Subject: Re: Textual Criticism Theories

From: [email-masked] (Jean Valentin)
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 04:03:48 GMT

Robert B. Waltz wrote:

>Hear, hear! NA27 ignores the Armenian and Georgian, often fails to
>cite the Coptic versions, and is inadequate for the Old Latin (for
>many variations you can't tell which Latins read what).
>
And let's not speak about Arabic, Ethiopian, medieval Dutch, English,
Catalan, Soghdian, Persian, medieval Hebrew, etc... Though I work directly
on the versions (and maybe not enough on the Greek, as my master C. Amphoux
told me), I like the edition of Merk, who gives more versional and
diatessaric evidence. Also, for the latin side, it gives the vulgate text
with old latin variants. Though my exemplar dates from 1944, I do not feel
that it has been superseeded.

>I wonder if anyone has *ever* met all the criteria?
I don't!

>I'll agree that liturgy and text are intimately related. Though I don't
>see why not growing up with the liturgy would keep us from understanding
>its influence.
Sure, only is it such an immense field that it's very difficult to master
when coming from an un-liturgical background (which, by the way, is my
case) - but we should all try...

shlomo w-shayno !

Jean Valentin - Brussels - Belgium

Ce qui est trop simple est faux, ce qui est trop complique est inutilisable.
What's too simple is wrong, what's too complicated is unusable.
Wat te eenvoudig is, is verkeerd. Wat te ingewikkeld is, is onbruikbaar.

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 08:25:47 -0700

On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, [email-masked] (Jean Valentin) wrote, in part:

>Catalan, Soghdian, Persian, medieval Hebrew, etc...

Most of those are so obscure that I can't even guess whether they are useful
or not...

>Though I work directly
>diatessaric evidence.

I agree that Merk's is in many ways the best of the hand editions... it
gives so many more variants than NA27! On the other hand, the apparatus
comes from von Soden, with mistakes of its own, and should be used
with caution. I think a wise student will have both Merk (for access
to the wide range of variants) and NA27 (for accuracy).

>Also, for the latin side, it gives the vulgate text

Same comments as above. Merk is the best hand edition of the vulgate
available (far better than, e.g., the smaller Wordsworth-White, which
often cites only the variants of the Sixtine and Clementine editions,
and at its best cites fewer than a dozen Latin manuscripts). But again
there is a caution: Merk seems to be slightly inaccurate. Comparing
the collations of am and ful in Merk, WW, the Latin Nestle, and the
shorter Tischendorf, I found Merk collations most often disagreed with
the others.

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]