Subject: Re: tc-list Full Collations or Samples?

From: Jean-Francois Racine <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 10:49:19 -0400

Thanks to Robert Waltz and Perry Stepp their responses.

>From what I understand, full collations of all NT mss against each other is
still a dream rather than a nearby reality.  I heard about some collation
software, but unless the mss are translated into electronic format, such a
software is not very useful.  Who would like to type a ms (and to risk
adding new variants to it :))

I believe that large samples can give an accurate picture of textual
affinities among mss as long as they include an error correction factor
that indicates the reliability of the collation.

In addition, I am not sure that it is possible to make full collations of
mss against each other, for a full collation would include all itacisms,
nu-movable, scribal blunders, etc. Where to stop?  In addition, I do not
think that one can make a full collation in the case of a lacunose ms.  In
this case, the collation is necessarily made from a sample since part of
the ms is missing.  Lacunose mss are not so rare in NTTC.

Jean-Francois Racine

Jean-Francois Racine
Departement de sciences religieuses et ethique
Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi
555, boul. de l'Universite
Chicoutimi, QC
G7H 2B1  CANADA
Tel: 418-545-5011 poste 2478
FAX: 418-545-5012
courriel: [email-masked]

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From: Jean-Francois Racine <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 10:53:06 -0400

To my question:

>> In addition, what does mean exactly collating all variation units?  Does it
>> include itacisms, nu-movable, non-sense readings, orthographic errors,
>> etc.?  One can question the significance of these types of variants
>> although they are, strictly speaking, variants.
>
Larry Hurtado answered:

>I think we have to ask "collation of variation units for what
questions/purpose?".  
>I have collated & compared variation in mss for the pupose of trying to
find mss-
>relationships, toward the larger question of textual history.  For such
purposes, 
>itacisms, & minor spelling variations are not relevant, hence not
significant.  
>They tell us other interesting things (e.g., about how words were spelled
by this 
>or that scribe at this or that time in this or that place, about how much
variation 
>there was in such matters, about whether a given scribe was very trained & 
>careful or not), but not about ms -relationships, for which we need to
examine 
>variants that are likely to have some sort of genetic relationship.
>
I agree with you that one should take into account the scope of collation:
to find mss relationships, to evaluate a copist's scribe as s-he copied a
ms or to know better the history of a language through the ages and in some
regions.

>From a strictly statistical point of view, I think that anyone collating
only *genetically significant variants* is working from a sample of
variants instead of working from the whole amount of variants that would
include all variation units genetically significant or not.  The use of a
sample implies the possibility of error and therefore calls for an error
correction due to the use of a sample.  One does not need to calculate an
error correction when one computes the whole *population* of variants.
Since the latter types of studies are rare in NT textual criticism (an
exception could be L. W. Richards, *The Classification of the Greek
Manuscripts of the Johannine Epistles [SBLDS, no. 35; Missoula, MT:
Scholars Press, 1977]),  most of mss collations proceed from samples and
should consequently an error correction factor.

I do not ignore that this issue came up two years ago on this list, but I
had not perceived at this time that most collations were done from samples,
even the ones that seem exhaustive.

Jean-Francois

Jean-Francois Racine