Subject: a little idea...

From: ANDREW SMITH <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 14:58:17 -0500 (EST)

I had this idea recently; but usually by the time I have an idea, I find
that someone else has already had the idea, and written it out, and
printed it...so my idea may not be new...but here goes...

If we would graph the stability of a text over time, I think that it would
be like a sine-wave, rising and falling on a regular basis, for this
reason, that an original text is produced (low amount of variation), then
copied multiple times (producing higher amounts of variation), is then
canonized (producing the need for one standard text and a purging of all
the variants, therefore low amounts of variation), and after the uniform
standardized text has been in place for a while people either get careless
or deliberately choose to create a few variations (higher amount of
variation), but then orthodoxy either purges the new variations or adopts
one of them as the new standard and purges the old standard (thus
returning to a low level of variation)...etc.

Is this plausible? Have others thought of it before me?

Andrew C. Smith

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 14:57:41 -0700

>returning to a low level of variation)...etc.

This model probably works for a while, but it fails after about the
seventh century. From that time on, the text generally became more
and more standardized, and fewer and fewer new readings arose
(except, of course, by accident). I think the graph, if it oscillates
at all, will be a damped (probably overdamped) oscillator.

And if that last sentence means nothing to you, don't worry about
it; I'm speaking in differential equations again. :-)

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

                            Robert B. Waltz
                         [email-masked]

Want more loudmouthed opinions about textual criticism?
Try my web page: http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn
(A very rough draft of part of the Encyclopedia of NT Textual Criticism)

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From: ANDREW SMITH <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 16:47:58 -0500 (EST)

> at all, will be a damped (probably overdamped) oscillator.

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

True, unless we'd use the word "text" in an unusual way to include other
versions and translations...because the pattern (as you point out) comes
to an equillibrium with the original text, but then repeats itself, later,
in the versions and translations. The cause of the "dampening" of the
oscillations is the developing self-consciousness of philology and TC.

A. Smith