Sat Oct 26 19:10:31 1996

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Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 17:54:51 -0700
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
From: "Robert B. Waltz" 
Subject: Re: a presentation of Amphoux's work
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On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Maurice Robinson  wrote:

[ concerning Vaganay-Amphoux: ]

>We have this volume in our library.  I personally did not recommend it to
>students because it does not seem to provide a reasonably balanced view of
>the evidence in the manner of Metzger.

I own it, and in some ways I think it valuable (e.g. it gives occasional
information about the work of Duplacy, which appears to be very solid).
I don't think its pro-"Western" bias is all that much stronger than
Metzger's pro-Alexandrian bias.

But I agree that it is not a good manual of textual criticism. There
is too little background information (about manuscripts and editions).
There is little discussion of how to engage in textual criticism (e.g.
no real list of criteria, and not enough examples). And it is not
well organized.

I think there really is an urgent need for a better manual of textual
criticism. Relatively speaking, Metzger is well-written (i.e. it's
readable), but it really does not give enough information, and --
again -- the organization is lacking. I have, I believe, *eight*
introductions to textual criticism (Aland&Aland, Black, Greenlee,
Hammond, Lake, Metzger, Vaganay&Amphoux, Westcott&Hort), plus
books which deal with this in part but not in whole (Comfort, Finegan,
Pickering, and the Text/Canon volumes of Gregory and Souter), and
I don't think any of them present the whole picture. Indeed, all
of them combined leave something to be desired.

On another topic, in another post:

>There still is the terminology matter which needs correction, to avoid
>confusion: As I noted, <is the "rough draft" of the Byzantine Textform ("original Byzantine
>text"), while H/F is the "rough draft" of the "majority text".>>

Let me give my logic, and then see what comes in response. :-)

This is, honestly, a hard problem for me, because it comes back to
this whole question of stemmatics. And, of course, the only place
H&F really use stemmatics is the Apocalypse. But I cannot judge
their work there, because I have *never* worked in the Apocalypse.
(To date, I've done about 45% of my work in Paul, 35% in the
Catholics, about 18% in the Gospels, and 2% in Acts.)

Still, I think that stemmatics have a place in constructing the
*original* form of the Byzantine text.

On the other hand, I see Maurice's point.

Let's take a hypothetical example in the Gospels. (It has to be
hypothetical, because I can't point to such a reading.) Suppose
that the Byzantine text splits, with A, family Pi, the purple
uncials, and the Lambda and M groups supporting one reading (call
it "X"), while Kx and Kr have another (call it "Y"). The support
for Y is greater -- probably over 60% of the total. "X," however,
has the support of most of the earliest Byzantine witnesses, and
of a large number of groups. Assume that both are equal on all
other grounds (if such is possible).

Pickering would say that " was the original Byzantine reading.
Hodges & Farstad probably would say the same.
Robinson would say ?
I would say that X is the original Byzantine reading.

So, by my standards, the edition that prints X will be the
"Byzantine" reading; the other will be the "Majority" edition.
And, I repeat, both are useful (a ms. like C will have been
influenced by the *earliest* form of the Byzantine text;
a late minuscule like 614 more probably by the majority text).
But they may be different.

Bob Waltz
waltzmn@skypoint.com

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