Fri Nov 1 08:55:23 1996

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From: Maurice Robinson 
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Subject: Re: More on 2427
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On Thu, 31 Oct 1996, Robert B. Waltz wrote:

> This brings up an interesting philosophical point. I said that 2427 was
> *not* a copy of B, because it differs in dozens of places from Vaticanus --
> and relatively few of these differences are in the direction of the
> Byzantine text-type. They look more like they came from another Alexandrian
> witness.

Which is why I was careful to note that it was corrected by a "non-B" type
of MS.  However, items in 2427 such as the long ending of Mark are more
likely to have been inserted from a more Byzantine type of MS, I suspect,
though I would have to see collation data there for 2427 to see if any of
the Alexandrian distinctive readings of the long ending might be present.

> This brings up a serious question: How much change can a manuscript
> tradition undergo and still be considered direct descent? For example,
> I've seen people who consider F G of Paul to be direct descendents of
> D -- which is simply ludicrous. I'd just like to know how others feel.

If virtually all MSS are "mixed" in varying degrees (which I think is a
given, even among the Byzantine Textform MSS), then the only matter of
"direct descent" would be when one has something like D/D-abschrift in the
Epistles.  

Yet stemmatically, one MS might be copied directly from another, and still
be quite distinct, due to errors made while copying, corrections made
while copying, inclusion of correction data from the exemplar, use of a
second exemplar for verification at certain points, etc.  Multiply these
factors geometrically by the same possibilities recurring in subsequent
copies, and the amount of mixture which can result over even one or two
copying generations can become immense.  After 10 or more copying
generations, the ultimate parent may well no longer be discernable. 

Even the "family" groups (like f1, f13, etc.) which are closely related
and descend from a hypothetical lost uncial exemplar differ widely among
themselves (see the various Studies and Documents volumes), and the
archetype of the lost uncial from which they derive is generally assumed
to be established by taking only those readings where family group members
_depart_ from the Byzantine Textform, on the assumption that the
correction trend would be away from non-Byzantine to Byzantine readings by
that time period (which of course would likely be correct, though I would
suggest that following the non-Byzantine reading of but _one_ family
member against the remainder of the group will likely result in an
aberrant reading being claimed as that of the uncial exemplar rather than
the reverse).


_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Professor of Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
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