Tue Nov 12 06:49:05 1996

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From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" 
Organization: Divinity Faculty
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Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 11:41:13 +000
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Subject: Re: Patristic statistics
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The current discussions here over Aland's "patristic statistics" 
remind me again that text critics still need to assess carefully how 
we use countings of "agreements" and what constitute "agreements".  
In my 1981 book, _Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean 
Text_, I tried to address the matter, building upon studies by 
Colwell and later Fee.  (See now the chapter by T. C. Geer, Jr., in 
_The Text of the NT in Contemp. Research_, ed. B. D. Ehrman, M. W. 
Holmes).
Counting "agreements" is almost meaningless, unless (1) agreements 
are considered in the context of all relevant readings--i.e., 
agreements as percentages of the total number of relevant 
variation-units, agreements *& disagreements*, and (2) agreements are 
assessed as to their significance (but only *after* the counting!).
Larry Hurtado  
L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  L.Hurtado@ed.ac.uk

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