Subject: three parables about text

From: ANDREW SMITH <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 19:42:12 -0500 (EST)

I hope that I'm not guilty of indescriminate "spamming," because I'm
cross-posting this to both the B-Hebrew and TC lists.

I'd like to tell three parables about textual transmission. Perhaps they'd
better be called "parallels," because they're not fictional. These are
histories of non-sacred texts. You can judge how or whether they're
relevant to the histories of the Tanakh and the New Testament.

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Parable #1 - Kant

Kant wrote his "Critique of Pure Reason" in 1781. When composing it, he
freely helped himself to passages of his earlier writings (diaries,
letters, etc.). He did this to the extend that researchers have identified
individual sentences in the "Critique of Pure Reason" in which the first
clause is taken (with exact wording) from one text, and the next clause is
taken (again with exact wording) from another text written five years
later. Many comentators have noted the very rough seams of this
"patched-together" text and how bumpily it tries to flow along. More than
one has commented that, if it were not known from recent history, readers
might not believe that this one book were composed by one single author!
German, like Hebrew and Greek, is a gendered language; most (all?)
gendered languages contain a few nouns of variable gender (one finds in
German, e.g., both "das Teil" and "der Teil"). Kant freely switches
genders with some of his nouns, including some of his most important
pieces of technical jargon. These two characteristics of Kantian
composition (the "cut-and-paste" method and the varying grammatical
genders) lead to interpretive difficulties, including pronouns which have
no clear grammatical antecedents, and conjunctions used to link clauses in
obscure and unattested ways. The the "Critique of Pure Reason" remains the
object of intense study.

***********************

Parable #2 - Nietzsche

Nietzsche published most of his books during his lifetime, but at least
one was unfinished when he went mad and later died. Most of his books
consist of aphorisms; the unfinished book did likewise. Nietzsche left
behind a collection of aphorisms, along with several different drafts of
the order in which they should be grouped and the outline of headings and
sub-heading under which they should appear. Several different editors have
constructed the book from this material, usually (but not always) under
the title "The Will to Power." Different editors chose different outlines
and headings, and chose differening groups of aphorisms to appear in the
book, leaving out perhaps a paragraph here or there which another editor
included, including a paragraph which another editor left out. Thus the
book exists in various forms, the forms depending upon the editor, yet
each having come from Nietzsche's pen.

*************************

Parable #3 - Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein published very few works during his life. At his death, he
left a large Nachlass. Included were some nearly finished books, and some
very rough drafts for books, and large numbers of miscelanious notes.
Since his death, many volumes of his writings have appeared. Some have
been very artificially constructed by pulling notes from very different
parts of the Nachlass and pasting them together. Others are notes from
which he lectured, or notes taken by students at his lectures. Other books
contain excerpts from letters he wrote. Some of these "books" have gone
through several "editions," as editors added a few more aphorisms from his
journals which seemed to fit the topic of the book. These books are all
from Wittgenstein's pen, yet each has been shaped by its editor. One book,
arguably one the more important ones (entitled "Philosophical
Investigations") was sent to press shortly before the manuscript
disappeared forever.

****************************

I have presented these three histories because we often think of textual
transmission primarily in regard to sacred texts. I think that we can
learn something from the histories of these non-sacred texts, e.g., that
the concept of "authorship" is not simple, or that we must be cautious in
the conclusions we draw from the state of a text.

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From: [email-masked] (Carlton Winbery)
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 20:02:18 +0400

ANDREW SMITH wrote;
>relevant to the histories of the Tanakh and the New Testament.

This has more to do with textual composition than transmission.  Sometimes
it is hard to draw the line where composition ends and transmission, but
these clearly speak to composition and very little to transmission.

Carlton L. Winbery
Fogleman Professor of Religion
Louisiana College
[email-masked]
[email-masked]
Fax (318) 442-4996
Phone (318) 487-7241