Talk:Textual criticism

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Contents

[edit] list for comma johanneum etc

I'd like there to be a list that includes comma johanneum, Mark 16, John 21, etc. Then each of those pages can have the list in its See Also, and someone looking up one can easily find the others. What would the list be called, and what would be on it? "List of New Testament Variations"? Or maybe it ought to be a page, so a reader can get a summary of all of them at once. "New Testament textual variations"? Leadwind (talk) 17:47, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Mark 16 and John 8 are the only large sections of the NT believed not to have been part of the original documents. John 8 (if it was not original) was added very early because it appears in early, just not the earliest, mss. Mark 16 seems to be a later addition since it appears only in somewhat later mss, there is also considerable variation in the various forms that were copied.
The comma johanneum is also late. The single Greek witness is widely believed to be a 15th century forgery.
These facts are printed in almost every major English Bible translation of the 20th century, they are very old news.
These and many other small variations are used by Christians debating other Christians about the value of the King James Version (KJV). Some Christians still argue the KJV is inerrant, even in translation! Other Christians believe it only makes sense to think of the originals as "the Bible" and so demand (and pay for) scholarship and publication of the best text criticism possible -- high technology scans of original manuscripts, computer modelling of incomplete letters and documentation of any uncertainty, lest unreliable readings creep into text that is considered vitally important.
The best summary of all the variations of the New Testament mss are in Novum Testamentum Graece (NA27) and The Greek New Testament (UBS3). NA27 is the prefered scholastic standard because it thoroughly documents minor changes (but does draw the line at spelling differences, and at naming insignificant mss that support the various readings).
UBS3 is much more practical for preachers checking texts or students learning NT Greek. It limits consideration of variations to only those of a more substantial nature (but often names more evidence for each reading than NA27 does). There is so much evidence about the NT text, that selection must be made about variations. Christians exactly like any one else (maybe even more so) are concerned about the biggest differences. They don't want to use biased texts in their Bibles.
I think what you want to see Leadwind is something like this. This is a book that explains every single decision made by UBS when compiling their version of the New Testament in Greek. They came up with exactly the same text as NA27. This is not magic, or from God, it's because some scholars were common to both projects, and because they were all using the same basic methods of text criticism.
You would find the book very boring. It explains, for example, why we or you was accepted in various places. These words vary by one Greek letter, and sometimes we can't be sure if the original NT would have had we love God or you love God. It's kind of important, but it's kind of not important. More interesting examples are that many manuscripts do not have Jesus saying at the cross, "Father forgive them", others do not have Jesus using a whip in John 2.
The book is not an argument for a reliable NT, it simply looks at each set of variations and explains why it thinks one of them is better than the others. It actually rates each decision for likelihood of being correct. Some decisions are easy, others are hard. Generally, the hardest ones are those that are least important. Important variations usually have predictable biases and it is easy to pick the unbiased version.
The book is extremely common. Any Bible college or seminary will have a copy and it takes about 5 minutes to see how it works, though the arguments won't make sense unless you know Greek and Christian theology. Catholics, Protestants and non-Christians all use the same books for this. They sometimes disagree violently about how to understand the words of the NT, but they nearly always agree what the words of the NT actually were.
This is extremely good news for people who don't believe the Bible. If the text of the Bible were uncertain, Christians could always escape from being wrong by saying, "Ah! But that's probably an error in copying, not an error in the Bible." No such luck, I'm afraid, the scribes made plenty of mistakes and also made biased edits at times, however, there were just too many of them in too many different locations to actually rewrite the Bible once copies had already spread everywhere, like a virus. Alastair Haines (talk) 03:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Textual Criticism of the New Testament

Should an article called something like "Textual Criticism of the New Testament" be split off from this one? I think it would be a good idea. This article is about 56k long, and a split like this would cut it signicantly. Peter Ballard (talk) 10:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is a good idea. Textual Criticism should be the parent article, and should not be dominated by discussing the New Testament. On the other hand, secondary literature about TC of the NT is so massively abundant that it cannot adequately be covered in a short section. Additionally, TC of the NT involves a number of important related issues because of the nature of its content matter.
The more I think about it, the more I think I should probably draft something when I have time. It'll save me having to write it into talk pages all the time. ;) Alastair Haines (talk) 03:34, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] More copies than any other ancient work?

“ "Book of the Dead" is the title now commonly given to the great collection of funerary texts which the ancient Egyptian scribes composed for the benefit of the dead. These consist of spells and incantations, hymns and litanies, magical formulae and names, words of power and prayers, and they are found cut or painted on walls of pyramids and tombs, and painted on coffins and sarcophagi and rolls of papyri. The title "Book of the Dead" is somewhat unsatisfactory and misleading, for the texts neither form a connected work nor belong to one period; they are miscellaneous in character, and tell us nothing about the lives and works of the dead with whom they were buried. ”

—E. A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead

"The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work, having over 5,300 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Ethiopic and Armenian. This compares to less than 700 manuscripts for Homer's Iliad, the next most well-documented work from antiquity". It's a common claim, but is it true? No citation is provided, and IIRC there are about 250,000 extant ancient copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and presumably there are a lot of copies of the Koran around. --Robert Stevens (talk) 12:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Josh McDowell, "More than a Carpenter" (Tyndale, 1987), p.48. (Not saying he's right, just giving a cite). I've always assumed that the Qur'an doesn't qualify because it isn't sufficiently old (though one could argue that the line is just drawn at a convenient place). It's hard to imagine it not exceeding the 700 MSS of Homer's Iliad. The 250k extand copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead sounds awful high to me, I'd like to see a cite on that. Peter Ballard (talk) 12:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Oops, my apologies, that should have been 25,000. I'll check the preface to my copy (if I can find it), I probably got the number from there.). But McDowell is a highly unreliable source, and presumably he's counting all the copies made throughout the Middle Ages, which isn't specifically relevant. And most of those would be later than Islam: as you say, the cutoff date was probably chosen for "convenience". I'll snip the hyperbole (not relevant to the article anyhow), but leave the number-of-copies info for the NT (dubious though it may be). --Robert Stevens (talk) 14:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
This is a quote from Bart Ehrman's The New Testament which is a college level introductory text (also, Ehrman is an actual, notable scholar, not an apologist like McDowell): "if we count up all of the New Testament manuscripts that have been discovered, the number is impressive. We currently know of some 5,400 Greek copies of all or part of the New Testament, ranging from tiny scraps of a verse or two that could fit in the palm of your hand to massive tomes containing all twenty-seven books bound together. These copies range in date, roughly from the second century down tot he invention of the printing press int he fifteenth century. As a result the New Testament is preserved in far more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity. There are, for example, fewer than 700 copies of Homer's Iliad, fewer than 350 copies of the plays of Euripides, and only one copy of the first six books of the Annals of Tacitus." -Andrew c [talk] 14:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
This link has some more sources here. However, there clearly is a POV being pushed, and some of the quotes are selective and we probably cannot use the webpage as a reliable source here. But it does contain references to actual scholarly works that may be helpful.-Andrew c [talk] 14:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I really like that source, and I only know of it because I've seen you using it Andrew. It's ideal to have a source biased against another source, because it gives a good indicator of the "limits of distortion". Even critics of X say ... is a good boundary of reliability.

I've added a reference here that explains why Egyptian Book of the Dead doesn't compare. This is not a Book really, it is the name of a literary genre, very numerously attested to be sure, and including much common material, but not a unified work. Alastair Haines (talk) 03:38, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments in passing

Jossi left a note asking if I'd be interested in copyediting this article. I've had a brief look through (no time for more than that, I'm afraid) and had the following comments:

  • "a branch of philology or bibliography" - I find the "or" confusing. Is it a branch of philology, bibliography or both? The "higher criticism" article introduces itself as "a branch of literary analysis". Would it be right to say that textual criticism is "literary analysis", or is it more akin to linguistic analysis?
Fixed ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • The linking of the three sub-disciplines to sections later in the article is understandable, but confusing. I find it annoying in the extreme to click on these links and then realise I am in the same article. I personally think it is better not to link at all, or to put in italics or something.
  • Overview - this section should be the lead, shouldn't it? See WP:LEAD. The lead section needs to be able to stand alone, and the overview section would do nicely here.
  • "Early textual critics were concerned with preserving the works of antiquity, and later with medieval and early modern manuscript writings" - I realise that this article can't provide too many examples, but a few more than just the Bible, Shakespeare and Plato. Medieval French manuscripts are mentioned at some point. Some Anglo-Saxon mauscripts could be mentioned as well. List of manuscripts (which is mentioned at the end) would be a good starting point. Just to give people some more context and to leaven the dry technical stuff. I suppose another way of putting this is that the current article probably says too much on Biblical and Shakespearean examples, and more on other examples would be good, if possible.
  • The "Books of the Bible" template doesn't really belong in this article. That is more for an article about Biblical textual criticism. Incidentally, some people may think of this as textual analysis, which appears to be something else entirely.
fixed. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Material and sources added ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • We have an article on Johann Jakob Griesbach, so this article should link to it (sorry, I know I should fix this myself).
Fixed myself. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 14:25, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Not strictly related, but I think that in some small way, part of what was done with the manuscripts of J. R. R. Tolkien was in some form a type of textual criticism. Sometimes, his literary executor (his son Christopher Tolkien) would base his analysis on the age (sometimes presumed) of various manuscripts, and there have also been some publications approaching a variorum (see J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography). If you want a modern example, that might be helpful!

Sorry I didn't have time to add more comments - I did enjoy reading the article. Carcharoth (talk) 19:23, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent points, Carcharoth. Thank you. I will work on these in the next day or so. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:30, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I concur with the "good read" above Jossi, well done, but I also concur that literary criticism is the parent category, not philology. Alastair Haines (talk) 03:55, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Sure! Do the honors... : ) ≈ jossi ≈ (talk)

[edit] Various tidbits

While following up my linking of Johann Jakob Griesbach, I created the redirect textual critic to point here. I presume that this is the right phrase to use. From what links here I found authorial intentionality, which might be something that should be linked from this article and made consistent with what is said here (or vice versa). I also found some redlinks at User:The Anome/Moby nouns/T that might be relevant: Text edition, Text hand, Textuaries and Textuary (none are linked from anywhere else other than that pages and now this talk page). Could someone please explain these in the context of textual criticism if they are relevant? Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 14:25, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Blogosphere textual criticism

Just a forward thinking comment.

The internet is just ripe for textual criticism. Websites often edit text continuously, some of which is accessed and cited at different times. Archives of previous text are not always kept. If it has not happened already, I think it may only be a matter of time before reconstructions of edit histories of web publications become commonplace.

Think Wiki. Wiki talk pages and edit histories are the text critic's dream world—precise documentation of every change, all the way back to an original text. More than attempted transcription is involved in each step, of course, however, where articles are genuine attempts to neutrally synthesize reliable sources, this is a conceptual transcription. Editor's attempts to harmonize Wiki text with reliable sources are sometimes a fascinating process to observe.

Other textual critical issues in cyberspace include urban myths and neologisms that circulate the web. Tracing the evolution or etymology of these is certainly widely discussed already.

Text criticism of ancient documents is like the internet on speed. Perhaps there is already a journal article somewhere about this. ;) Alastair Haines (talk) 12:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Added sections to other articles

I've added a Manuscript evidence section to Comma Johanneum, Pericope Adulterae, John 21 and will add a similar section for the long ending of Mark at some stage. A generous Polish contributor has provided articles on many of the key manuscripts. Wikipedia makes NT text criticism verifiable in an extraordinarily efficient way. Alastair Haines (talk) 04:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Summary of manuscript evidence now added at the bottom of the very long Mark 16 article. Alastair Haines (talk) 02:54, 10 June 2008 (UTC)