Sun Nov 26 22:39:08 1995

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Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 11:36:21 +0800 (WST)
From: Timothy John Finney 
To: Jeff Kloha 
Cc: TC-LIST@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Re: Text und Textwert series
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On Tue, 21 Nov 1995, Jeff Kloha wrote:
 
> I am beginning work on a STM thesis on the text of James. Fresh
> collations are being made of the papyri and available uncials.
> However, I need a selection of representative minuscules to consult.
> The first volumes of the _Text und Textwert_ series analyze the
> Catholic Epistles. My question is: While the volumes present
> exhaustive studies of relationships among manuscripts in the "test
> passages", has any work been published using this data to determine
> exactly which manuscripts fall into special groupings? Have the Alands
> or their Institut produced any classifications of manuscripts, or have
> they simply supplied the data and left individuals to use their own
> theories to group manuscripts (e.g., Colwell's multiple readings or
> the Profile Method)? 

James happens to be the book which the Muenster Institut is using as a
test case for its proposed Major Critical Edition. Herr Minke has done a
lot of computer based work to isolate important MSS, such as those you
wish to see. He had a paper (written in German) published in New Testament
Studies in 1993 or 1994 which sets out the basics of his approach. 
Perhaps a letter to the Institut Director, Professorin Barbara Aland,
asking precisely these questions would be in order. 

> 
> The paper on "Categories and Text Types" by B. Aland published in the
> second ed. of _Text of the New Testament_ simply explains their
> classification of mss. into "categories" I, II, III, IV, and V. Is
> that as precise as one can get using the "test passages", or can
> actual "families" be determined using the _Text und Textwert_ data?

No doubt the Texte und Textwort (did I spell that right?) data is the 
best we have so far to work out family relationships. It has been said that 
there is a risk of circular reasoning in the current I, II, III, ... 
classification system. All that can really be said from the data is that 
one MS is like another one. That is, high percentage agreement indicates 
relatedness of MSS. Whether one family is more significant than another 
is a question which must be answered by looking at archtypes of the 
various families once the family boundaries have been delineated.

There is a new technique for reconstructing MS relationships called
cladistic analysis. The new version of Peter Robinson's Collate program is
promised to incorporate a facility to carry out this analysis. Whether
cladistic analysis of NT MS relationships is meaningful remains to be 
seen. The problem is that we have only a small sample of the original
population in the extant MSS. Also, all of the MSS to be analysed must be
transcribed to use the Collate program (a most worthwhile exercise, in my
opinion). 

Tim Finney
Murdoch University
Western Australia

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