Subject: Re: versions

From: DC PARKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 11:14:17 GMT

Maurice Robinson wrote
> 
> Here we may still have semantic differences.  I would consider each
> separate MS of a given version as reflecting a witness to some 
overarching  Vorlage of that version, but not equal to the same thing 
as separate Greek MSS.  
Yes, it had not occurred to me that anybody would count 25 Armenian 
MSS as 'equal to the same thing as separate Greek MSS'.  But here 
one cannot generalise.  To take all the MSS of a version as witnesses 
to the Vorlage is to assume that a version is 'watertight', with no 
influence upon it from the Greek tradition after the production of the 
Vorlage.  But there are of course examples of readings where the 
knowledge of a different Greek text has affected a MS or MSS of a 
version (the sort of place where an apparatus might read sah (mss) or 
suchlike).  It is thus not possible to insist on Professor Robinson's 
very rigid schema.  Yes, one sets out in versional research with the 
main task of reconstructing the Greek Vorlage.  But one has to be 
open to the possibility that any variant from that which is not 
inner-versional corruption may be due to further Greek influence.

An example which I dig out at random is Luke 22.3.  The Greek v.l. is 
(teste NA 27) epikaloumenon / kaloumenon.  Vulgate MSS (teste WW) 
have the v.ll.  cognominabatur / cognominatur / uocabatur / uocabitur / 
 uocatur.

Weeding out the inner-Latin, one then has the question which Jerome 
might have read, and then of accounting for the other.  I grant the 
difficulty of the fact that Old Latin d has uocatur, so that the variation 
might be due to Old Latin influence.  But if you will grant that special 
problem, we have the possibility of continuing Greek influence.

I don't think that this is semantic.  It's a part of how one views and 
uses and interprets the materials.

David Parker
DC PARKER
DEPT OF THEOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
TEL. 0121-414 3613
FAX  0121-414 6866
E-MAIL [email-masked]

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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 17:03:31 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 5 Nov 1996, DC PARKER wrote:

> Vorlage.  

Again Parker and I are agreed.  I certainly do not mean to imply that
there cannot be various recensions and texttypes within a versional
tradition -- in fact I pointed this out specifically in regard to the
European and African Old Latin traditions.  The Georgian 1 and 2 are
another clear example, and there are sub-types among all versional
traditions, so far as I recall.

> But there are of course examples of readings where the 
> suchlike).  

This also is agreed.  Certainly those MSS which are in such places
atypical of the versional Vorlage will have either created a reading by
accident or chance, or will thereby indicate by such a variant a knowledge
of other circulating readings, either in the versional tradition or from
Greek or patristic sources.

> inner-versional corruption may be due to further Greek influence.

Agreed, so long as "may not" also remains a possibility, in which case
intra-versional variants (not "corruption" per se) may simply be thus
reflected.

> problem, we have the possibility of continuing Greek influence.

In the case mentioned, there certainly seems to be evidence to that point.
I would not suggest in the absence of conflicting Greek testimony,
however, that two variant readings in the same unit among OL MSS would
imply a "lost" Greek variant no longer extant among the Greek MS
tradition, but that such likely reflects intra-OL variation instead.

> uses and interprets the materials.

I also would concur on this point, even though it is certain that we might
not use the same materials in the same manner.

_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Professor of Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
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