Talk:Textual criticism/Archive 2

Comments in passing[edit]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

This article should mention, explain and link to variorum (I got there via critical apparatus).

Material and sources added ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Excellent points, Carcharoth. Thank you. I will work on these in the next day or so. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:30, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Sure! Do the honors... : ) ≈ jossi ≈ (talk)

Embedded citations[edit]

Embedded links should not be used in place of footnotes. In its early years Wikipedia allowed this as a form of citation—for example by adding a link after a sentence, like this [1], which looks like this. [1] This is no longer permitted. Embedded links should also not be used to place external links to websites in the body of an article. For example, do not spam links to company websites in article text, like this: "Apple, Inc. announced their latest product..." InterWikimedia links may be appropriate in the body of an article; see Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects.WP:CITE. This article has a number of embedded citations which appear to be against policy.-Civilizededucation^talk 16:31, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not seeing external links in the body, except for a couple that link to Bible verses, and one very oddly formatted one under "Other disputed NT Passages." I've frequently seen this with Bible verses, as they link to a look-up page where you can find the verse in a great number of versions and translations. I'm not sure how or why this convention arose with Bible verses. I assume what you're saying is that this link should be moved to a footnote even when it's appropriate to cite chapter and verse within the body of the article. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, that's what I am trying to say. The one under the section "Other disputed NT Passages" is odd as you say.The Antioch Bible Society <http://antiochbiblesociety.org/> ,... and there are others, eg.Johann Jakob Griesbach (1745–1812) published several editions of the New Testament. In his 1796 edition, he established fifteen critical rules.....-Civilizededucation^talk 18:02, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Time to break out holy text section?[edit]

Seems that this article is too detailed on the NT and yet not detailed enough in the other sections. Suggest summarize and break out:

pages: In ictu oculi (talk) 03:18, 30 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I fully support the proposal. Textual criticism can apply to Homer or Shakespeare too - I think it is contrived to but all these in one article because they happen to be sacred texts (why not textual criticism of the Bhagavad Ghita)? This is a long article and it should be broken up. To the proposal I would only add that we ned a general and generic article on textual criticism that introduces the topic and the basic methods. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:09, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this in general; however, there does need to be an article called "textual criticism" that explains what it is, its methodologies and aims (primarily to arrive at a text, and secondarily involving interpretation). The separate articles would deal with the application of textual criticism in various fields and the specific kinds of questions it can address. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:07, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The german article de:Textkritik des Neuen Testaments might be an example how the articles can develop. There is a gap in the en:wikipedia on this subject. There is so much more to be said about. --Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 17:21, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now i found two articles with many redundancies: List_of_major_textual_variants_in_the_New_Testament and Textual variants in the New Testament. The two existing articles should be merged into one and no redundancy to the new article . --Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 19:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

References[edit]

It seems Studies in Stemmatology" (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company) is listed twice in the references. There are two volumes for SiS. Perhaps they should be specified? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.133.222.248 (talk) 05:05, 19 May 2013 (UTC) [reply]

Validation[edit]

Have the methods of TC ever been subjected to a validation process that would verify them as correct? Are the results of TC studies considered to be objectively valid or are they subjective best-guesses to be accepted or rejected by the reader? Virgil H. Soule (talk) 17:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The methods have been validated many times, however the results remain uncertain to a small level, depending on the quality of the surviving texts. How can it be validated? For example you have three manuskripts of 14th and 15th century of different origins, that differ in many details. You can use the method to find out which variants are older. In some cases you have other manuskripts of 8th century or a translation of 2nd century and can check if the results of TC are correct and in most cases the resulting text of TC is identical or very close to the older manuscripts.--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 07:03, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Percentage of accuracy NT[edit]

There have been added two sections about percentage of accuracy which are absolutely wrong in this isolated form. As everyone can see in the latest editions of Nestle-Aland, there is almost no sentence without variants. You can claim that high percentage only by neglecting "minor" errors. Now look at this sentence in the source http://www.str.org/articles/is-the-new-testament-text-reliable#.Un-sEiemZ4w: Most of the differences are completely inconsequential--spelling errors, inverted phrases and the like. A side by side comparison between the two main text families (the Majority Text and the modern critical text) shows agreement a full 98% of the time. You can get this figure only by the fact, that the critical text has already sorted out most of the variants. The critical text excludes all variants of spelling errors, they will not even be mentioned so non of the spelling errors is included in this 98% figure. The critical text also has to choose from the remaining variants. Many variants don´t affect the sense of the text such as differing order of the words but they still are variants and just ignored by this percentage. Very often it excludes the variants of the western text, so the variants of the western text are not included in this figure. Most of the time the variants of the caesarean text is excluded, so it will not show up in the percentage. If you compare only two forms of texts you of course get less dissagreement than when you compare all texts. The excluded variants don´t cease to exist just because they are not recognised as authentic by the critical editions. Have a look on Nestle-Aland and you will find, there is allmost no sentence that hasn´t two or more variants, some verses have 10 variant readings in different parts of the verse. However just one of this variants is compared to the majority text and the other nine are not counted. This figures are a cheat.--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 16:17, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Compare what is written here: Novum_Testamentum_Graece#Accuracy_of_the_New_Testament--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 01:51, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

thank you for the correction. you're right. sorry about that - i'll be more careful to use the accurate wording in the next edit. nevertheless, i wouldn't call the figure a cheat, however. the above quote means that the raw texts differ in inconsequential manners, and when we compare the two texts (Alexandrian and Byzantine) after they have gone through textual criticism, they are 98% in agreement with each other despite their vastly different backgrounds. in any case, i botched it with my poor wording and carelessness. once again, my apologies. 76.88.102.40 (talk) 04:44, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is another source of trouble: The critical text contains some passages that are marked with double square brackets. This indicates passages which for sure are not part of the original text. This passages include Mark 16:9-19, John 7:53-11 and some other minor passages. If you compare it with the byzantine text, you´d have to omit this passages. The sources you have chosen have an apologetic aim. We should stick to sources of scientific value if ever possible. On the other hand different readings should not be accounted only as flaws. Variant readings are something that enriches the tradition and they are a kind of interpretation of the text, a part of the solution of the hermeneutical problem. Variant readings are a response to difficult parts of the bible and represent the way the writer(s) understands their sources. Many variants are deliberate changes to present the text more clearly, so we should consider it as a help towards a better understandig. The text glows in different colours, but it is still bright light. There "is" a reason, why the mentioned passages have found their way into the bibles. --Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 20:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Old Testament[edit]

Textual criticism of the OT is remarkably different to other literature. We have quite a few manuskripts of the masoretic text. There are no significant differences between the masoretic manuskripts. You can take any of these and each of them may contain maybe 20 to 30 minor changes like a jod instead of waw or plene instead of defective writing or occasionaly an omitted letter, that don´t affect the sense in any way. It makes allmost no difference if you take the aleppo codex or codex leningradensis. Surely any modern edition of the bible contains more errors than these manuscripts. However there are siginificant differences to the version of the septuagint and to the samaritic pentateuch, there are also differences to the manuscripts of Qumran. Some of the manuscripts of Qumran are related to the septuagint, some are similar to the samaritic pentateuch, some are near to the masoretic text so the other sources represent also dffferent valuable versions of their own right. Whenever it comes to textual criticism the other versions and the Qumran scrolls may not be omitted.--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 12:24, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that, despite what this article currently claims, the original urtext of the Hebrew Bible (assuming any such text ever existed in the case of, say, the Pentateuch) were almost all written hundreds of years before the Dead Sea Scrolls were copied. The Masoretic text itself contains more variation from the Dead Sea Scrolls than within itself, and neither of them can tell us anything about consistency with the "original" from centuries before our earliest extant copies... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:16, 28 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Giftzwerg 88, what are you saying, in terms of how the article should be written? PiCo (talk) 14:00, 29 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whaaaaaaat??? "Textual criticism is ...the identification and removal of transcription errors in texts, both manuscripts and printed books." No it's not! Find a good RS and get a definition from there! PiCo (talk) 14:03, 29 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Ehrman 2006"?[edit]

Whose Word Is It? is just the UK title for Misquoting Jesus, originally published in 2005. Citing these as though they were two separate books is confusing. I think we should replace all citations of Ehrman 2006 with Ehrman 2005. The problem is that without copies of both editions I can't check the page numbers... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:07, 28 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My article split[edit]

There are objections voiced against my split of Textual criticism of the New Testament out of this one, according to my understanding of Wikipedia:Summary style. and per suggestion voiced years ago: #Time to break out holy text section? Please comment. - üser:Altenmann >t 16:54, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

pre-printing secular text crit[edit]

Presently reads:

"However, the application of textual criticism to non-religious works does not antedate the invention of printing."

This is nonsense, can someone who has a minute fix this?

For example

the Alexandria Library  “stimulated an intensive editorial program that spawned the development of critical editions, textual exegesis

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-places/the-ancient-library-of-alexandria/

https://books.google.be/books?id=qNCDdy6fD18C&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200&dq=textual+criticism+at+the+library+of+alexandria&source=bl&ots=BATs6lAtIC&sig=Ayj9Aqvjl43q7KaWWhzfpNE057Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLjYPI1dfLAhWFWxoKHamBCicQ6AEIOzAF#v=onepage&q=textual%20criticism%20at%20the%20library%20of%20alexandria&f=false

https://books.google.be/books?id=TT8BAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=textual+criticism+at+the+library+of+alexandria&source=bl&ots=WuswZNc8GD&sig=R1FxsntWUsepwDY8-C1Q4x41Qsc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLjYPI1dfLAhWFWxoKHamBCicQ6AEIIzAA#v=onepage&q=textual%20criticism%20at%20the%20library%20of%20alexandria&f=false

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.180.88.220 (talk) 20:44, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

History of Textual Criticism: separate page?[edit]

The early history of textual criticism, up to and including Lachmann, say - now very summarily covered on this page - may merit a separate page, as it covers large parts of humanistic endeavours from the Library of Alexandria via the humanists (Filelfo, Valla, Petrarch, Bracciolini, etc.) up to the Altertumswissenschaft and the folklorists of Late 18th early 19th Germany. Wikiproject Textual Scholarship Mountainmists (talk) 08:54, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bias towards textual criticism of religious texts.[edit]

This article is biased towards biblical textual criticism. There should be a separate article entitled "Biblical Textual Criticism," while this article should refocus to be more general. The Wikiproject Textual Scholarship (KU Leuven) is working to improve the neutrality of the article and on the inclusion of new developments within the field. Bordalejo (talk) 08:54, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction to article[edit]

The introduction to this article is pretty bad. It has way too many unnecessary examples, is grammatically unpleasant, and states a lot of information that seems too superfluous to be in the introduction. Jay Schro (talk) 03:16, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, but I didn't write on this article[edit]

Please,

My PC was off during september/december 2019. I did not write anything on this period.--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 01:07, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong definition[edit]

Textual Criticism is not a branch including Phylology. It's just the opposite: Phylology is a branch including Textual Criticism.

Phylology also includes Criticism, History, Linguistics, Languages (tongue), and whatelse about LOGOS, ok? Phylo=lover/friend + LOGY/LOGOS=discourse. So I forgot this: the etymology also belongs to Phylology. Grammar too.

If the Wikipedia wants my colaboration, just ask for, but do not register on my history many wrong ideas by other one--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 01:21, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Definition and the lead[edit]

I reverted an edit of the lead by Camillo Cavalcanti because the cited sources did not back up the claims being made. That user then made another edit which was the same as the last with the addition of a large quote from Ferdinand de Saussure. To avoid starting an edit war, I suggest we have a discussion here about the content of the lead and try to reach consensus. Camillo Cavalcanti wants the lead to say that textual criticism "is the initial part[1] of philology[2]". For the phrase "initial part" they cite the introductory chapter of Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2012). I cannot find Tov saying that textual criticism is the initial part of philology in that chapter. In fact, Tov does not mention philology at all. Amazon has a preview where one can read some of that chapter if anyone wants to have a look. Tov says,

Textual criticism deals with the origin and nature of all the witnesses of a text, in our case the biblical books. This analysis often involves an attempt to discover the original form of details in a composition, or even of large stretches of text, although what exactly constitutes (an) "original text(s)" is subject to much debate. In the course of this inquiry, attempts are made to describe how the texts were written, changed, and transmitted from one generation to the next. Those scholars who express a view on the originality of readings do so while evaluating their comparative value. This comparison - the central area of the textual praxis - refers to the value of the readings (variants) included in the textual witness.
— Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible

As there are only two pages in Tov that deal with textual criticism in general (as opposed to textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible specifically), I have to assume Camillo Cavalcanti means to cite these first two pages (pp.1-2). The second citation ([2]) is to the page for "Philology" on the Ancient History Encyclopedia. At the end of this short article (on philology, not textual criticism) it mentions "textual philology editing", which it says "is yet another branch of philology with (sic) includes the study of texts and their history in a sense including textual criticism". This is much better than the first source, but it is still very brief and vague. Does the author mean that textual philology editing and textual criticism are the same thing? Or just similar things? If the former, why use two different terms? More evidence that this understanding reflects general scholarly practice is required. Moreover, the cited source does not justify Camillo Cavalcanti's removal of the references to textual scholarship and literary criticism in the opening sentence of the lead. Camillo Cavalcanti also re-added other statements that I already removed due to lacking sources and being poorly written. In my judgement, the content of the lead as reformulated by Camillo Cavalcanti has not been properly justified by the sources provided, thus I reverted his edit once more. As for the new addition of the large quote from Saussure, it only serves to expand an already bloated lead. While I don't object to including Saussure in general, there is no need to expand the lead, and in any case the quote from Saussure is mainly talking about philology. From these edits I think it's reasonable to suggest that Camillo Cavalcanti wants to edit the page to meet their understanding of the relationship between textual criticism and philology (see also the talk section above). While such views can be accommodated, they should be properly sourced and part of a balanced representation of the views of expects. I'd like to end by noting that over ten years ago this article was once considered a potential good article. A look at the lead from then shows a marked difference in clarity and length. Hopefully we can all work together to remedy this situation. Retinalsummer (talk) 15:56, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Stemmatics[edit]

The sentence here "the first known example of such a stemma, albeit with the name, dates from 1827". Albeit makes no sense here. Should it be "albeit without the name" or "with the name" Newystats (talk) 21:09, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've edited to "albeit without the name", revert if I'm wrong. Newystats (talk) 19:41, 25 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

'Eclectic' versus 'Critical'[edit]

This article takes 'eclectic' as a synonym of 'critical'. The former is a pejorative term sometimes applied by Bedierists to critical editions. However, whereas the text of a critical edition is established on the basis of a stemma, the construction of a genuinely eclectic edition is not guided by any such generally agreed principle. There is no reason to put the term 'critical' in quotation marks in the article. 'Critical edition' is the correct and accepted term.