Subject: tc-list How to collate everything

From: Timothy John Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 09:17:09 +0800 (WST)

On the topic of how to transcribe and collate lots of manuscripts, I think
that the Internet provides a wonderful opportunity for many people to work
on the project simultaneously.

Here is what is needed:
(0) Willing workers with sufficient ability
(1) A standard approach: just what do we want to transcribe and how shall
we do it?
(2) A site
(3) An administrative process that provides a sufficient level and
mechanism of quality control
(4) Computer programs that support the enterprise

I won't bore you with my views concerning these five points (yet).

Just a reminder: a couple of months ago I released my transcriptions of
the papyrus and uncial manuscripts of the Epistle to the Hebrews into Net
land. They are free and for the use of anyone who wants to play with them.
They represent a first faltering step towards the goal of electrification
of the New Testament manuscript tradition.

Tim Finney

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From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 10:14:31 +000

In response to Timothy Finney's plea, let me re-iterate and re-
emphasize what has already been said by others:  unilaterial 
collations and transcriptions (i.e., by one person) are notoriously 
prone to errors, and collations or transcriptions prepared for others 
to rely upon (i.e., to "read" the mss) should follow something like 
the IGNTP protocols (two independent transcriptions/collations, 
then checked independently by a third party).  Collations prepared 
for quantitative counts will almost certainly have some errors too, 
but given that quantitative analysis (e.g., the Colwell or Claremont 
Profile or Ehrman's categories) usually involves a large number of 
variation units, and no significance is to be attached to %s unless 
they are separated by some significant distance. An individual error 
in collation here or there will make thus little or no difference on 
judgements reached about mss relationships (but, of course a lot 
of errors concentrated in one area would!).
But collations/transcriptions prepared to give the equivalent of the 
mss themselves (facsimiles of sorts) should be as free of errors as 
is humanly possible through the exacting procedure stated above.
So, could Finney tell us what procedure he has followed in 
(double)checking his transcriptions which he has so generously 
provided to the world via the Internet?
Larry Hurtado

L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  [email-masked]

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From: TOMMY MARKANZIA REKLAM HB <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 21:40:34 +0000

I have been following the debate on this list about how to collate mss
and make them available electronically. I´m am just a happy amateur, but
would like to ask You experts: Isn´t it possible, in this matter, to
build on the massive undertakings of the Muenster Institute and the
IGNTP project? 

Was it 1997, the Muenster Institute released the first volume of NT
"Editio Critica Major" - ECM - (epistle of James)? In their ecclectic
text they have of course used a specific methodology which lead to an
exclusion of some manuscripts as secondary (Byzantine). But aren´t those
"Byzantine" manuscripts somehow recorded in the second volume of ECM?  

If we have printed editions (available in an electronic format, as they
must be for typesetting and printing), albeit with a lot of
abbreviations for practical reasons, can´t we "translate" them with a
computer program and in that way generate electronic "collations" (this
is perhaps a wrong designation since this method works backwords) of all
manuscripts that the edition itself builds on? The Nestle-Aland alone
cites "constant witnesses" in the apparatus, and then one must be able
to generate each of these constant witnesses electronically. I´m aware
that the constant witnesses are only a small group of all mss - but if
we turn from NA27 to ECM and the IGNTP (of which I´m not that familiar
with) then it seems to me that a great deal of work has already been
done. Am I wrong here?

Tommy Wasserman - a Swedish student with an interest in NT textual
matters.