Friday, February 08, 2008

'Rarely Cited' Early Versions by Number

4
I am trying to gather some statistics regarding the difference in NA27's use of the early versions. According to my electronic search, the 'rarely cited' versions produced the following number of hits from the apparatus criticus:

Ethiopic 4
Armenian 8
Georgian 2
OC Slavonic 0
Gothic 0

This is a steep difference, when one considers that the Coptic versions are cited 1057 times in the Gospel according to John (the above numbers are for the whole NT). I understand the reasoning behind this, but am still somewhat surprised at the contrast.

4 comments

  1. The Gothic is early enough that it should be regularly cited.

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  2. This is yet another idiosyncratic use of "early" - in this case in relation to versions of the NT.

    By what standards would we call an Old-Church-Slavonic version "early"?

    Ulrich Schmid

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  3. It may be that the problem is Coptic, Syriac, and Latin being cited too frequently as much as it is that these others being cited too infrequently.

    At least some of PJ's publications could suggest that.

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  4. Sorry, my tally on the Coptic was off by one unit in the hundreds place. : ( It now stands corrected at 1057.

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