Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism

From: [email-masked] (Ulrich Schmid)
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 97 20:17:21 +0100

On Fri, 24 Jan 1997, Bart Ehrman wrote:

>   Well, of course it's simply not true that there were never "real"
>scribes who simply copied one verse here or there rather than an entire
>manuscript.  Any church father quoting a solitary verse or two did
>precisely this -- and sometimes, as we have reason to believe, they
>actually consulted an exemplar before doing so; moreover, there were
>amulets, etc. with very small portions of scripture on them, copied just
>for the purpose.  So I'm not sure that I see your point.  

Well, the point is that I'm still thinking about one of your initial statements 
in the light of my own experience with MSS and scribal activities: "I guess 
maybe one difference could be that scribes _are_ (how's that?) able to reproduce 
exactly what they inherit in their exemplars..." (Bart Ehrman). Therefore, I'm 
particularly happy to subscribe to the following:

>Of course it's not absolutely impossible for a scribe to reproduce a text 
>accurately; it's just extremely difficult for long texts. 

In fact, I never "met" a scribe who, after testing his product over a span of 
lets say three or four pages, did not produce some results presumably not to the 
credit of the exemplar he reproduced (orthographicals, itacisms, slips, etc.). 
For what ever reason (regional dialects, lack of vigorous orthographical 
standards, etc.), apart from majour textual variant readings, no scribe seemed 
to have "reproduced exactly what he inherited in his exemplar". These are the 
facts as I'm familiar with them, still waiting for counter-examples from real 
scribes producing real MSS copies.

Now, why the emphasis on REAL scribes and copies? I still maintain the 
difference between copying texts and writing new texts. Copying texts  
includes at least the intention of reproducing given textual units without 
conciously altering their shape so that the copy can virtually replace the 
exemplar that it was copied from. Therfore, "scribes who simply copied one 
verse here or there rather than an entire manuscript" are writing new texts, 
IMHO. The same goes for "any church father quoting a solitary verse or two", 
"amulets, etc."

>   BTW, are you saying that John 1:1 by itself is not a "real" text?  If
>so, then I'd like to know what you yourself understand a text to be. 

Well, John 1:1 is at least part of a "real" text. I was just wondering if it 
belongs to the same categories of "real" texts, i.e. subjected to the same 
aspects of copying as outlined above.

Ulrich Schmid, Muenster

---

From: "Lewis Reich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 00:27:56 -500

On 25 Jan 97 at 20:17, Ulrich Schmid wrote:
 
> In fact, I never "met" a scribe who, after testing his product over
> a span of lets say three or four pages, did not produce some results
> presumably not to the credit of the exemplar he reproduced
> (orthographicals, itacisms, slips, etc.). For what ever reason
> (regional dialects, lack of vigorous orthographical standards,
> etc.), apart from majour textual variant readings, no scribe seemed
> to have "reproduced exactly what he inherited in his exemplar".
> These are the facts as I'm familiar with them, still waiting for
> counter-examples from real scribes producing real MSS copies.

I think a counter-example might be provided by the traditional 
scribes who for the past thousand years and more have produced Torah 
scrolls for use in synagogues.

Lewis Reich
[email-masked]