Subject: Re: "Alexandrian" Text

From: "Larry W. Hurtado" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 09:36:10 -0500 (CDT)

As to Colwell's suggested quantitative definition of a "text-type" (70% 
or better agreement in relevant variation-units), I've always taken his 
intention as somewhat pragmatic and ad hoc.  That is, because the term 
"text-type" itself begs the question of what the term means, Colwell 
suggests that we start "empirically" with something and then 
"inductively" proceed.  In this case, he suggested we start with what few 
will dispute (other than Hoskier?):  That if there is anything like 
"text-type" agreement it is probably manifested/demonstrated in the 
Aleph-B relation in the Gospels.  Now, when Colwell tested out his 
proposed method of collating a selection of major witnesses against one 
another, what he got was an Aleph-B agreement consistently in excess of 
70%.  So, translating the Aleph-B relationship into quantitative 
categories, he offered 70% agreement.
	There's nothing inflexible or non-negotiable about this, nor is 
the 70% figure something that exactly defines, so that 67% for example 
would somehow "fail".  Colwell pointed out that the leading Western 
witnesses don't have the level of agreement he found in Aleph-B.  So he 
suggested that the "Western text" is not the same relatively more 
cohesive phenomenon that the Aleph-B relationship seems to represent.
	I've argued that the incorrectly labelled "pre-Caesareans" (esp. 
W and P45) are (a) not in fact particularly related to the purported 
major "Caesarean" witnesses (Theta, 565), and (b) that the W-P45 
relationship approaches the Aleph-B relationship in most of Mark, but is 
not as tight a relationship as Aleph-B.  This doen'st mean that W and P45 
aren't from a common "text-type" (in my view), but it does suggest that 
"text-type" has be be a bit flexible in what it means, or else W & P45 are 
(one or both) a bit more loosely members of whatever "text-type" one 
imagines them to represent than are Aleph & B.
	In all the recent discussion here I've wanted to suggest that we 
look carefully at what "text-type" means for us.  To my mind, a 
"text-type" is empirically represented in measurable  and significant 
agreements between/among witnesesses of such amount and kind as to make 
some kind of special historical relationship the best explanation.
	In historical terms, however, "text-type" seems to me to refer to 
a particular kind of scribal behavior.  Each text-type seems to me to be 
distinguished by scribal practices and approaches to copying/transmitting 
the NT texts.  Of course, once a more freely/loosely copied scribe did 
his work, a more careful scribe could have diligently & faithfully copied 
the many variants introduced!  But still, that faithful copy would 
indicate that at the (crucial) earlier stages of this textual tradition, 
this "text-type" is a more edited, more loosely-transmitted kind of text.
	Of course also, all such judgments are *comparative*, for no ms 
seems to be completely free of scribally-produced variants.
	
Larry Hurtado, Religion, Univ. of Manitoba

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From: [email-masked] (Vincent Broman)
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 96 15:24:36 PDT

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[email-masked] wrote:
> intention as somewhat pragmatic and ad hoc.

I agree.  The problem I have with the "70%" is that we don't presently
have clear, universal agreement on how to arrive at the 70 numerator
and the 100 denominator.

The count of agreements will depend on how you divide up the units
of variation and on how you count subvariants.  For example,
the Text und Textwert series sets up units of variation which can include
many tens of words and for which many tens of variant readings must be
listed, page after page.  In such a unit of variation, two witnesses
might differ by some jot or tittle, or by some major rewriting,
and the TuT statistics merely count match=1, miss=0.

Any agreement statistics can be inflated or deflated by packing the
court, i.e. by being more or less inclusive in one's selection of
units of variation.  Adding lots of minor variations where almost
all the witnesses agree anyway makes everyone look more similar.
In the bad old days the selected units of variation were just the
differences from the TR.  Better analysts counted agreements
from among all the variants listed in Tischendorf.  Colwell chose a roster
of witnesses which sample from all the known groups/families/types
and formed variation units from that representative universe,
possibly discarding singular readings (acc. to some definition).
Others have restricted themselves to variants listed in Nestle-Aland,
or even in the UBS editions.  All these will come up with different
denominators in their percentages, which will then be compared against 70/100.

I like Hurtado's thinking in saying:

>                                   This doen'st mean that W and P45 

It makes sense to me that one can formulate some consistent, repeatable
measure of affinity, and then report results in terms like:
"MSS X and Y are more closely related than W and Theta in Mark, but less
closely than 01 and B".  Once this is established, then hypotheses
can be discussed as to how close they are in genealogical terms.

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