Thu Oct 24 13:37:27 1996

From owner-tc-list  Thu Oct 24 13:37:27 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by scholar.cc.emory.edu (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
	id NAA25808; Thu, 24 Oct 1996 13:34:41 -0400
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 19:29:39 GMT
X-Sender: vale5655@mail.arcadis.be
Message-Id: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-Mailer: Eudora F1.5.4
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
From: jgvalentin@arcadis.be (Jean Valentin)
Subject: Re: Textual Criticism Theories
Sender: owner-tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
content-length: 3837

Jim West, you wrote:
>

>The simplest explanation as to why these minor translations have no
>influence on TC is simply because they are minor.  They do not, in reality,
>help us to reconstruct the Greek text of the NT or the Hebrew text of the OT
Wrong. They document us on very old types of texts. Read Voobus' Early
versions of the NT for the eastern versions. Our knowledge of the vetus
syra is so fragmentary, that old eastern versions help us a lot, also for
the reconstruction of Tatian's harmony. See the introduction of Petersen's
book on the Diatessaron to remind you that such text types are earlier than
any Greek recension (except Codex Bezae, but it's also fragmentary). In the
west, many versions preserve an old latin type of text. I think many
versions preserve types of texts that are older than the one of the greek
manuscripts, whether alexandrine, byzantine or palestinian.

>(unless someone is going to argue that the NT was originally written in KJ
>english!).
Please don't be offensive. There are caveats for the use of the versions
(see Metzger's book on the versions) but they really help in reconstructing
pre-IIId century forms of text.

>
>The only use versions like these have is to compare with one another- being
>translations of translations, etc., they do not take us any closer to the
>Greek text.
Not always. Some are indeed translations of a well-known type of text
(vulgate or byzantine text, sometimes the peshitto). But most preserve
ancient types.
I use to compare the history of the text to this: when you throw a stone in
the water, you get concentric circles. The older ones are the most remote
from the center, right? Well, this is what happens in the history of the NT
text (as in the history of liturgy): some peripheral traditions are much
more conservative than the greek tradition. How do you interpret it when
Persian and Dutch manuscripts preserve many common variants?

>
>When a version does seem to have an "older" reading it is, somewhere, based
>on a Greek manuscript.
Yes, but as you know, many haven't survived. All we have is scores of mss
of the byzantine recension, a few mss of the alexandrian texts, and then
some mss that carry remnants of other text-types, mostly contaminated by
the byzantine recension. When you look at the versions, the picture is
"somewhat" modified. Versions give us important documentation about the
palestinian and western text-types, to mention only these two. Seen from a
greek-only perspective, codex Koridethi is quite an isolated phenomenon,
but when you look at the versions, the agreement of it with georgian (the
"pre-vulgate" type), armenian (the second version), syropalestinian, and
several arabic versions is impressing: this text has been predominant in
the East for centuries - in fact, I suspect that, as it was so many times
translated, it was the official text of the Jerusalem patriarchate before
its byzantinization.

>
>Thus it does not behhove us to waste years of study on "medieval dutch" and
>its contribution to NT TC when we ought to spend our time with the greek mss.
It's everything except wasting time! To take the dutch example, this
language is crucial for the study of the old latin and diatessaric texts.
Though the mss begin to appear in the XIIIth century, the text they contain
brings us directly to the IInd century.
If you want to study greek mss, that's surely an important discipline - an
essential one indeed. But please don't despise what other disciplines can
bring to your research. Scholarship needs interdisciplinary exchange.



shlomo w-shayno !

Jean Valentin - Brussels - Belgium

Ce qui est trop simple est faux, ce qui est trop complique est inutilisable.
What's too simple is wrong, what's too complicated is unusable.
Wat te eenvoudig is, is verkeerd. Wat te ingewikkeld is, is onbruikbaar.

Back