Tue Jan 14 21:05:52 1997

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From: winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net (Carlton Winbery)
Subject: Re: three parables about text
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ANDREW SMITH wrote;
>I hope that I'm not guilty of indescriminate "spamming," because I'm
>cross-posting this to both the B-Hebrew and TC lists.
>
>I'd like to tell three parables about textual transmission. Perhaps they'd
>better be called "parallels," because they're not fictional. These are
>histories of non-sacred texts. You can judge how or whether they're
>relevant to the histories of the Tanakh and the New Testament.
>
>**********************
>
>Parable #1 - Kant
>
>Kant wrote his "Critique of Pure Reason" in 1781. When composing it, he
>freely helped himself to passages of his earlier writings (diaries,
>letters, etc.). He did this to the extend that researchers have identified
>individual sentences in the "Critique of Pure Reason" in which the first
>clause is taken (with exact wording) from one text, and the next clause is
>taken (again with exact wording) from another text written five years
>later. Many comentators have noted the very rough seams of this
>"patched-together" text and how bumpily it tries to flow along. More than
>one has commented that, if it were not known from recent history, readers
>might not believe that this one book were composed by one single author!
>German, like Hebrew and Greek, is a gendered language; most (all?)
>gendered languages contain a few nouns of variable gender (one finds in
>German, e.g., both "das Teil" and "der Teil"). Kant freely switches
>genders with some of his nouns, including some of his most important
>pieces of technical jargon. These two characteristics of Kantian
>composition (the "cut-and-paste" method and the varying grammatical
>genders) lead to interpretive difficulties, including pronouns which have
>no clear grammatical antecedents, and conjunctions used to link clauses in
>obscure and unattested ways. The the "Critique of Pure Reason" remains the
>object of intense study.
>
>***********************
>
>Parable #2 - Nietzsche
>
>Nietzsche published most of his books during his lifetime, but at least
>one was unfinished when he went mad and later died. Most of his books
>consist of aphorisms; the unfinished book did likewise. Nietzsche left
>behind a collection of aphorisms, along with several different drafts of
>the order in which they should be grouped and the outline of headings and
>sub-heading under which they should appear. Several different editors have
>constructed the book from this material, usually (but not always) under
>the title "The Will to Power." Different editors chose different outlines
>and headings, and chose differening groups of aphorisms to appear in the
>book, leaving out perhaps a paragraph here or there which another editor
>included, including a paragraph which another editor left out. Thus the
>book exists in various forms, the forms depending upon the editor, yet
>each having come from Nietzsche's pen.
>
>*************************
>
>Parable #3 - Wittgenstein
>
>Wittgenstein published very few works during his life. At his death, he
>left a large Nachlass. Included were some nearly finished books, and some
>very rough drafts for books, and large numbers of miscelanious notes.
>Since his death, many volumes of his writings have appeared. Some have
>been very artificially constructed by pulling notes from very different
>parts of the Nachlass and pasting them together. Others are notes from
>which he lectured, or notes taken by students at his lectures. Other books
>contain excerpts from letters he wrote. Some of these "books" have gone
>through several "editions," as editors added a few more aphorisms from his
>journals which seemed to fit the topic of the book. These books are all
>from Wittgenstein's pen, yet each has been shaped by its editor. One book,
>arguably one the more important ones (entitled "Philosophical
>Investigations") was sent to press shortly before the manuscript
>disappeared forever.
>
>****************************
>
>I have presented these three histories because we often think of textual
>transmission primarily in regard to sacred texts. I think that we can
>learn something from the histories of these non-sacred texts, e.g., that
>the concept of "authorship" is not simple, or that we must be cautious in
>the conclusions we draw from the state of a text.

This has more to do with textual composition than transmission.  Sometimes
it is hard to draw the line where composition ends and transmission, but
these clearly speak to composition and very little to transmission.


Carlton L. Winbery
Fogleman Professor of Religion
Louisiana College
winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net
winbery@andria.lacollege.edu
Fax (318) 442-4996
Phone (318) 487-7241

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