Monday, October 06, 2008

Vetus Latina Iohannes Electronic Edition v. 1.3

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Hugh Houghton of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE)in Birmingham informs me that a new version (1.3) of the Vetus Latina Iohannes Electronic Edition has been uploaded. It includes four new witnesses, 22B, 32, 33 and 48. There have been a number of corrections in the transcriptions. Moreover, the manuscript description page now includes the dates of all the witnesses. Feedback is welcome.

Hugh has underlined that the electronic edition is still work in progress. There has been constant proofreading for the last year, and this phase is planned to be completed sometime in next year. ITSEE has recently appointed a new Research Fellow, and the institute is making very good progress towards a print edition.

I have been using the electronic edition during the last couple of days for a paper on the Periocope of the Adulteress for the upcoming SBL (on what Jesus wrote on the ground). One conclusion is that the PA is attested by most OL witnesses (extant in this part of John). I can only recommend this valuable resource.

5 comments

  1. Hello Tommy,

    I have looked at the Old Latin evidence, too, recently, to include the evidence in more detail into the online commentary.

    Here's what I found:

    An analysis of the variants (not counting d) shows, that the Old Latin text is nearest to the (M, Gamma, f1, 892) group, thus representing a text very close to NA. This is quite remarkable, first, because all Old Latins basically represent the same text type (including e), and second, because the Old Latin otherwise is not a very reliable witness.
    The Old Latin actually is then (by far) the oldest witness to this type of text!
    If one is looking at the evidence a little bit closer, one can distinguish 3 groups:
    e
    c, ff2
    j, l, r1, Vulgate

    The three groups seem to be independent translations of an M/021-type text, with c, ff2 showing a few deviations (additions).
    This is also an interesting result, because it shows that the Old Latin cannot be traced back to one Latin original.
    It is interesting that we see here the "European" Old Latin split into two traditions. This has also been found by Philip Burton ("The Old Latin Gospels: A Study of their Texts and Language", Oxford 2000) for the rest of the Gospel of John. The Synoptic Gospels seem to go back to only one tradition.
    The groups Burton suggest are slightly different though for the rest of John:
    (j, r1, e) and (c, ff2, l, vg). l and vg are in different groups.

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  2. Oh, I forgot:
    I am speaking about the PA above!

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  3. "The Old Latin actually is then (by far) the oldest witness to this type of text!"

    Are any of these Old Latin mss conclusively dated earlier than d?

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  4. This appears to be a fine resource to the itala.

    This will bring the lond citations of assembled witnesses in Tischendorf to light most readily as well as NA27.

    Wow,

    Malcolm

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  5. "Are any of these Old Latin mss conclusively dated earlier than d?"

    Not much.
    But is this an important question?
    What I wanted to say is that the text that is considered by NA to be nearest to the original is supported by the Old Latin as its oldest witness.

    For me d is a singularity, which is difficult to judge. Basically it also belongs to the Old Latin, but it is a special case.

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