Tue Aug 20 16:58:19 1996

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Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 15:49:56 -0700
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From: "Robert B. Waltz" 
Subject: Re: Manuscripts
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On Tue, 20 Aug 96 11:43:35, Vincent Broman  wrote:

>BillCombs@aol.com asked:
>>     ... Are the collations we have in the apparatus of UBS4 and NA27 not to
>> be trusted?
>
>NA27 et al are trustworthy enough as far as they go, but they are tightly
>constrained by space, by editor's theories, etc, to give one narrow viewport
>out onto the mass of data available.  Compare NA27/IGNPT/Swanson on a verse or
>two in Luke and you quickly find out how much selection and simplification has
>to be done to produce a "hand edition" of the NT.  It's a lot.
>
>I'm happy to use acccurate transcriptions and collations instead of
>manuscript images, as long as the transcription is reporting on the aspects
>of the text of interest to me.  You'd need a very detailed transcription
>to learn much about mis-spellings, nomina sacra, and the like.  From NA27
>you could only gain a rough impression of how closely different witnesses
>are related to each other and no clear idea at all of how reliable any
>one witness (even a "constant" witness) is in terms of faithful copying.

To give an example of VIncent Broman's point, let me take Philippians 4
as an example. I have done an edition that cites all meaningful (i.e.
non-rothpgraphic) variants in about two dozen manuscripts (checking a
dozen or so others at certain points). In this chapter, NA27 cites
fourteen variants (plus 1 conjecture). My text cites *ninety-eight.*
And this, be it noted, is based on only a handful of manuscripts, and
in a book that has fewer variants than most, in a part of the corpus
that has relatively few variants.

But I personally have an even bigger complaint with NA27: The selection
of witnesses. If you look at the Greek "constant witnesses," three are
"Western" (D F G). Four are predominantly Byzantine (K L; also Psi and
1241, which are much more Byzantine than anything else). One stands
apart (1505). Other than that, *every witness cited in NA27 is what
Aland would call Alexandrian.*

Now I'm very glad to have most of those Alexandrian manuscripts; I'd hate
to be without a reference for 33, or 81, or 1175, or 1506, or 1881. (I
have access to a collation of 1739, so I don't need that.) But the NA27
list includes some really rather minor manuscripts (104, 1241, 2464)
and omits some *key* texts -- 330/451/2492, which form a unique manuscript
family; 1611, the best text of a Syriac-flavoured group; 2127, 1962, and
442, which *may* hold the key to unravelling the history of the late
Alexandrian text and Von Soden's I group (365 is close to 2127, but not
as good).

Obviously not all of us can afford all the volumes of the IGNTP (even if
they were available), or the equivalent work from the Munster Institute.
What is desperately needed is a volume about three times the size of
NA27, with perhaps half again as many manuscripts (of all sorts!),
twice as many readings -- and a *good* determination of which readings
are the true majority readings. (I once made a very big fool of myself
because NA26/27 list the wrong reading as the majority text in 2 Cor. 2:17).

Bob Waltz
waltzmn@skypoint.com

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