tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post2904980580283832557..comments2024-03-17T17:46:24.354+00:00Comments on Evangelical Textual Criticism: SBL Tartu, Working With Biblical Manuscripts (TC) 2P.J. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04388225485348300613noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-9763274100106201682010-08-26T00:36:35.887+01:002010-08-26T00:36:35.887+01:00"Conjectural Emendation" you have to be ..."Conjectural Emendation" you have to be kidding?? This is the first rule of Textual Criticism. Namely "Never to invent new readings"-Burgon <br /><br />We cannot fix upon the Text of Holy Writ by mere speculation and dreams?? Unless of course Revelation 22:18-19 fits your fancy. <br />If there is no mss. evidence there is no reading.Period.Helvidiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06715554252217877912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-72663804476895937152010-08-07T17:29:57.549+01:002010-08-07T17:29:57.549+01:00Does anyone have a number for Greek mss of the OT?...Does anyone have a number for Greek mss of the OT?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-58222397446726136642010-08-07T03:53:04.806+01:002010-08-07T03:53:04.806+01:00Thank you for that answer. Sorry for asking but I&...Thank you for that answer. Sorry for asking but I'm a novice at TC but very interested in learning.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-63832234420926342642010-08-06T23:53:01.865+01:002010-08-06T23:53:01.865+01:00Anonymous,
I presume the answer to that is found ...Anonymous,<br /><br />I presume the answer to that is found in the paragraph above what you quoted, where it says in parentheses, "not necessarily Biblical."<br /><br />The number ~5,750 is just New Testament mss.Eric Rowehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00559055709208918638noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-42817758233564213422010-08-06T23:34:31.807+01:002010-08-06T23:34:31.807+01:00On this: The total of extant Byz. MSS from 4th to ...On this: The total of extant Byz. MSS from 4th to end of 19th cent. is estimated to be 60.000 codices. For example, Athos alone holds 16.000 codices.<br /><br />How does this hold when we are also told that the total number of Greek MSS is around 5750?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-51633626776732947322010-08-06T10:20:07.607+01:002010-08-06T10:20:07.607+01:00And trying to finish a book chapter.And trying to finish a book chapter.Peter M. Headhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03379103292621457026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-40677354978688827772010-08-06T10:19:23.037+01:002010-08-06T10:19:23.037+01:00Besides, he is still waiting to hear Tommy's a...Besides, he is still waiting to hear Tommy's argument about Mark 1.1.Peter M. Headhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03379103292621457026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-23769616965688412142010-08-06T10:18:34.450+01:002010-08-06T10:18:34.450+01:00Peter Head is way too busy to indulge in such thin...Peter Head is way too busy to indulge in such things right now.Peter M. Headhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03379103292621457026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-29995574043272916962010-08-05T19:45:11.040+01:002010-08-05T19:45:11.040+01:00Speaking of Peter Head, if we can just put through...Speaking of Peter Head, if we can just put through another 7 or 8 comments, I'm sure he could manage to get us the rest of the way to 50.Daniel Bucknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-82347864335943278962010-08-04T21:54:16.411+01:002010-08-04T21:54:16.411+01:00Don't worry about multiple comments, Peter Hea...Don't worry about multiple comments, Peter Head does that all the time (but without filling the space).Tommy Wassermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10674769923361035721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-9823865789521905682010-08-04T21:53:29.112+01:002010-08-04T21:53:29.112+01:00Thanks Ryan for your triple post of comments!Thanks Ryan for your triple post of comments!Tommy Wassermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10674769923361035721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-901109125496109672010-08-04T21:52:36.432+01:002010-08-04T21:52:36.432+01:00Ryan: "That is, it may be the most difficult ...Ryan: "That is, it may be the most difficult reading and in other respects also commendable, but if it cannot explain the rise of the others and thereby offer a reasonable genealogical reconstruction with itself as the archetype, then I don't see how we can be satisfied with it."<br /><br />Ryan, I don't know how you interpreted my loose notes but in fact I agree with what you write here. Do you see that in my text I distinguish between lectio difficilior and a nonsense reading. We cannot be satisfied with a too difficult reading, but if it is just difficult and it explains the origin of the other readings, then we should be careful to look for a "smoother" solution. I point out that in practice there is sometimes only a thin line between a lectio difficilior and a nonsense reading (note the example in Luke 2:14 which was first regarded as too difficult, but then could be explained as a hebraism, and therefore it is the preferred reading). There you have it.<br /><br />I am not against conjectures in theory, but I still regard them as the "last resort" – a language which Jan Krans expressed some dissatisfaction with.Tommy Wassermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10674769923361035721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-56727121592434626892010-08-04T19:47:36.026+01:002010-08-04T19:47:36.026+01:00wow. I wrote all that, and when the software told...wow. I wrote all that, and when the software told me it was too large to post, rather than consider whether perhaps I might have been a little longwinded, I simply broke it up into multiple posts! I don't know whether to be proud of that or ashamed...<br /><br />ah, well, I consider it a valuable service to all those people having trouble falling asleep.Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10915737233077999632noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-5447151473474980472010-08-04T19:45:40.750+01:002010-08-04T19:45:40.750+01:00Now, you said one other thing which reminded me of...Now, you said one other thing which reminded me of something:<br /><br />"Finally I posed another question to Jan which is just interesting to think about: ”Whose error is it?” If we assume hypothetically that the archetype of the tradition is equal to the autograph, does this archetype have to be inerrant? Can, for example, Paul or his amanuensis have made a grammatical mistake? (that could result in a nonsense reading.) Would the conjecture in that case be what the author intended to write ... it is an interesting question."<br /><br />Westcott & Hort make reference to this as well, and I like to quote them on the issue. <br /><br />"There is much literature, ancient no less than modern, in which it is needful to remember that authors are not always grammatical, or clear, or consistent, or felicitous; so that no seldom an ordinary reader finds it easy to replace a feeble or half-appropriate word or phrase by an effective substitute; and thus the best words to express an author’s meaning need not in all cases be those which he actually employed."<br /><br />In other words, we can't always rush to propose a conjecture in every place that we find the text deficient, because sometimes the author themselves could have simply composed a deficient text. That's a great caution, and I agree with you that it should be allowed to decelerate conjectural proposals.<br /><br />At the same time, Westcott & Hort also point out that we can't just accept a text simply because it makes good sense, because a scribal reading, if it were to gain prominence in the ms tradition, would naturally have to appear sensible:<br /><br />"It follows that, with the exception of pure blunders, readings originating with scribes must always at the time have combined the appearance of improvement with the absence of its reality. If they had not been plausible, they would not have existed: yet their excellence must have been either superficial or partial, and the balance of inward and essential excellence must lie against them."<br /><br />Between those two poles is, I think, a middle ground on which a healthy practice of new testament conjectural emendation could and should thrive.Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10915737233077999632noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-12102738369041031522010-08-04T19:44:24.118+01:002010-08-04T19:44:24.118+01:00Second, I'm not sure your position fully recko...Second, I'm not sure your position fully reckons with manuscript loss. Sure, we have lots of surviving mss compared to other classical fields, but that doesn't change the fact that we likely have only a fraction of all the mss ever produced. In other words, we don't have all the evidence; we have a truncated data base. <br /><br />Ockham's razor may favour an extant reading as being a simpler explanation then some hypothesis that a differing original reading was subsequently lost, but ockhams razor speaks only in probabilities, and from an all-things-being-equal perspective at that. In other words, all things being equal, an elaborate hypothesis about readings being lost is not the most probable. But all things are not equal, because the mss have in fact already been lost. We do not have to deal in terms of probability in this respect, because the notion of ms loss is already a certainty. However improbable it may have been a priori, ms loss is now an a posteriori fact. <br /><br />(This reminds me of the awesome TV commercial for some accounting firm that shows two accountants walking down the street discussing the percentage probability of various mundane things happening, such as a 33% chance that the blue sedan will run the red light, a 15% chance that the taxi will turn right, etc. Then a man goes by wearing a vintage flying suit riding a galloping ostrich, and the two shocked accountants look at each other and the one says "what are the odds of that?!?" and the other says "100%....now!")<br /><br />In the same way, ms loss is a reality now, and so I think we need do reckon with the consequences of that. <br /><br />I can't think of any other field of study wherein we could loose a large part, perhaps even a majority, of the evidence but still conclude that all the evidence we need must be extant in the surviving minority. If the police took 10 bags of fingerprints at a murder scene but then lost 8 of them on the way back to the lab, would they conclude that they likely still have the killer's prints? <br /><br />It reminds me of a great analogy that Kurt Aland used (not strictly for this question though, but it works):<br /><br />"Like a child, who, having picked up stones or shells on the shore and brought them home, then seeks to determine from the collected specimens the kinds of stones or shells which can be found on that particular shore. This child might have had the good fortune to collect specimens of all the important kinds of stones or shells to be found on that shore, so that a thorough examination of this shore would merely add few and unimportant new kinds to those already known. It may be that, in NT textual research, we are in a position similar to that of this child. But who knows it with certainty and who can really take it for granted?"Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10915737233077999632noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-19638389945536020842010-08-04T19:44:12.658+01:002010-08-04T19:44:12.658+01:00That said, while I'm obviously biased, I respe...That said, while I'm obviously biased, I respectfully disagree with your line of thinking in this comment:<br /><br />In the time for questions I pointed out that, in my opinion, conjectures should remain the last resort, not because of ”theology” but mainly because of a general methodological consideration – Occam’s razor: If we have manuscript evidence and a valid textcritical principle that says we should prefer the difficult reading (lectio difficilior), then we should be very hesitant to look for other ”smoother” solutions. On the other hand, I agree that there is a thin line between what is a lectio difficilior and a nonsense reading."<br /><br />It seems to me that this position does not reckon with at least two issues. <br /><br />First, I'm not sure we can or should consider lectio difficillior exclusive of a genealogical perspective. That is, it may be the most difficult reading and in other respects also commendable, but if it cannot explain the rise of the others and thereby offer a reasonable genealogical reconstruction with itself as the archetype, then I don't see how we can be satisfied with it. Every tradition or line of descent needs a starting point, and if we don't appear to have one extant, then I think we must conjecture it.Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10915737233077999632noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-226267864183667402010-08-04T19:43:36.331+01:002010-08-04T19:43:36.331+01:00Tommy,
Great notes, as usual. Thanks for that. ...Tommy,<br /><br />Great notes, as usual. Thanks for that. I'm sure I can speak for a lot of people when I say that those of us who are unable to attend these meetings have really come to depend upon your summaries in order to keep up with things. It's almost as good as being there!Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10915737233077999632noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-77260816454312271342010-08-04T19:32:31.739+01:002010-08-04T19:32:31.739+01:00"In this case, however, there's no real B..."In this case, however, there's no real Byzantine reading for v.25c, since many (and many early ones, e.g. K L etc.) have νῦν instead of either δέ or γάρ."<br /><br />Thanks Stephen! Does this change the meaning by use of a temporal particle, or is nun just a synonym here?<br /><br />I would guess the latter, since νῦν is already in the immediate context.<br /><br />But further: there is a Byz and ς reading of δέ here, just as there is a WH and UBS reading of γάρ. Did you mean to say that δέ is not the Majority reading?Daniel Bucknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-42199074704731523042010-08-03T15:16:16.644+01:002010-08-03T15:16:16.644+01:00Tommy, I just noticed that you had asked: Bentley ...Tommy, I just noticed that you had asked: <i>Bentley suggested a conjecture, but then abandoned it [did he explain why?] </i><br /><br />I was probably overly concise in the presentation, but my feeling is that Bentley later dealt with the problem in the text that he perceived by adopting the reading of C and the Vulgate, which omitted "Hagar" (as his own later edition of Galatians shows). Without the "Hagar," the problems he identified go away.Stephen C. Carlsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18239379955876245197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-53986664652648968042010-08-03T02:33:39.108+01:002010-08-03T02:33:39.108+01:00Thanks, Daniel. I'll try to look out for such...Thanks, Daniel. I'll try to look out for such examples in the future.<br /><br />In this case, however, there's no real Byzantine reading for v.25c, since many (and many early ones, e.g. K L etc.) have νῦν instead of either δέ or γάρ. Furthermore, the variants occur in different, non-contiguous clauses, so it's hard to see how one variant affects the other.Stephen C. Carlsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18239379955876245197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-18499206265348893672010-08-02T18:55:19.738+01:002010-08-02T18:55:19.738+01:00Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
Hi Daniel, could you cla...Stephen C. Carlson wrote:<br />Hi Daniel, could you clarify how you see the δουλεύει δὲ μετὰ τῶν τέκνων reading relates to the Byzantine reading of v.25a?<br /><br />I don't have much to go on, but according to the UBS apparatus, there's a phenomenon at work that I've run across several other places, in which the UBS and Byz texts are transpositions of each other; there's no mention in the apparatus of how the mss themselves individually read at the 2 junctures. <br />UBS reads: <br />τὸ δὲ Ἁγὰρ Σινᾶ ... δουλεύει γὰρ μετὰ. <br />Byz reads:<br />Τὸ γάρ Ἅγαρ Σινᾶ ... δουλεύει δὲ μετά.Daniel Bucknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-72239853402662068272010-07-31T00:51:25.626+01:002010-07-31T00:51:25.626+01:00White Man and Eric, to tell you the truth, I actua...White Man and Eric, to tell you the truth, I actually revised the text very slightly after Eric made his remark, so, no, Eric you did not misread (and neither did White Man who read a new version). I am sorry. It feels awkward to always put "Update" when some detail is changed. I am glad we have careful readers, keep it up please!Tommy Wassermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10674769923361035721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-75332997291222953922010-07-30T23:15:35.878+01:002010-07-30T23:15:35.878+01:00Hi Daniel, could you clarify how you see the δουλε...Hi Daniel, could you clarify how you see the δουλεύει δὲ μετὰ τῶν τέκνων reading relates to the Byzantine reading of v.25a?Stephen C. Carlsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18239379955876245197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-79161637896366134212010-07-30T22:57:25.362+01:002010-07-30T22:57:25.362+01:00The external, transcriptional, and intrinsic consi...The external, transcriptional, and intrinsic considerations all suggest that v.25a should read "to gar Sina oros estin en th Arabia" (“for Sinai is a mountain in Arabia”<br /><br />Sounds like an interesting textual transmission theory. I wonder, though, how it accounts for the phenomenon whereby mss that read GAR AGAR SINA tend to read DE META farther down in the verse, rather than the other way around.Daniel Bucknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-14088584727770704602010-07-30T21:24:07.214+01:002010-07-30T21:24:07.214+01:00"Eric...he dated the mss to the 9th century, ..."Eric...he dated the mss to the 9th century, not the university itself."<br /><br />Ohhhh. I see you're right. My mistake.<br /><br />"Not to mention that 11th century + 9 centuries does not equal 21st century, which we are far enough into now to keep it straight from the last century."<br /><br />It's a moot point now, given my complete misreading of the original post. But with rounding off it would work. The website doesn't say exactly what year the U. of Timbuktu was founded, it only says the 11th century. But if the U. of Bologna is older, and was founded in A.D. 1088 (which is the date wikipedia gives), then the U. of Timbuktu would have to have been founded some time in the range of A.D. 1089-1100, or 910-920 years ago, roughly 9 centuries.Eric Rowehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00559055709208918638noreply@blogger.com