Wed Nov 6 08:32:16 1996

From owner-tc-list  Wed Nov  6 08:32:16 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by scholar.cc.emory.edu (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
	id IAA21689; Wed, 6 Nov 1996 08:31:18 -0500
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 14:27:20 +0100 (MET)
From: "M. Bakker" 
X-Sender: mbakker@cclsun01
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Re: versions : what do you expect?
In-Reply-To: <199611051901.LAA28154@Np.nosc.mil>
Message-Id: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
content-length: 1989



On Tue, 5 Nov 1996, Vincent Broman wrote:
 
> As an example, the Gothic edition of Streitberg (and from Metzger's
> comments I suppose the other Gothic editions are similar) displays the
> Gothic and Greek Vorlage on facing pages, the Gothic page supplied
> with linguistic notes, the Greek page with text-critical notes.  The
> few pages with more than one Gothic MS extant (in Paul) displayed the texts
> in double columns (but of course an Arabic text with many MSS would
> need to appear in apparatus form).
> 
> One problem of Streitberg's that you would want to avoid is that
> his Greek Vorlage is not a direct retroversion of the Gothic MSS,
> but a reconstruction of the Greek text Ulfilas is supposed
> to have translated from, prior to the contaminating influence of
> the Latin Vulgate intruding into the Gothic tradition.  He does
> this by identifying Vulgate readings and replacing them with Koine readings.
> While his theory of contamination is plausible, printing a hypothetical
> reconstruction instead of a straight retroversion makes it harder to
> untangle what is the basic evidence and what is just his theory.
> 

Something similar is the case with the reconstructions of the Old Slavic 
Gospels published by Vajs in 1935 and 1936. Reconstructing the Greek Vorlage 
from which St Cyril translated was simply one bridge too far.

Vajs' reconstruction of the Old Slavic Tetraevangelion needs to be 
reviewed in many places. It is therefore strange that it was used to 
represent the Slavic evidence in UBSGNT4. When I asked Bruce Metzger 
about it he said he was surprised it was decided to include Slavic 
evidence in the apparatus but not the Gothic version. Perhaps it was 
thought that its inclusion would please traditionalists in Slavic 
countries. One has to be careful with barely examined evidence, 
inclusion of all these exotic sigla may turn an apparatus into a veritable 
Variantenfriedhof.


Dr. Michael Bakker
Slavic Seminar
University of Amsterdam

Back