tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post6271561075950150448..comments2024-03-28T19:21:17.654+00:00Comments on Evangelical Textual Criticism: Rob Turnbull on Arabic Manuscripts and New Testament Textual CriticismP.J. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04388225485348300613noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-3674041344583175742020-03-04T21:04:16.631+00:002020-03-04T21:04:16.631+00:00When I studied Christian Arabic under Arthur Voobu...When I studied Christian Arabic under Arthur Voobus, he gave me an Arabic Gospel text (I think from the Vatican) to collate and it had many similarities to the Old Syriac Gospel text.Dan McConaughyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05504818488078314405noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-73149954359424346782020-03-04T13:49:20.096+00:002020-03-04T13:49:20.096+00:00Thanks for this post, and thanks to Rob Turnbull f...Thanks for this post, and thanks to Rob Turnbull for his work.<br /><br />I have some questions related to what's presented.<br /><br />1) That graph indicates that out of the 2,000 manuscripts of the Gospels included in Text und Textwert there are only 4 papyri. Is that really the case? Why not include more? Is it because all the other Gospel papyri were considered too fragmentary and didn't contain enough of the test variants?<br /><br />2) Are there really 7 Gospels manuscripts from the 500s that have greater than 75% agreement with the majority in the test variants? I see that 6 of the 7 are even already included in the Aland's category V. But I seem to remember A and W being considered exceptional cases as manuscripts that old with Byzantine leanings. I assume that the green circle with ~75% majority text agreement in the 500s is W, and that A is the green circle in the 400s with ~85% agreement. But it's those 6 Category V manuscripts in the 500s that surprise me. What are those manuscripts? And are they being given older dates on this graph (based, it says, on the dates ascribed to them on the Liste) than what the same manuscripts used to be dated until recently?<br /><br />3) More to the point of what the OP is really about: For a study like this it's pretty vital to get into the details of how you know that the Arabic manuscripts in question really do attest to a given variant. A common problem with using versions for this is that readings in the versions that are often claimed to support a given Greek variant in fact can just as easily be explained by way of differences between the languages that result in the reading in the receptor language being a possible rendering of either one of two different Greek readings, and not a clear cut translation of one over the other, despite hasty claims that it is. P. J. Williams has shown good examples of this phenomenon with respect to Syriac versions here on this blog in the past. Of course there are some variants where it is more clear cut. But a prerequisite to presenting statistics like this is showing how the data treats these different cases.Eric Rowehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00559055709208918638noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17859011.post-47050438889207157772020-03-04T10:11:34.738+00:002020-03-04T10:11:34.738+00:00I wasn't present sadly. Did he get a chance to...I wasn't present sadly. Did he get a chance to discuss the Arabic copy of the Diatessaron? Or was that beyond the purview of his topic?Conrad Dixonnoreply@blogger.com