Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism

From: [email-masked] (Dr. E. Habas)
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 14:15:29 +0200

>On Fri, 24 Jan 1997, Bart Ehrman 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.

.......

Does your experience include professional Torah-writers (=SOFREI STM)?

Thank you,

E. Habas

Dept of History
Ben Gurion University
Be'er Sheva, Israel

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From: Bart Ehrman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 07:28:10 -0500 (EST)

Dr. Habas,

   The words you've attributed to me were written _to_ me (not by me).  I
personally think it is possible for scribes to reproduce their examplars
exactly.

-- Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

---

From: [email-masked] (Ulrich Schmid)
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 97 14:53:29 +0100

.......

.......

>Be'er Sheva, Israel

The broad statement is mine. I should have said "...no scribe reproducing Greek 
NT MSS...". 

Dr. Habas, the answer to your question is no. (* In fact, I had a closer look at 
one scroll of Genesis, but experts confirmed that this piece of writing from the 
13th century doesn't meet professional standards.)

Ulrich Schmid, Muenster