Subject: tc-list Codex formats according to Turner

From: "DC PARKER" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 12:40:45 GMT

There was some interesting data sent about Turner's format theories.  
I can remember wondering about the data which he placed into groups 
when I read first the book, and whether there was not some overlap 
between the groups.  However, the criticisms placed against it in 
Wieland Willker's message of 6 February need careful scrutinising, 
for the following reasons:

1.  It includes MSS which Turner himself describes as 'Aberrants' 
(pp. 19ff).  This obscures the data which he places firmly in a 
group.  In fact 36 out of the 70 MSS in Willker's list are aberrant.  
One would need to run the check only on the MSS which Turner 
placed firmly within a group, to invalidate his theories.

2.  The MSS listed by Willker begin near the end of Group 7 and 
finish in Group 10.  That is, they cross various Group boundaries.  
But the evidence might be stronger for some groups than for others.

3. What about the MSS of other sizes listed (Groups 1-6, some of 7 
and 10, 11?), not to mention the parchment codices?  That is, only a 
small part of Turner's data has been scrutinised here.

4.   Part of Turner's enquiry is to distinguish between papyrus and 
parchment MSS in size and format, and this is not, it seems to me, 
affected by the criticism.

5.  Turner himself allows a certain variation (p. 23).  It would 
presumably need to be shown that this variation was either 
mathematically or historically inadmissible for his groupings to be 
invalidated.

N.B. Turner treats P4 and P64+P67 as two MSS, which we now know 
to be one.  He categorised them as Group 9 Aberrant 1.  
But Willker on the basis of Turner's data records a variation of 
0.12 between their proportions.  This is the same as between the 
highest and lowest proportions of the MSS listed by Willker from 
Group 9, suggesting that at least this range of variation is 
permissible.  Add the MSS from the group not included by Willker, 
and you get a variation of 0.13.

If you've ever tried measuring a MS, you'll find that it's not so 
precise a science that the odd 0.something here and there can be 
quantified.  In fact, take 100a, in Turner's Group 8.  It is recorded 
as 13x26, i.e. B half H exactly.  But add a mere 1mm to its height 
and take one off its breadth, and you have 2.02.  Do the opposite, 
and you have 1.98.  You must expect at least this much degree of 
variation.  In fact, you would have a greater variation in size 
than this within a MS: they didn't trim pages by machine then.  When 
one notes from Turner's main list (p. 106)  that this MS 100a is 
given these dimensions by its editor (i.e. there is some 
uncertainty), the need for this flexibility becomes more obvious.

6.  The discussion in Turner's final chapter places his data in the 
context of the development of the codex.  One would have to show this 
to be at fault before one could demonstrate his groupings to be 
inadmissible.  (i.e. the statistics are only aprt of his argument).

7.  His case also (again see the last chapter) involves the beta as 
well as the alpha measurement (that is, written area as well as size 
of page).

In short, the more I look at this critique of Turner, the less 
convincing I find it.

David Parker

DR DC PARKER
READER IN NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM AND PALAEOGRAPHY
DEPT OF THEOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
TEL. 0121-414 3613
FAX  0121-414 6866
E-MAIL D.C.PARKER@.BHAM.AC.UK

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 08:38:43 -0600

>placed firmly within a group, to invalidate his theories.

This brings up an important question, though, which I can't answer
since I don't have Turner. How does Turner decide which mss.
are "aberrant"? By your figures, Turner threw out *more than
half* the data as "aberrant." Chances are, in *any* data set,
I could discover patterns if I'm allowed to toss out half
the data arbitrarily. So how did Turner cast out those
36 documents? By some absolutely repeatable process, or simply
by some intuitive examination? If the latter, his data should go
out the window.
Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

"The one thing we learn from history --
   is that no one ever learns from history."