Sun Feb 9 09:09:52 1997
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Date: Sun, 09 Feb 97 16:21:51 +0100
From: schmiul@uni-muenster.de (Ulrich Schmid)
Subject: Re: professional scribes
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On Sun, 9 Feb 1997, Effie Habas wrote:
>Dr. Schmid's revised statement as to scribes' practices is very
>interesting. If indeed "...no scribe reproducing Greek
>NT MSS..." has managed to produce a perfect (or close to it) manuscript
>(and yet the chronological boundaries of this are not clear to me), than
>either there is a marked difference in the professional level between these
>scribes and those copying Hebrew OT texts for use in Jewish communities,
>which would seem odd, or one could suggest a marked difference in the
>*attitude* of the former and the latter scribes to the texts that they were
>copying. Could that be the case? I wonder... Maybe a different solution has
>escaped me - I don't know enough about Greek NT scribes.
It might be interesting to discuss the meaning of the term "to produce a perfect
(or close to it) manuscript". If we rerfer to the standards put forth by the
masoretics, most likely no scribe reproducing Greek NT MSS can compete. Maybe
"professional levels" were different, maybe "a marked difference in the
*attitude*" is detectable. However, I suspect most of the differences are due to
features transcendending the attitudes or professional levels of individuals
(scribes).
As far as I know the masoretic standards include counting letters and various
systems of punctuation which help counting and prevent from *correcting*
sensless words or word forms (e.g., ketif/qere). This type of standardisation
has been adopted and became part of professional skills all over the *world* for
this body of literature. As far as I can see no such strict rules existed in
Greek or Latin writing transcendending regional and/or chronological boundaries
(for whatever body of literature?).
At some point in time Biblical Hebrew became some kind of *artificial*
liturgical language separated from the influence of linguistic changes through
everyday use of a *living* language. As far as I can see for a considerable span
of time the transmission of Greek and Latin texts has been embedded in *living*
linguistic surroundings with various points of contact and change (at least
within the realms of orthography). BTW --- From the Qumran scrolls we know
analogous phenomena for Hebrew OT texts.
[quoting Schmid:]
>> In fact, I had a closer look at
>>one scroll of Genesis, but experts confirmed that this piece of writing
>>from >the
>>13th century doesn't meet professional standards.)
>Again, you gave no details, but normally any OT text which is not perfect
>(namely, contains a mistake) would be put aside and never used, though such
>texts would not be thrown away in the usual manner (luckily for anyone
>using material from the Cairo Geniza). So we *do* have many examples of
>imperfect texts, but we know they were not used.
A rabbi looking at the mentioned scroll judged it to be put aside because of
irregularities within the *lay-out* (line lenght) and because of some wiping and
reparing. The latter may or may not indicate *incorrect* correction of faults.
>From the rabbi we learned that here in Germany a newly written OT scroll
containing more than three faults had to be sent to a kind of approving
committee in Cologne that makes a final decision.
I would be interested in hearing more about this type of *technical* features
that seem to guarantee a maximum of *correct* textual transmission.
Ulrich Schmid, Muenster
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