Subject: tc-list Computer collation etc

From: Timothy John Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 11:09:42 +0800 (WST)

Dear everyone,

Jean-Francis Racine was asking about collation. For your information, I
have transcribed the 29 accessible papyrus and uncial mss of Hebrews using
Peter Robinson's mark-up scheme.

THIS TOOK ME THREE YEARS.

I have written collation programs that generate a universal text
containing all variants in the input witnesses. There is no need to have a
base text if you use my technique.

THIS TOOK ONE YEAR.

Three months of that time was taken up making a table that informs the
collation programs what are spelling and what are textual variations.  The
list contains just over 2000 lines, with each line corresponding to a word
that does not occur in the UBS4 text. (That is, of the 5000 words in
Hebrews, there are 2000 words in these 29 mss that you might call variants
with respect to the UBS4 text. But that does not mean there is a variation
on every second word of Hebrews, because many words have no associated
variation while other words have many associated variations.) These 2000
words are either spelling or textual variants, with the large majority
being spelling variants. 

I have taken the collation output (which is in the form of binary data
matrices) and subjected it to a form of multivariate analysis called
classical scaling. The resultant maps show that from a textual perspective
the extant witnesses are distributed between two major centres (Egypt and
Constantinople?) From the spelling perspective, which I regard as a more
effective indication of provenance (scribes were inclined to spell
according to local custom even when copying an exotic text), there appear
to be three groups. I am not sure whether to associate the third group
with Caesarea or Antioch. (U6, the only representative of the 'Western'
text which is in the collated mss sits away on its own in the textual
maps.)

THIS HAS TAKEN ME A YEAR.

I suspect that the same data matrices could be subjected to the cladistic
analysis that got Peter Robinson published in Nature recently. This would
be an interesting exercise as the classical scaling maps only show you
where the text has been, not where it has come from.

If you want my transcriptions they should be available from entmp.org by
the end of the year. My collation programs are written in PERL so they
will run on your Mac, PC, or UNIX platform. (It's better to use the UNIX
platform -- the matrix production program takes two hours to run on my
university's Sun.) The programs will also be available at entmp.org by the
end of the year.

I'm in the process of writing up my thesis and hope to be finished in the
next two months. When it is finished you can read it to see how to
transcribe, collate, and analyse New Testament manuscript variation using
computers. 

P.S. Peter Robinson's Collate program is excellent. However, if you want
to be able to distinguish between spelling and textual variation for the
purposes of analysis, I think that you had better use my programs. But
don't forget how long it takes!

Best regards,

Tim Finney.