Subject: Re: Byzantine text

From: [email-masked] (Robert B. Waltz)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 96 20:06 CDT

On Mon, 29 Apr 96, [email-masked] (Vincent Broman) wrote:

>For any kind of evaluation involving Byzantine witnesses,
>the selection of readings in UBS3 or even NA26 is highly unrepresentative,
>and will make your counts of agreements nearly meaningless.
>For instance, in this case lots of units of variation where Westerns
>and Alexandrians agree against Byzantines will not be covered by
>any entry in the apparatus, because the text is felt to be firm.
>This is a standard pitfall in using a selective apparatus.
>You need to work from the IGNTP volumes, Tischendorf, or Von Soden.

I agree as to the bias of NA26; you would think they would at least
note the divergences from TR! And I've been amazed at how many readings
that everyone would agree are important (by which I mean readings where
the "Alexandrian" witnesses are significantly divided and UBS goes
against Byz). Example: Col. 3:18. UBS reads KOMISETAI with B K L 1175
and not much else (but in agreement with Eph. 6:8); TR has KOMIEITAI
following Aleph* A C (D*) (F-G) Ivid 056 0142 33 81 436 1739 pm.
I don't know about you, but I prefer KOMIEITAI.

I also agree that a sample of "unbiased" readings would be better.
Much better. I was doing what I could to improve on the heavily
biased readings of UBS. But if a sample is large enough, it matters
less. Which is why I wanted a larger sample.

It's also important to remember the difference between RELATIVE and
ABSOLUTE statistics. Changing our sample will change the actual
RATE of agreement between, say, vg and E (the absolute statistic).
It is far less likely to change the amount of difference between vg
and E as opposed to vg and B (the relative statistic).

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 01:48:54 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 29 Apr 1996, Robert B. Waltz wrote:

> note the divergences from TR! 

Out of curiosity, I would ask "why"?  Not to include TR readings (which
are mostly quite insignificant, since almost all true Byzantine readings
are included in N27 under the "M" siglum) is but what should be normal
practice in a critical edition.  The TR (any edition) is totally
irrelevant to NT textual criticism, except as a collation base. 

I do agree that some readings which the N27 editors considered important 
are certainly not as important as many others which they left out.  I for 
one would probably have preferred a number of synonym-substitution 
or omission/inclusion variants for the numerous places where a KAI/DE 
or word-transposition difference is noted.  But that, I suppose, is the 
nature of a hand-edition as opposed to the major critical editions such 
as Tischendorf, Von Soden, or IGNTP (Legg and others).

_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Assoc. Prof./Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
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From: [email-masked] (Vincent Broman)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 96 16:46:28 PDT

[email-masked] said:
> I was doing what I could to improve on the heavily
> less.

If your sampling method is biased, increasing the sample size won't help,
the larger sample will still be biased, it just has a smaller variance.

The RELATIVE statistics are =exactly= what gets botched up
by bias in your sampling.  What you need is a sampling method
that you can convince your readers is totally independent of
what you're trying to measure.
And you would have a hard time convincing me that the selection
of variants in the UBS3 apparatus is =independent= of the attestation
by texttypes.

Vincent Broman             Email: [email-masked]                    =   o     
2224 33d St.               Phone: +1 619 284 3775                  =  _ /- _   
San Diego, CA  92104-5605  Starship: 32d42m22s N 117d14m13s W     =  (_)> (_)  
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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 22:25:17 -0400 (EDT)

On Tue, 30 Apr 1996, Vincent Broman wrote:

> What you need is a sampling method

Since the grouping of MSS into near-neighbor clusters will occur within
any sufficiently large sampling base, there is no reason not to select
initially those readings which are more likely to provide texttype-
specific data rather than clutter one's database with numerous readings
which are not texttype-specific.  Virtually the same results will be
obtained by either method, but they will differ only in magnitude of the
results.  I for one would prefer to determine texttype relationships by
who percentage points rather than by the hundredths of percentage points. 

The UBS apparatus is not exactly biassed toward texttype 
interrelationships. The data taken from that apparatus still point to a 
high degree of "mixture" in all non-Byzantine witnesses, and a mixture 
which does not occur in any predictable pattern.