Tim Finney on Analysis of Textual Variation

Tim Finney has emailed to say that he has finished the fifth chapter of his electronically published book entitled Analysis of Textual Variation. The book, he claims, is a step in the direction of creating a method whereby a quantitative assessment of the question of the reliability of the scribal copying process of the Bible could be made. (Update: Tim writes: "

Unfortunately, the part of the book which is to address such things remains in my head!") It also contains extensive discussions of various statistical and analytical models applied to the textual criticism of the Bible (with special attention to the Epistle to the Hebrews).

Here are the chapter headings:

1. Introduction
2. Encoding textual variation
3. Dissimilarity
4. Exploratory multivariate analysis
5. A survey of textual space
(Up-date: I have removed the links after advice from Tim, since his regular up-dates can result in lost links or presumably to old links linking to old versions; so use the PURL link above)

5. A survey of textual space

I'm sure Tim would love some interaction on the book, and I wonder about the best way to facilitate that. We could certainly host a review session, or a chapter-by-chapter discussion. What do you think?

IGNTP blog on editing John

The International Greek New Testament Project has begun a blog on the editing of the Gospel of John.

A Black Day for Theology in Sweden Follow-up

After reading my blogpost A Black Day for Theology in Sweden, Colin Hansen of Christianity Today contacted me because he wanted to do a follow-up article on the situation of our seminary and of theological education in general in Sweden. I and our principal Pekka Mellergård sent him comments and answers to his questions (although I was in the middle of three conferences). Hansen's article, "Seminaries in Peril. Government evaluation threatens training of Swedish pastors" has now been published (27/7) and is available in the Christianity Today online.

See also other reactions to my original post here, here, here and here.

Review of Holmes' Apostolic Fathers

Timothy Sailors, who presented in the Working with Biblical Manuscripts unit at the SBL Int. in Rome recently has written a review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.07-08 of Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. Pp. xxv, 806. ISBN 9780801034688.

Conclusion:

Many of the critical observations in this review apply equally to other editions of the Apostolic Fathers (including the Loeb edition), though in some areas, Holmes offers marked improvements upon these. The serious student will still need to consult Lightfoot for fuller discussions and textual evidence.18 Moreover, more detailed introductions will have to be sought elsewhere: either in the Loeb edition, in the (recent or recently augmented) Sources chrétiennes volumes, or in commentaries on individual Apostolic Fathers (especially those in the Kommentar zu den Apostolischen Vätern series). Holmes has nevertheless met the need for a reliable, single-volume critical edition of the Greek texts of the Apostolic Fathers with English translations. His revision commends itself in many ways as the standard hand edition of this corpus.

Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mt Sinai

Wolfgang Schulze has announced (in a new comment to an old post that I accidently deleted and could not retrieve) that the full edition of the Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests from St Catherine's Monastery (Mt. Sinai) has now been published by Brepols:

Jost Gippert, Wolfgang Schulze, Zaza Aleksidze and Jean-Pierre Mahé, eds., The Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mount Sinai. Monumenta Palaeographica Medii Aevi/Series Ibero-Caucasica 2. 2 vols., XXIV+530 pp.; Turnhout: Brepols 2009.

Background from Schulze's homepage:

In 1996, the Georgian scientist Zaza Aleksidze – while doing documentary work in the St. Catherine monastery on Mt. Sinai – discovered two Georgian palimpsest manuscripts (conventionally labelled N/Sin-13 or M13 and N/Sin-55 or M55) that contain in their lower, heavily washed layer texts in Albanian script (see Aleksidze & Mahé 1997, 2002 for a detailed presentation of the manuscripts and a preliminary discussion of the language of the lower layers, http://armazi.uni-frankfurt.de/armaz3.htm for a presentation of the Sinai project). Meanwhile, the pioneering work of Aleksidze has been continued by Jost Gippert (Frankfurt) and Wolfgang Schulze (Munich). For the time being, nearly the totality of the readable folios of both manuscripts has been deciphered and interpreted. Aleksidze’s assumption that we have to deal with a rather old lectionary used in the Holy Service turned out to be correct. For copyright reasons, I cannot go into the details of the whole corpus (see the projected publication in Aleksidze & Gippert & Mahé & Schulze (forthcoming)). Hence, I have to restrict myself to more general remarks.

In sum, the two manuscripts consist of roughly 180 folios (recto/verso), in parts heavily distorted and only fragmentary. They show the Aluan text in horizontal lines crossed by the upper layer of Georgian text in vertical lines (see http://armazi.uni-frankfurt.de/sinai/albanica/m13.htm for images). The Aluan text is strongly washed out. Its characters have (in major parts) merged with the Georgian letters of the upper layer. The original Albanian text was written in two columns (22 to 23 lines per page) which 15 to 20 characters per line. In addition, smaller characters were used to add commentaries relevant for the use of the lectionary in the Holy Service. At the end of M13 n63, the scribe seems to have added a ‘personal note’.

The bulk of the lectionary is preserved in M13, whereas M55 is much smaller and more fragmentary in nature. It is not quite clear whether both manuscripts had been written at the same time. Perhaps, M13 is older stemming from the 5th or 6th century, whereas M55 has been written in the 8th century (see Aleksidze 2002). Nevertheless, it comes clear that both manuscripts originally represented a single ‘book’ which contained passages from the New Testament as well as at least one passage from the Old Testament.

Earlier, Schulze and Gippert have published an article, "Some Remarks on the Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests" in Iran and the Caucasus, Volume 11, Number 2, 2007 , pp. 201-211(11) in which they summarize their results of the analysis of the text (as far as they had examined it by then) and concludes, among other things, that the translators relied upon corresponding Old Armenian sources. At the same time, however, it can be shown that the texts in parts deviate from surviving Old Armenian Bible texts, so that Georgian, Greek, and Syriac sources must also be taken into account.

Also read our earlier report on this and related projects connected to the Georgian version and MSS here.

ITSEE Workshops: XML publishing, metadata, collaborative editing

The Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editions, Birmingham, is hosting three workshops from September 22 to September 25.

1. Tuesday 22 September: ‘SDPublisher: a new and different XML publishing system’. This workshop will present a hands-on introduction to SDPublisher, the new XML publishing system developed by people associated with ITSEE and Scholarly Digital Editions: see www.sd-editions.com/SDPublisher.
2. Wednesday 23 September: ‘The Virtual Manuscript Room: linking resources and scholarship on the web’. This workshop will introduce the concepts behind the Virtual Manuscript Room project, and their implementation in the project, with particular emphasis on the use of metadata in the project to link together manuscript images, transcripts and resources related to them.
More details of both workshops can be found at http://itsee.bham.ac.uk/vmr/ITSEEworkshops.htm.

The third is a two day workshop, on the subject of "Tools for Collaborative Scholarly Editing over the Web", on Thursday 24 and Friday 25 September. The first day, "Actions: the State of the Art" on Thursday 24 September, will be open to all: in this, representatives of projects around the world will give presentations on what they have done, are doing, or plan to do, to develop tools for collaborative scholarly editing over the Web. The second day, 'Problems and Futures' on Friday 25 September, will be a series of discussions on, firstly, three key emerging problem areas (intellectual property/scholarly authority; sustainability and interoperability), and, secondly, on the possible shapes of scholarly editing in the world to come. Attendance at this second day will be by invitation only, with numbers restricted. More details of this workshop can be found at http://itsee.bham.ac.uk/vmr/toolscfp.htm.

Attendance at all workshops is open to all (with the restriction to invitees for the Friday 25 September). We have funding from the JISC (the Virtual Manuscript Room) and from the European Science Foundation (through the InterEdition project) and so are able to offer the workshops without charge. We are interested in hearing from anyone who would like to present work they are doing in relation to collaborative editing tools on Thursday 24th, and from anyone who believes that they have something to contribute to the discussions on Friday 25th.

Limited cheap accommodation is available close to the workshop venues (in the Orchard Learning Resource Centre, Selly Oak) for those who act quickly. We may be able to offer assistance with travel and accommodation, particularly to people giving presentations on Thursday 24th and taking part in the discussions on Friday 25th.

To register, or learn more, please contact either Peter Robinson (the workshops leader) or Richard Goode (the workshops organizer), details here. (via European Society for Textual Scholarship and the Society for Textual Scholarshi email)