Subject: Re: versions : what do you expect?

From: "Henry T. Carmichael" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 14:11:41 +0000

Vincent Broman wrote:

> [email-masked] asked about Arabic-Greek retroversion:
> > I am simply curious, in this connection, how such a retroversion
> > accomplishes more than simply being a "targum" on a putative text?
> 
> Besides serving as a Targum on the Arabic texts, a Greek retroversion
> made with an eye on the MS/versional/patristic traditions could
> serve as a bridge in connecting the Arabic texts back to the sources
> from which they came.  Even a reader innocent of Arabic could get useful
> information from such a retroversion, even though he would be seriously
> handicapped in evaluating the information.

	An interested lurker, I have an additional question, which will probably
display my ignorance:  What grounds are there for supposing the Arabic to
have come directly from the Greek (which appears to be the reason for a
Greek retroversion)?  If there were an intermediate version (Syriac?,
something else?), and the Arabic were a rendition of *that*, would there be
any way of detecting such a translational history?

Henry Carmichael

---

From: "David G.K. Taylor" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 10:49:56 GMT

Sorry for the late reply to this posting, but I'm on study leave at the 
moment and this has slowed down my response time to all 
correspondence!

My work involves editing Syriac texts and working with editions of 
various Middle Eastern writings. On the basis of this it seems to me 
that the first question that should be asked of any text is: what makes it 
intrinsically important enough to edit? Once this has been 
assessed you are in a good position to identify the likely readership of 
your edition, and so to determine your editorial policy.

For example, it is conceivable that a late Arabic version has little of 
importance to contribute to the reconstruction of the earliest Greek text 
or recensions, but that its value lies in identifying the text of the NT that 
was the basis of all local theological writing, or that it is of greatest 
importance as a witness to the development of Christian Arabic prose, 
etc. etc.

Now, if you decide that it is an important NT textual witness a 
translation might be useful for other scholars (but if so use a modern 
language, don't use Latin which is not only little understood by most 
academics but has always been an inappropriate choice for the 
translation of semitic languages). A reasonable model might then be 
Burkitt's translation of the Old Syriac gospels. If the readership is likely 
to consist of other Arabists and / or members of the churches which 
own these manuscripts then there is little point in producing such a 
translation.

Even so, it is worth considering publishing instead of a translation a 
series of tables of collations against the various textual families you 
mention. A rather dated example of this technique can be found in the 
edition of Acts produced by Ropes. This would certainly be more useful 
than a second apparatus at the bottom of each page. (Lectionary 
readings, as in editions of Greek texts, should simply be included in 
the main apparatus).

As for recensions of the Arabic text, this comes back to your purpose in 
editing it. Do you want to reconstruct the earliest version, or to lay bare 
each of the major stages that the text went through? Are the recensions 
important because of their readings per se, or because of their witness 
to changing influences on the monastic and church communities? If the 
latter then the variant readings are perhaps best confined to the 
apparatus. The introduction would then be the place to detail 
stemmata and discuss the history and causes of the later 
recensions.  

Hope this helps,

David Taylor

*********************************************************************
Dr David G.K.Taylor               email: [email-masked]
Department of Theology,       tel:   0121-414 5666
University of Birmingham,    fax:   0121-414 6866
Birmingham B15 2TT,
U.K.
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