Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | März/2021 |
Spalte: | 177-179 |
Kategorie: | Neues Testament |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Lembke, Markus, Müller, Darius, u. Ulrich B. Schmid [Hgg.] |
Titel/Untertitel: | Text und Textwert der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments. Bd. VI: Die Apokalypse. Teststellenkollation und Auswertungen. Hg. in Gemeinschaft m. M. Karrer. |
Verlag: | Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter 2017 XX, 941 S. = Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung, 49. Geb. EUR 199,95. ISBN 9783110547283. |
Rezensent: | Juan Hernández, Jr. |
During his inaugural address at Cambridge in 1911, A. E. Housman quipped, no doubt tongue in cheek, that the Germans thought textual scholarship was »mathematics.« One can only imagine what he would have thought of the 791 pages of statistical analyses in the Text und Textwert volume on the Apocalypse’s textual tradition! What concerned him, of course, was not math per se but the allure of slavishly following rules or procedures that inexorably lead to certain results. The latest TuT volume cannot be reduced to such a judgment. The project is more nuanced than that. But the risk is one to be aware of. Still, the data are immensely useful for clarifying questions related to the Apocalypse’s textual groupings and their unparalleled complexities.
The latest TuT volume offers a fresh foundation for a comprehensive review of the Apocalypse’s manuscript tradition. Of the book’s 310 manuscripts, 285 are included in the collation results, 274 of which undergo additional analyses. Only inaccessible or fragmentary manuscripts are excluded. Further, readings from 71 ad-ditional manuscripts compared to H. C. Hoskier’s edition and 26 compared to Josef Schmid’s publications are also considered. The Apocalypse’s limited manuscript attestation facilitates the analysis of all eligible manuscripts. The study thus represents an unparallel-ed opportunity to reexamine the book’s textual tradition en masse.
One hundred and twenty-three Teststellen are drawn from seven categories of readings and examined. These include: 1) »Majority Text« readings (i. e., shared Αν Κ readings) that differ from NA28; 2) mutually exclusive Αν and K readings that differ from NA28; 3) read-ings that reflect Schmid’s »old text« divisions (P47 S/AC); 4) readings that differ among Hoskier’s families; 5) readings that vary among the Arethas (Αρ) and K texts; 6) problematic readings; and 7) readings considered important in the secondary literature. The manuscript attestation of every Teststelle is collated in order to establish trends and lay a foundation for further genealogical analysis.
The Teststellen data appear in a number of lists and undergo a series of analyses. The initial lists are descriptive and lay the groundwork for further evaluation. The first list, the »Collation Results«, follows the sequence of the 123 Teststellen and offers a glimpse into the manuscript attestation of each reading. The collations are the basis for determining the textual character of each manuscript and offer an initial assessment of readings and their potential textual relationships. The Coherence Based Genealogical Method will subsequently (and separately) offer a complete genealogical analysis of the entire tradition as part of the production of the Editio critica maior (ECM) of the Apocalypse.
The second list, the »Descriptive List«, covers the same material but organizes the data by manuscripts rather than Teststellen. Manuscript supplements, a common feature of this particular textual tradition, are also displayed as separate witnesses. The supplements often belong to different textual families and require independent analyses. This feature of hybrid manuscripts was initially discussed by Schmid and fully incorporated into his reconstruction of the book’s textual history. The separate display of manuscript supplements in the current edition is a departure from prior
Three Evaluative Lists follow. The first, »Sorting by Percentages«, features fourteen lists. Ten arrange manuscripts by percentages of agreement with NA28, K, Αν, Com, Special, and Singular Readings, two by percentages of agreement with the relative Majority, and two highlight differences between NA28 and the relative Majority readings. The sorting strategies allow different manuscript rank-ings to emerge alongside their respective readings. The measures further provide a panoramic view of the entire textual tradition. The stability of the K, Αν, and Com groupings is also underscored by the procedure, but sub-groupings remain unestablished through this sorting method.
The second evaluative list, the »Comparative List«, facilitates manuscript-to-manuscript comparisons, while the third, »Group-ing by Percentages of Agreement«, offers an assessment of sub-groups that are independent of the K, Αν, or Com text forms. The tables of the third list are organized by manuscript number and include data designed to isolate sub-groups and test claims about the traditional branches of the Apocalypse, the most notorious of which are P47 S and AC Oec, Schmid’s classic representation of the »old« text forms. Seven columns facilitate the comparative analysis of potential groups. A comparison of Codex Sinaiticus with P47 illustrates the function and yields of the method.
The first column begins with the main manuscript, Codex Sinaiticus. The second follows with the comparison manuscript, P47. The two set the stage for comparison. The third column fea-tures the percentage of agreement between the two at their shared Teststellen (58 %). The fourth displays the level of agreement (with-out the Teststellen) where Codex Sinaiticus agrees with the relative Majority (64 %). The fifth column shows the number of manuscripts with which P47 agrees with the same percentage as with Codex Sinaiticus (0 %). There are thus no other manuscripts, apart from Codex Sinaiticus, with which P47 displays a 58 % level of agreement. It is its nearest relative in the extant manuscript tradition.
The preliminary results are suggestive. The percentage of agreement between Codex Sinaiticus and P47, for example, raises ques-tions about their standing as representatives of the same text type. Codex Sinaiticus, it appears, does not have any relatives with which it agrees at 80 % or more, which is the TuT threshold for a text form or text type. Its nearest relative is P47, but their agreement level, as noted, is 58 %. The percentage increases to 64 %, if relative Majority readings are excluded. The percentage nonetheless remains well below the 80 % threshold. As such, the TuT data eliminate P47/S as a text form.
The codices Alexandrinus and Ephraemi Rescriptus face a similar fate. Their agreement level is 72 %. The level rises to 74 %, if the relative Majority readings are ignored. The percentage drops to 53 %, however, if the text of Oecumenius is included. Schmid had identified Oecumenius as a member of the AC Oec text form. Its inclusion with AC, however, erodes the percentage of agreement in TuT’s statistical model. Whether the calculations are of AC or AC Oec, the percentages fall below the 80 % threshold. Schmid’s P47 S and AC Oec text types are thus related but are not close enough to identify as text forms by TuT standards.
The retention of the 80 % threshold is surprising given that the Majority text has been relativized and every other criterion modified to accommodate this peculiar textual tradition. One would have thought the consideration of a relative text form standard would have been in order. Further, the exclusion of older forms on the basis of a preset percentage threatens to flatten Schmid’s nuanced characterization of the tradition. The 58 % (or 64 %) rate for P47 S and the 72 % (or 74 %) for AC appear to support Schmid’s claim that the two text forms regularly diverge from their own textual groupings. The 80 % standard thus tells us less than we imagine.
The TuT data nonetheless represent a considerable advance in the study of the Apocalypse’s manuscript tradition. The statistical pro-files secure a foundation for restructuring the entire textual tradition and are but one of a series of studies that will culminate with the reconstruction of the book’s Ausgangstext for the ECM. The clarity and precision of the TuT’s data effectively execute the goals for this particular stage of research. And careful use of the data in conjunc-tion with the broader history of textual research will no doubt produce valuable yields and perhaps even keep Housman’s ghost at bay.