Tue Feb 11 07:59:45 1997

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From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" 
Organization: Divinity Faculty
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Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 12:58:35 +000
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Subject: Re: professional scribes
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Once again, recent discussions here lead me to point the listmembers 
to an important recent book I've mentioned before here:
Harry W. Gamble, _Books & Readers in the Early Church:  A History of 
Early Christian Texts_ (Yale Univ. Press, 1995).  
It might be a *very* useful exercise to have a number of scholars 
study the book and then engage one another on this list on the 
relevant topics:  such as the use of scriptoria, scribal 
training/abilities, etc.
On the question of NT vs. Jewish scribal practices, it is just a bit 
anachronistic to compare Massoretic scribal discipline with what 
might have been going on in the first two centuries CE.  Here E. 
Tov's work (e.g., _Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible_) is useful, 
in drawing upon early evidence (esp. Qumran) about the relatively 
greater fluidity/variety of the text of the OT in this early period.
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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