Subject: Re: More on 2427

From: "Dave Washburn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 10:06:24 -7

Bob Waltz wrote:
> This brings up a serious question: How much change can a manuscript
> tradition undergo and still be considered direct descent? For example,
> I've seen people who consider F G of Paul to be direct descendents of
> D -- which is simply ludicrous. I'd just like to know how others feel.

It seems to me that this is one of those questions that has never 
been adequately answered, could be critical for several aspects of 
TC, but has sort of gotten lost in the shuffle of other 
methodological questions.  Hort developed his whole text-type system 
based on the principle "identity of error implies identity of 
origin," but I'm not sure that's a valid canon.  How much "identity 
of error"?  What is meant by "identity of origin?"

It seems to me that what we need most in order to answer this 
question are some clear examples of direct descent and/or copying so 
that we can - at least for one period of the stream of transmission - 
examine the forces that were in action, i.e. how much change, 
correction by other mss., and all the rest.  Without such clear 
examples, I'm not totally convinced that we can answer this question 
(though I remain hopeful that somehow we can).

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur/home.html
I've never had an original thought in my life,
so this opinion must be someone else's fault.

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From: Vincent Broman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 10:57:51 -0800 (PST)

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Bob Waltz wrote:
> tradition undergo and still be considered direct descent?

Dave Washburn wrote:
> question are some clear examples of direct descent....

There are precious few known examples of extant MSS being directly
descended from each other, even after searches of monastic libraries
where family relations of MSS ought to be close, even inbred.
Bezae and D-Abschrift are one pair, with a few (couple of?) other pairs known.
In the Ferrar family, the general topology of the family tree is known,
but a substantial number of hypothetical intermediaries are hypothesized
to make the connections work.  I'm not sure about the smaller Lake family (f1)
but the same might be true there.

In Silva Lake's reconstruction of the stemma of Family Pi in Mark, all of
the extant MSS, excepting possibly Pi, were leaves of the tree, and all of
the ancestors of MSS were hypotheticals.  She didn't even commit to the
idea that Pi itself was the granddaddy of the family, because the reconstructed
text of the archetype, obtained from the oldest miniscules by voting,
differed from Pi in 14 (+-?) places in Mark.  She did allow that if the
archetype was not Pi, it was quite a good copy of Pi.  By taking advantage
of the uncertainty of late medieval paleographical dates, she was able to
argue that the nominally 9th century MS K (Cyprius) was a grandson of Pi,
but Geerlings thought K was just a sibling or cousin of Pi.
Geerling's and Champlin's not-quite-as-thorough analysis of family Pi
in the other three Gospels was much less certain about the exact family
relations of the MSS, basically saying that the later MSS in the family
probably descended from the earlier ones, with progressive degrees of
Kx mixture as the generations pass.  One of the two, G. or C., I forget which,
used a rule of thumb that agreement in 93% of the variants from the TR
would indicate a one-generation-of-copying distance between father and son.
Similarly, 86% for two-generations, 79% for three generations.  Really.

Wisse found a bunch of close pairs among the Kx and Kmix heaps, but
I suspect that inside such a homogeneous tribe, random coincidental
resemblances are no big surprise.  More detailed study than a simple
profile comparison would be needed to be confident that a closely related
pair had been found among the Kx and Kmix MSS.

Vincent Broman,  code D783 Bayside                       Email: [email-masked]
Naval Command Control and Ocean Surveillance Center, RDT&E Div.
San Diego, CA  92152-6222,  USA                          Phone: +1 619 553 1641
=== PGP protected mail preferred.  For public key finger [email-masked] ===

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 14:29:27 -0700

>Bezae and D-Abschrift are one pair, with a few (couple of?) other pairs known.

Just a minor correction: Dabs is a copy of Claromontanus, not Bezae.
And, by strange coincidence, there's a second, fragmentary copy of
Claromontanus.

There is also a copy of 205 known, and Lake thought that 205 itself
might be a copy of 209. (Personally, I doubt it. 205 is very possibly
descended from 209 -- certainly they are very close -- but 205 has
just slightly more Byzantine readings; enough that I have to
suspect that there were a couple of intervening generations.)

>but the same might be true there.

Colwell claims that family 1 is a "true family," with a precisely
reconstructable stemma. I've always doubted that, personally. He
also states that several of the subgroups of the Ferrar group have
reconstructable stemma.

>but Geerlings thought K was just a sibling or cousin of Pi.

My inclination -- which I freely admit is based on inadequate research --
is to consider them cousinns.

>Similarly, 86% for two-generations, 79% for three generations.  Really.

Yet another reason why Colwell argued against basing *anything* on
variants from the TR!

>pair had been found among the Kx and Kmix MSS.

This still, it seems to me, leaves us with the original question.
Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that 2427 had been copied from
a manuscript (call it X) that was copied from B. But suppose that X
had been deliberately but sporadically corrected from another manuscript
along the lines of, say, C (e.g. it's largely Alexandrian, but from a
subtype that differs from B and that has a large Byzantine infusion).
Is 2427 then a copy of B? A descendent of B? A relative of B?

Or suppose the distance were slightly greater. Then what?

Put it this way: 2427 is not an exact copy of B; either there are
intermediate steps, or changes were made as it was copied. A true
copy will differ from the original only in accidental errors. How
far, then, are we justified in extending the term "copy"?

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

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From: Jack Kilmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 14:21:21 -0600

Vincent Broman wrote:

> pair had been found among the Kx and Kmix MSS.

	There seems to be a great parallel between textual criticism
and palaeoanthropology.  We are examining small fossil fragments and
speculating on a common ancestor...looking for the "Lucy" of
manuscripts.  Everytime a new fossil is discovered, we re-examine
the family (hominidae/Byzantine/Alexandrian) and it's genera, species
and sub-species as well as "tribes and clans."  Textual variants are
like genetic codes.

	I, for one, am not convinced that the common ancestor of the
Gospels lie strictly in oral tradition.  This seems to infer the
redaction layer propaganda that the disciples and immediate post-passion
Yeshuine Movement Jews were either illiterate, or wrote
nothing.  In this respect, Aramaisms are much like mitochondrial
DNA with direct lineage to "Lucy" documents.  The Antiochene and
Ephesian "genetic engineers" in Hellenic Christianity seem to have
performed some extensive gene-splicing.

	I wonder if the 11Q New Jerusalem fragments just might
represent a holotype for Revelation.

	Just a thought in passing on these interesting discussions
that arouse the biologist in me.

Jack Kilmon
[email-masked]

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 15:36:07 -0700

On Thu, 31 Oct 1996, Jack Kilmon <[email-masked]> wrote:

[ ... ]

>and sub-species as well as "tribes and clans."  Textual variants are

A biologist friend of mine commented on this: That the history of the
text is much evolution or genetic exchange. It is also like the
dissemination of folklore and folk culture. For that matter, you
can even find parallels to thermodynamic processes.

This should not be surprising: Entropy is a universal phenomenon,
and there is no such thing as perfect order.

>Gospels lie strictly in oral tradition.

I doubt that there are many who would say this. All information in
the gospels ultimately goes back to oral tradition (or memory), but
that is *not* the same thing. There seem to have been at least
two written sources -- Mark and Q. In addition, Matthew and Luke
probably had their own written sources.

In fact, I once proposed to Ulrich Schmidt (based on the "folkloric"
styles of some of the material in Matthew and Luke) that the two
gospels had at least *six* sources -- Mark, Q1 (parallel to the
Gospel of Thomas), Q2 (Q material not in Thomas), M1, L1, and L2.
Some were written (Mark), some oral (Q1, L2), and some I'm not
sure about.

Am I sure of this theory? No. Can I separate the sources? Not always.
But that's what the style says -- at least to a person who has been
steeping himself in folklore for most of the last twenty years.

>This seems to infer the

:-)

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

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From: Jack Kilmon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 15:02:17 -0600

> Some were written (Mark), some oral (Q1, L2), and some I'm not

	I have arrived at the same conclusions with reservations
that "proto-Mark" was the text that resulted in Canonical Mark.
I think that GThom1 and Q1 arose from the "Oracles" that may have
been written by the disciple Matthew DURING the ministry of Jesus
and its use by the Syrian author of the Gospel is responsible for
the adoption of the disciple's name for the work.  I am inclined
to hold open the possibility that an Aramaic "proto-John" may have
preceded or been contemporaneous with these earliest sources....
perhaps as early as the 40's CE.

Shelama amkhon
Jack Kilmon
[email-masked]

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From: "L. Mark Bruffey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 19:32:13 -0800

> origin," but I'm not sure that's a valid canon. 

Didn't Hort have to compromise on this axiom in practice anyway?

Mark