Mon Nov 18 00:52:23 1996

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Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 00:46:05 -0500
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Subject: Re: Uncials & majuscules et al.
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In a message dated 96-11-04 10:33:10 EST, Jimmy Adair writes:

<< To say that a versional witness is secondary to a particular Greek witness
 (i.e., its Vorlage) is true enough, but to go on to claim that the
 testimony of the versions _as a whole_ is secondary to the testimony of
 the Greek mss _as a whole_ is simply not true.  To oversimplify the
 matter, suppose that an Old Syriac ms were translated from the autograph
 of Mark.  It would be a witness much closer to the original than a twelfth
 century Greek ms with 20 copies separating it from the autograph. 
 Obviously the limitations of the Syriac language in rendering Greek and
 aspects of the translation technique would have to be taken into account
 in reconstructing the Greek readings lying behind the versional witness,
 but its value as a witness to the text would remain great.  Versional
 witnesses are secondary only in the sense that translation technique and
 similar matters limit to a greater or lesser extent the certainty of the
 retroversion into Greek.  They should not be considered secondary to the
 entire Greek ms tradition simply because they are not written in Greek.  A
 similar case can be made for the value of patristic testimony, although of
 course other factors are involved.  >>

Bravo Jimmy!  This is also what was intended in my original writ, but may
have been missed due to it's brevity.  Thank you for the clarification.

Rich Elliott

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