Thu Oct 24 09:41:26 1996

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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 08:25:47 -0700
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
From: "Robert B. Waltz" 
Subject: Re: Textual Criticism Theories
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On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, jgvalentin@arcadis.be (Jean Valentin) wrote, in part:

>>Hear, hear! NA27 ignores the Armenian and Georgian, often fails to
>>cite the Coptic versions, and is inadequate for the Old Latin (for
>>many variations you can't tell which Latins read what).
>>
>And let's not speak about Arabic, Ethiopian, medieval Dutch, English,
>Catalan, Soghdian, Persian, medieval Hebrew, etc...

Most of those are so obscure that I can't even guess whether they are useful
or not...

>Though I work directly
>on the versions (and maybe not enough on the Greek, as my master C. Amphoux
>told me), I like the edition of Merk, who gives more versional and
>diatessaric evidence.

I agree that Merk's is in many ways the best of the hand editions... it
gives so many more variants than NA27! On the other hand, the apparatus
comes from von Soden, with mistakes of its own, and should be used
with caution. I think a wise student will have both Merk (for access
to the wide range of variants) and NA27 (for accuracy).

>Also, for the latin side, it gives the vulgate text
>with old latin variants. Though my exemplar dates from 1944, I do not feel
>that it has been superseeded.

Same comments as above. Merk is the best hand edition of the vulgate
available (far better than, e.g., the smaller Wordsworth-White, which
often cites only the variants of the Sixtine and Clementine editions,
and at its best cites fewer than a dozen Latin manuscripts). But again
there is a caution: Merk seems to be slightly inaccurate. Comparing
the collations of am and ful in Merk, WW, the Latin Nestle, and the
shorter Tischendorf, I found Merk collations most often disagreed with
the others.

Bob Waltz
waltzmn@skypoint.com

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