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Textual criticism is a branch of
textual scholarship Textual scholarship (or textual studies) is an umbrella term for disciplines that deal with describing, transcribing, editing or annotating texts and physical documents. Overview Textual research is mainly historically oriented. Textual scholars ...
, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in dates from the earliest writing in cuneiform, impressed on clay, for example, to multiple unpublished versions of a 21st-century author's work. Historically,
scribes A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing. The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promin ...
who were paid to copy documents may have been literate, but many were simply copyists, mimicking the shapes of letters without necessarily understanding what they meant. This means that unintentional alterations were common when copying manuscripts by hand. Intentional alterations may have been made as well, for example, the censoring of printed work for political, religious or cultural reasons. The objective of the textual critic's work is to provide a better understanding of the creation and historical transmission of the text and its variants. This understanding may lead to the production of a critical edition containing a scholarly curated text. If a scholar has several versions of a manuscript but no known original, then established methods of textual criticism can be used to seek to reconstruct the original text as closely as possible. The same methods can be used to reconstruct intermediate versions, or
recension Recension is the practice of editing or revising a text based on critical analysis. When referring to manuscripts, this may be a revision by another author. The term is derived from Latin ''recensio'' ("review, analysis"). In textual criticism (as ...
s, of a document's transcription history, depending on the number and quality of the text available. On the other hand, the one original text that a scholar theorizes to exist is referred to as the urtext (in the context of Biblical studies),
archetype The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...
or autograph; however, there is not necessarily a single original text for every group of texts. For example, if a story was spread by
oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985) ...
, and then later written down by different people in different locations, the versions can vary greatly. There are many approaches or methods to the practice of textual criticism, notably eclecticism, stemmatics, and copy-text editing. Quantitative techniques are also used to determine the relationships between witnesses to a text, with methods from evolutionary biology (
phylogenetics In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups ...
) appearing to be effective on a range of traditions. In some domains, such as religious and classical text editing, the phrase "lower criticism" refers to textual criticism and " higher criticism" to the endeavor to establish the authorship, date, and place of composition of the original
text Text may refer to: Written word * Text (literary theory), any object that can be read, including: **Religious text, a writing that a religious tradition considers to be sacred **Text, a verse or passage from scripture used in expository preachin ...
.


History

Textual criticism has been practiced for over two thousand years, as one of the
philological Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as t ...
arts. Early textual critics, especially the librarians of Hellenistic Alexandria in the last two centuries BC, were concerned with preserving the works of antiquity, and this continued through the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
into the early modern period and the invention of the
printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...
. Textual criticism was an important aspect of the work of many Renaissance humanists, such as Desiderius Erasmus, who edited the Greek
New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
, creating the ''
Textus Receptus ''Textus Receptus'' (Latin: "received text") refers to all printed editions of the Greek New Testament from Erasmus's ''Novum Instrumentum omne'' (1516) to the 1633 Elzevir edition. It was the most commonly used text type for Protestant deno ...
''. In Italy, scholars such as Petrarch and
Poggio Bracciolini Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (11 February 1380 – 30 October 1459), usually referred to simply as Poggio Bracciolini, was an Italian scholar and an early Renaissance humanist. He was responsible for rediscovering and recovering many classi ...
collected and edited many Latin manuscripts, while a new spirit of critical enquiry was boosted by the attention to textual states, for example in the work of
Lorenzo Valla Lorenzo Valla (; also Latinized as Laurentius; 14071 August 1457) was an Italian Renaissance humanist, rhetorician, educator, scholar, and Catholic priest. He is best known for his historical-critical textual analysis that proved that the ''Do ...
on the purported
Donation of Constantine The ''Donation of Constantine'' ( ) is a forged Roman imperial decree by which the 4th-century emperor Constantine the Great supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope. Composed probably in ...
. Many ancient works, such as the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
and the
Greek tragedies Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy. Greek tragedy is widely believed t ...
, survive in hundreds of copies, and the relationship of each copy to the original may be unclear. Textual scholars have debated for centuries which sources are most closely derived from the original, hence which readings in those sources are correct. Although texts such as Greek plays presumably had one original, the question of whether some biblical books, like the
Gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...
s, ever had just one original has been discussed.Tanselle, (1989) ''A Rationale of Textual Criticism''. Interest in applying textual criticism to the
Quran The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...
has also developed after the discovery of the Sana'a manuscripts in 1972, which possibly date back to the seventh to eighth centuries. In the English language, the works of
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
have been a particularly fertile ground for textual criticism—both because the texts, as transmitted, contain a considerable amount of variation, and because the effort and expense of producing superior editions of his works have always been widely viewed as worthwhile. The principles of textual criticism, although originally developed and refined for works of antiquity and the Bible, and, for Anglo-American Copy-Text editing, Shakespeare, have been applied to many works, from (near-)contemporary texts to the earliest known written documents. Ranging from ancient
Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
and
Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
to the twentieth century, textual criticism covers a period of about five millennia.


Basic notions and objectives

The basic problem, as described by Paul Maas, is as follows: Maas comments further that "A dictation revised by the author must be regarded as equivalent to an autograph manuscript". The lack of autograph manuscripts applies to many cultures other than Greek and Roman. In such a situation, a key objective becomes the identification of the first ''exemplar'' before any split in the tradition. That exemplar is known as the ''
archetype The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...
''. "If we succeed in establishing the text of he archetype the ''constitutio'' (reconstruction of the original) is considerably advanced." The textual critic's ultimate objective is the production of a "critical edition". This contains the text that the author has determined most closely approximates the original, and is accompanied by an ''apparatus criticus'' or
critical apparatus A critical apparatus ( la, apparatus criticus) in textual criticism of primary source material, is an organized system of notations to represent, in a single text, the complex history of that text in a concise form useful to diligent readers and ...
. The critical apparatus presents the author's work in three parts: first, a list or description of the evidence that the editor used (names of manuscripts, or abbreviations called
sigla Scribal abbreviations or sigla (singular: siglum) are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mechanica ...
); second, the editor's analysis of that evidence (sometimes a simple likelihood rating),; and third, a record of rejected variants of the text (often in order of preference).


Process

Before inexpensive mechanical printing, literature was copied by hand, and many variations were introduced by copyists. The age of printing made the scribal profession effectively redundant. Printed editions, while less susceptible to the proliferation of variations likely to arise during manual transmission, are nonetheless not immune to introducing variations from an author's autograph. Instead of a scribe miscopying his source, a compositor or a printing shop may read or typeset a work in a way that differs from the autograph. Since each scribe or printer commits different errors, reconstruction of the lost original is often aided by a selection of readings taken from many sources. An edited text that draws from multiple sources is said to be ''eclectic''. In contrast to this approach, some textual critics prefer to identify the single best surviving text, and not to combine readings from multiple sources. When comparing different documents, or "witnesses", of a single, original text, the observed differences are called ''variant readings'', or simply ''variants'' or ''readings''. It is not always apparent which single variant represents the author's original work. The process of textual criticism seeks to explain how each variant may have entered the text, either by accident (duplication or omission) or intention (harmonization or censorship), as scribes or supervisors transmitted the original author's text by copying it. The textual critic's task, therefore, is to sort through the variants, eliminating those most likely to be ''un''-original, hence establishing a critical text, or critical edition, that is intended to best approximate the original. At the same time, the critical text should document variant readings, so the relation of extant witnesses to the reconstructed original is apparent to a reader of the critical edition. In establishing the critical text, the textual critic considers both "external" evidence (the age, provenance, and affiliation of each witness) and "internal" or "physical" considerations (what the author and scribes, or printers, were likely to have done). The collation of all known variants of a text is referred to as a variorum, namely a work of textual criticism whereby all variations and emendations are set side by side so that a reader can track how textual decisions have been made in the preparation of a text for publication. The
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
and the works of
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
have often been the subjects of variorum editions, although the same techniques have been applied with less frequency to many other works, such as Walt Whitman's ''
Leaves of Grass ''Leaves of Grass'' is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. Though it was first published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting ''Leaves of Grass'', revising it multiple times until his death. T ...
'', and the prose writings of Edward Fitzgerald. In practice, citation of manuscript evidence implies any of several methodologies. The ideal, but most costly, method is physical inspection of the manuscript itself; alternatively, published photographs or facsimile editions may be inspected. This method involves paleographical analysis—interpretation of handwriting, incomplete letters and even reconstruction of lacunae. More typically, editions of manuscripts are consulted, which have done this paleographical work already.


Eclecticism

Eclecticism refers to the practice of consulting a wide diversity of witnesses to a particular original. The practice is based on the principle that the more independent transmission histories there are, the less likely they will be to reproduce the same errors. What one omits, the others may retain; what one adds, the others are unlikely to add. Eclecticism allows inferences to be drawn regarding the original text, based on the evidence of contrasts between witnesses. Eclectic readings also normally give an impression of the number of witnesses to each available reading. Although a reading supported by the majority of witnesses is frequently preferred, this does not follow automatically. For example, a second edition of a Shakespeare play may include an addition alluding to an event known to have happened between the two editions. Although nearly all subsequent manuscripts may have included the addition, textual critics may reconstruct the original without the addition. The result of the process is a text with readings drawn from many witnesses. It is not a copy of any particular manuscript, and may deviate from the majority of existing manuscripts. In a purely eclectic approach, no single witness is theoretically favored. Instead, the critic forms opinions about individual witnesses, relying on both external and internal evidence. Since the mid-19th century, eclecticism, in which there is no ''a priori'' bias to a single manuscript, has been the dominant method of editing the Greek text of the New Testament (currently, the United Bible Society, 5th ed. and Nestle-Åland, 28th ed.). Even so, the oldest manuscripts, being of the Alexandrian text-type, are the most favored, and the critical text has an Alexandrian disposition.Aland, B. 1994, p. 138


External evidence

External evidence is evidence of each physical witness, its date, source, and relationship to other known witnesses. Critics will often prefer the readings supported by the oldest witnesses. Since errors tend to accumulate, older manuscripts should have fewer errors. Readings supported by a majority of witnesses are also usually preferred, since these are less likely to reflect accidents or individual biases. For the same reasons, the most geographically diverse witnesses are preferred. Some manuscripts show evidence that particular care was taken in their composition, for example, by including alternative readings in their margins, demonstrating that more than one prior copy (exemplar) was consulted in producing the current one. Other factors being equal, these are the ''best'' witnesses. The role of the textual critic is necessary when these basic criteria are in conflict. For instance, there will typically be fewer early copies, and a larger number of later copies. The textual critic will attempt to balance these criteria, to determine the original text. There are many other more sophisticated considerations. For example, readings that depart from the known practice of a scribe or a given period may be deemed more reliable, since a scribe is unlikely on his own initiative to have departed from the usual practice.Hartin, Petzer, Mannig 2001, pp. 47–53


Internal evidence

Internal evidence is evidence that comes from the text itself, independent of the physical characteristics of the document. Various considerations can be used to decide which reading is the most likely to be original. Sometimes these considerations can be in conflict. Two common considerations have the Latin names '' lectio brevior'' (shorter reading) and ''lectio difficilior'' (more difficult reading). The first is the general observation that scribes tended to add words, for clarification or out of habit, more often than they removed them. The second, '' lectio difficilior potior'' (the harder reading is stronger), recognizes the tendency for harmonization—resolving apparent inconsistencies in the text. Applying this principle leads to taking the more difficult (unharmonized) reading as being more likely to be the original. Such cases also include scribes simplifying and smoothing texts they did not fully understand. Another scribal tendency is called homoioteleuton, meaning "similar endings". Homoioteleuton occurs when two words/phrases/lines end with the similar sequence of letters. The scribe, having finished copying the first, skips to the second, omitting all intervening words. ''Homoioarche'' refers to eye-skip when the ''beginnings'' of two lines are similar. The critic may also examine the other writings of the author to decide what words and grammatical constructions match his style. The evaluation of internal evidence also provides the critic with information that helps him evaluate the reliability of individual manuscripts. Thus, the consideration of internal and external evidence is related. After considering all relevant factors, the textual critic seeks the reading that best explains how the other readings would arise. That reading is then the most likely candidate to have been original.


Canons of textual criticism

Various scholars have developed guidelines, or ''canons'' of textual criticism, to guide the exercise of the critic's judgment in determining the best readings of a text. One of the earliest was Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752), who in 1734 produced an edition of the Greek New Testament. In his commentary, he established the rule ''Proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua'', ("the harder reading is to be preferred").
Johann Jakob Griesbach Johann Jakob Griesbach (4 January 1745 – 24 March 1812) was a German biblical textual critic. Griesbach's fame rests upon his work in New Testament criticism, in which he inaugurated a new epoch. His solution to the synoptic problem bears his na ...
(1745–1812) published several editions of the New Testament. In his 1796 edition, he established fifteen critical rules. Among them was a variant of Bengel's rule, ''Lectio difficilior potior'', "the harder reading is better." Another was ''Lectio brevior praeferenda'', "the shorter reading is better", based on the idea that scribes were more likely to add than to delete. This rule cannot be applied uncritically, as scribes may omit material inadvertently. Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901) and Fenton Hort (1828–1892) published an edition of the New Testament in Greek in 1881. They proposed nine critical rules, including a version of Bengel's rule, "The reading is less likely to be original that shows a disposition to smooth away difficulties." They also argued that "Readings are approved or rejected by reason of the quality, and not the number, of their supporting witnesses", and that "The reading is to be preferred that most fitly explains the existence of the others." Many of these rules, although originally developed for biblical textual criticism, have wide applicability to any text susceptible to errors of transmission.


Limitations of eclecticism

Since the canons of criticism are highly susceptible to interpretation, and at times even contradict each other, they may be employed to justify a result that fits the textual critic's aesthetic or theological agenda. Starting in the 19th century, scholars sought more rigorous methods to guide editorial judgment. Stemmatics and copy-text editing – while both eclectic, in that they permit the editor to select readings from multiple sources – sought to reduce subjectivity by establishing one or a few witnesses presumably as being favored by "objective" criteria. The citing of sources used, and alternate readings, and the use of original text and images helps readers and other critics determine to an extent the depth of research of the critic, and to independently verify their work.


Stemmatics


Overview

Stemmatics or stemmatology is a rigorous approach to textual criticism. Karl Lachmann (1793–1851) greatly contributed to making this method famous, even though he did not invent it. The method takes its name from the word ''stemma''. The
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
word Liddell, H.G. & Scott, R. (1940). ''A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press. and its
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
in
classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later period ...
Lewis, C.T. & Short, C. (1879). ''A Latin dictionary founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press.Saalfeld, G.A.E.A. (1884). ''Tensaurus Italograecus. Ausführliches historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Griechischen Lehn- und Fremdwörter im Lateinischen.'' Wien: Druck und Verlag von Carl Gerold's Sohn, Buchhändler der Kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften. may refer to " family trees". This specific meaning shows the relationships of the surviving witnesses (the first known example of such a stemma, albeit without the name, dates from 1827). The family tree is also referred to as a ''
cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...
''.Mulken & van Pieter 1996, p. 84 The method works from the principle that "community of error implies community of origin". That is, if two witnesses have a number of errors in common, it may be presumed that they were derived from a common intermediate source, called a ''hyparchetype''. Relations between the lost intermediates are determined by the same process, placing all extant manuscripts in a family tree or '' stemma codicum'' descended from a single ''archetype''. The process of constructing the stemma is called ''recension'', or the Latin ''recensio''.Wilson and Reynolds 1974, p. 186 Having completed the stemma, the critic proceeds to the next step, called ''selection'' or ''selectio'', where the text of the archetype is determined by examining variants from the closest hyparchetypes to the archetype and selecting the best ones. If one reading occurs more often than another at the same level of the tree, then the dominant reading is selected. If two competing readings occur equally often, then the editor uses judgment to select the correct reading.Roseman 1999, p. 73 After ''selectio'', the text may still contain errors, since there may be passages where no source preserves the correct reading. The step of ''examination'', or ''examinatio'' is applied to find corruptions. Where the editor concludes that the text is corrupt, it is corrected by a process called "emendation", or ''emendatio'' (also sometimes called ''divinatio''). Emendations not supported by any known source are sometimes called ''conjectural'' emendations.McCarter 1986, p. 62 The process of ''selectio'' resembles eclectic textual criticism, but applied to a restricted set of hypothetical hyparchetypes. The steps of ''examinatio'' and ''emendatio'' resemble copy-text editing. In fact, the other techniques can be seen as special cases of stemmatics in which a rigorous family history of the text cannot be determined but only approximated. If it seems that one manuscript is by far the best text, then copy text editing is appropriate, and if it seems that a group of manuscripts are good, then eclecticism on that group would be proper. The Hodges–Farstad edition of the Greek New Testament attempts to use stemmatics for some portions.


Phylogenetics

Phylogenetics In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups ...
is a technique borrowed from
biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
, where it was originally named ''phylogenetic systematics'' by Willi Hennig. In biology, the technique is used to determine the
evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
ary relationships between different
species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
. In its application in textual criticism, the text of a number of different witnesses may be entered into a computer, which records all the differences between them, or derived from an existing apparatus. The manuscripts are then grouped according to their shared characteristics. The difference between phylogenetics and more traditional forms of statistical analysis is that, rather than simply arranging the manuscripts into rough groupings according to their overall similarity, phylogenetics assumes that they are part of a branching family tree and uses that assumption to derive relationships between them. This makes it more like an automated approach to stemmatics. However, where there is a difference, the computer does not attempt to decide which reading is closer to the original text, and so does not indicate which branch of the tree is the "root"—which manuscript tradition is closest to the original. Other types of evidence must be used for that purpose. Phylogenetics faces the same difficulty as textual criticism: the appearance of characteristics in descendants of an ancestor other than by direct copying (or miscopying) of the ancestor, for example where a scribe combines readings from two or more different manuscripts ("contamination"). The same phenomenon is widely present among living organisms, as instances of
horizontal gene transfer Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) or lateral gene transfer (LGT) is the movement of genetic material between unicellular and/or multicellular organisms other than by the ("vertical") transmission of DNA from parent to offspring (reproduction). H ...
(or lateral gene transfer) and genetic recombination, particularly among bacteria. Further exploration of the applicability of the different methods for coping with these problems across both living organisms and textual traditions is a promising area of study. Software developed for use in biology has been applied successfully to textual criticism; for example, it is being used by the Canterbury Tales Project to determine the relationship between the 84 surviving manuscripts and four early printed editions of '' The Canterbury Tales''. Shaw's edition of Dante's ''Commedia'' uses phylogenetic and traditional methods alongside each other in a comprehensive exploration of relations among seven early witnesses to Dante's text.


Limitations and criticism

The stemmatic method assumes that each witness is derived from one, and only one, predecessor. If a scribe refers to more than one source when creating her or his copy, then the new copy will not clearly fall into a single branch of the family tree. In the stemmatic method, a manuscript that is derived from more than one source is said to be ''contaminated''. The method also assumes that scribes only make new errorsthey do not attempt to correct the errors of their predecessors. When a text has been improved by the scribe, it is said to be ''sophisticated'', but "sophistication" impairs the method by obscuring a document's relationship to other witnesses, and making it more difficult to place the manuscript correctly in the stemma. The stemmatic method requires the textual critic to group manuscripts by commonality of error. It is required, therefore, that the critic can distinguish erroneous readings from correct ones. This assumption has often come under attack.
W. W. Greg Sir Walter Wilson Greg (9 July 1875 – 4 March 1959), known professionally as W. W. Greg, was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century. Family and education Greg was born at Wimbledon Common in 1875. H ...
noted: "That if a scribe makes a mistake he will inevitably produce nonsense is the tacit and wholly unwarranted assumption."
Franz Anton Knittel Franz Anton Knittel (April 3, 1721 – December 10, 1792) was a German, Lutheran orthodox theologian, priest, and palaeographer. He examined palimpsests' text of the ''Codex Guelferbytanus 64 Weissenburgensis'' and deciphered text of Codex Ca ...
defended the traditional point of view in theology and was against the modern textual criticism. He defended an authenticity of the Pericopa Adulterae (John 7:53–8:11), Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7), and
Testimonium Flavianum The extant manuscripts of the book ''Antiquities of the Jews'', written by the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus around AD 93–94, contain two references to Jesus of Nazareth and one reference to John the Baptist. The first a ...
. According to him,
Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' w ...
in his Novum Instrumentum omne did not incorporate the ''Comma'' from Codex Montfortianus, because of grammar differences, but used Complutensian Polyglotta. According to him, the ''Comma'' was known for
Tertullian Tertullian (; la, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus; 155 AD – 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of L ...
. The stemmatic method's final step is ''emendatio'', also sometimes referred to as "conjectural emendation". But, in fact, the critic employs conjecture at every step of the process. Some of the method's rules that are designed to reduce the exercise of editorial judgment do not necessarily produce the correct result. For example, where there are more than two witnesses at the same level of the tree, normally the critic will select the dominant reading. However, it may be no more than fortuitous that more witnesses have survived that present a particular reading. A plausible reading that occurs less often may, nevertheless, be the correct one. Lastly, the stemmatic method assumes that every extant witness is derived, however remotely, from a single source. It does not account for the possibility that the original author may have revised her or his work, and that the text could have existed at different times in more than one authoritative version.


Best-text editing

The critic Joseph Bédier (1864–1938), who had worked with stemmatics, launched an attack on that method in 1928. He surveyed editions of medieval French texts that were produced with the stemmatic method, and found that textual critics tended overwhelmingly to produce bifid trees, divided into just two branches. He concluded that this outcome was unlikely to have occurred by chance, and that therefore, the method was tending to produce bipartite stemmas regardless of the actual history of the witnesses. He suspected that editors tended to favor trees with two branches, as this would maximize the opportunities for editorial judgment (as there would be no third branch to "break the tie" whenever the witnesses disagreed). He also noted that, for many works, more than one reasonable stemma could be postulated, suggesting that the method was not as rigorous or as scientific as its proponents had claimed. Bédier's doubts about the stemmatic method led him to consider whether it could be dropped altogether. As an alternative to stemmatics, Bédier proposed a Best-text editing method, in which a single textual witness, judged to be of a 'good' textual state by the editor, is emended as lightly as possible for manifest transmission mistakes, but left otherwise unchanged. This makes a Best-text edition essentially a documentary edition. For an example one may refer to Eugene Vinaver's edition of the Winchester Manuscript of Malory's '' Le Morte d'Arthur''.


Copy-text editing

When copy-text editing, the scholar fixes errors in a base text, often with the help of other witnesses. Often, the base text is selected from the oldest manuscript of the text, but in the early days of printing, the copy text was often a manuscript that was at hand. Using the copy-text method, the critic examines the base text and makes corrections (called emendations) in places where the base text appears wrong to the critic. This can be done by looking for places in the base text that do not make sense or by looking at the text of other witnesses for a superior reading. Close-call decisions are usually resolved in favor of the copy-text. The first published, printed edition of the Greek
New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
was produced by this method.
Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' w ...
, the editor, selected a manuscript from the local Dominican monastery in Basle and corrected its obvious errors by consulting other local manuscripts. The Westcott and Hort text, which was the basis for the Revised Version of the English bible, also used the copy-text method, using the
Codex Vaticanus The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), designated by siglum B or 03 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), δ 1 ( von Soden), is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old ...
as the base manuscript.


McKerrow's concept of copy-text

The bibliographer Ronald B. McKerrow introduced the term ''copy-text'' in his 1904 edition of the works of
Thomas Nashe Thomas Nashe (baptised November 1567 – c. 1601; also Nash) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel ''The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including ''Pierce Penniless,'' ...
, defining it as "the text used in each particular case as the basis of mine". McKerrow was aware of the limitations of the stemmatic method, and believed it was more prudent to choose one particular text that was thought to be particularly reliable, and then to emend it only where the text was obviously corrupt. The French critic Joseph Bédier likewise became disenchanted with the stemmatic method, and concluded that the editor should choose the best available text, and emend it as little as possible. In McKerrow's method as originally introduced, the copy-text was not necessarily the earliest text. In some cases, McKerrow would choose a later witness, noting that "if an editor has reason to suppose that a certain text embodies later corrections than any other, and at the same time has no ground for disbelieving that these corrections, or some of them at least, are the work of the author, he has no choice but to make that text the basis of his reprint". By 1939, in his ''Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare'', McKerrow had changed his mind about this approach, as he feared that a later editioneven if it contained authorial correctionswould "deviate more widely than the earliest print from the author's original manuscript". He therefore concluded that the correct procedure would be "produced by using the earliest 'good' print as copy-text and inserting into it, from the first edition which contains them, such corrections as appear to us to be derived from the author". But, fearing the arbitrary exercise of editorial judgment, McKerrow stated that, having concluded that a later edition had substantive revisions attributable to the author, "we must accept all the alterations of that edition, saving any which seem obvious blunders or misprints".


W. W. Greg's rationale of copy-text

Anglo-American textual criticism in the last half of the 20th century came to be dominated by a landmark 1950 essay by Sir Walter W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text". Greg proposed: Greg observed that compositors at printing shops tended to follow the "substantive" readings of their copy faithfully, except when they deviated unintentionally; but that "as regards accidentals they will normally follow their own habits or inclination, though they may, for various reasons and to varying degrees, be influenced by their copy". He concluded: Greg's view, in short, was that the "copy-text can be allowed no over-riding or even preponderant authority so far as substantive readings are concerned". The choice between reasonable competing readings, he said: Although Greg argued that editors should be free to use their judgment to choose between competing substantive readings, he suggested that an editor should defer to the copy-text when "the claims of two readings ... appear to be exactly balanced. ... In such a case, while there can be no logical reason for giving preference to the copy-text, in practice, if there is no reason for altering its reading, the obvious thing seems to be to let it stand." The "exactly balanced" variants are said to be ''indifferent''. Editors who follow Greg's rationale produce ''eclectic'' editions, in that the authority for the "accidentals" is derived from one particular source (usually the earliest one) that the editor considers to be authoritative, but the authority for the "substantives" is determined in each individual case according to the editor's judgment. The resulting text, except for the accidentals, is constructed without relying predominantly on any one witness.


Greg–Bowers–Tanselle

W. W. Greg did not live long enough to apply his rationale of copy-text to any actual editions of works. His rationale was adopted and significantly expanded by
Fredson Bowers Fredson Thayer Bowers (April 25, 1905 – April 11, 1991) was an American Bibliography, bibliographer and scholar of Textual criticism, textual editing. Life Bowers was a graduate of Brown University and Harvard University (Ph.D.). He taught at ...
(1905–1991). Starting in the 1970s, G. Thomas Tanselle vigorously took up the method's defense and added significant contributions of his own. Greg's rationale as practiced by Bowers and Tanselle has come to be known as the "Greg–Bowers" or the "Greg–Bowers–Tanselle" method.


Application to works of all periods

In his 1964 essay, "Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American Authors", Bowers said that "the theory of copy-text proposed by Sir Walter Greg rules supreme". Bowers's assertion of "supremacy" was in contrast to Greg's more modest claim that "My desire is rather to provoke discussion than to lay down the law". Whereas Greg had limited his illustrative examples to English Renaissance drama, where his expertise lay, Bowers argued that the rationale was "the most workable editorial principle yet contrived to produce a critical text that is authoritative in the maximum of its details whether the author be
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
,
Dryden '' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
, Fielding, Nathaniel Hawthorne, or
Stephen Crane Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism an ...
. The principle is sound without regard for the literary period." For works where an author's manuscript survived—a case Greg had not considered—Bowers concluded that the manuscript should generally serve as copy-text. Citing the example of Nathaniel Hawthorne, he noted: Following Greg, the editor would then replace any of the manuscript readings with substantives from printed editions that could be reliably attributed to the author: "Obviously, an editor cannot simply reprint the manuscript, and he must substitute for its readings any words that he believes Hawthorne changed in proof."


Uninfluenced final authorial intention

McKerrow had articulated textual criticism's goal in terms of "our ideal of an author's fair copy of his work in its final state". Bowers asserted that editions founded on Greg's method would "represent the nearest approximation in every respect of the author's final intentions." Bowers stated similarly that the editor's task is to "approximate as nearly as possible an inferential authorial fair copy." Tanselle notes that, "Textual criticism ... has generally been undertaken with a view to reconstructing, as accurately as possible, the text finally intended by the author". Bowers and Tanselle argue for rejecting textual variants that an author inserted at the suggestion of others. Bowers said that his edition of
Stephen Crane Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism an ...
's first novel, ''Maggie'', presented "the author's final and uninfluenced artistic intentions." In his writings, Tanselle refers to "unconstrained authorial intention" or "an author's uninfluenced intentions." This marks a departure from Greg, who had merely suggested that the editor inquire whether a later reading "is one that the author can reasonably be supposed to have substituted for the former", not implying any further inquiry as to ''why'' the author had made the change. Tanselle discusses the example of Herman Melville's ''
Typee ''Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life'' is American writer Herman Melville's first book, published in 1846, when Melville was 26 years old. Considered a classic in travel and adventure literature, the narrative is based on Melville's experiences on ...
''. After the novel's initial publication, Melville's publisher asked him to soften the novel's criticisms of missionaries in the South Seas. Although Melville pronounced the changes an improvement, Tanselle rejected them in his edition, concluding that "there is no evidence, internal or external, to suggest that they are the kinds of changes Melville would have made without pressure from someone else." Bowers confronted a similar problem in his edition of ''Maggie''. Crane originally printed the novel privately in 1893. To secure commercial publication in 1896, Crane agreed to remove profanity, but he also made stylistic revisions. Bowers's approach was to preserve the stylistic and literary changes of 1896, but to revert to the 1893 readings where he believed that Crane was fulfilling the publisher's intention rather than his own. There were, however, intermediate cases that could reasonably have been attributed to either intention, and some of Bowers's choices came under fire—both as to his judgment, and as to the wisdom of conflating readings from the two different versions of ''Maggie''. Hans Zeller argued that it is impossible to tease apart the changes Crane made for literary reasons and those made at the publisher's insistence: Bowers and Tanselle recognize that texts often exist in more than one authoritative version. Tanselle argues that: He suggests that where a revision is "horizontal" (''i.e.'', aimed at improving the work as originally conceived), then the editor should adopt the author's later version. But where a revision is "vertical" (''i.e.'', fundamentally altering the work's intention as a whole), then the revision should be treated as a new work, and edited separately on its own terms.


Format for apparatus

Bowers was also influential in defining the form of
critical apparatus A critical apparatus ( la, apparatus criticus) in textual criticism of primary source material, is an organized system of notations to represent, in a single text, the complex history of that text in a concise form useful to diligent readers and ...
that should accompany a scholarly edition. In addition to the ''content'' of the apparatus, Bowers led a movement to relegate editorial matter to appendices, leaving the critically established text "in the clear", that is, free of any signs of editorial intervention. Tanselle explained the rationale for this approach: Some critics believe that a clear-text edition gives the edited text too great a prominence, relegating textual variants to appendices that are difficult to use, and suggesting a greater sense of certainty about the established text than it deserves. As Shillingsburg notes, "English scholarly editions have tended to use notes at the foot of the text page, indicating, tacitly, a greater modesty about the "established" text and drawing attention more forcibly to at least some of the alternative forms of the text".


The MLA's CEAA and CSE

In 1963, the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) established the Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA). The CEAA's ''Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures'', first published in 1967, adopted the Greg–Bowers rationale in full. A CEAA examiner would inspect each edition, and only those meeting the requirements would receive a seal denoting "An Approved Text." Between 1966 and 1975, the Center allocated more than $1.5 million in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to various scholarly editing projects, which were required to follow the guidelines (including the structure of editorial apparatus) as Bowers had defined them. According to Davis, the funds coordinated by the CEAA over the same period were more than $6 million, counting funding from universities, university presses, and other bodies. The Center for Scholarly Editions (CSE) replaced the CEAA in 1976. The change of name indicated the shift to a broader agenda than just American authors. The Center also ceased its role in the allocation of funds. The Center's latest guidelines (2003) no longer prescribe a particular editorial procedure.


Application to religious documents


Book of Mormon

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (
LDS Church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The c ...
) includes the
Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude d ...
as a foundational reference. LDS members typically believe the book to be a literal historical record. Although some earlier unpublished studies had been prepared, not until the early 1970s was true textual criticism applied to the Book of Mormon. At that time BYU Professor Ellis Rasmussen and his associates were asked by the LDS Church to begin preparation for a new edition of the Holy Scriptures. One aspect of that effort entailed digitizing the text and preparing appropriate footnotes; another aspect required establishing the most dependable text. To that latter end, Stanley R. Larson (a Rasmussen graduate student) set about applying modern text critical standards to the manuscripts and early editions of the Book of Mormon as his thesis project—which he completed in 1974. To that end, Larson carefully examined the Original Manuscript (the one dictated by
Joseph Smith Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, ...
to his scribes) and the Printer's Manuscript (the copy Oliver Cowdery prepared for the Printer in 1829–1830), and compared them with the first, second, and third editions of the Book of Mormon to determine what sort of changes had occurred over time and to make judgments as to which readings were the most original. Larson proceeded to publish a useful set of well-argued articles on the phenomena which he had discovered. Many of his observations were included as improvements in the 1981 LDS edition of the Book of Mormon. By 1979, with the establishment of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (
FARMS A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...
) as a California non-profit research institution, an effort led by Robert F. Smith began to take full account of Larson's work and to publish a Critical Text of the Book of Mormon. Thus was born the FARMS Critical Text Project which published the first volume of the 3-volume Book of Mormon Critical Text in 1984. The third volume of that first edition was published in 1987, but was already being superseded by a second, revised edition of the entire work, greatly aided through the advice and assistance of then Yale doctoral candidate Grant Hardy, Dr. Gordon C. Thomasson, Professor John W. Welch (the head of FARMS), Professor
Royal Skousen Royal Jon Skousen (; born August 5, 1945) is a retired professor of linguistics and English at Brigham Young University (BYU), where he is editor of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. He is "the leading expert on the textual history of th ...
, and others too numerous to mention here. However, these were merely preliminary steps to a far more exacting and all-encompassing project. In 1988, with that preliminary phase of the project completed, Professor Skousen took over as editor and head of the FARMS Critical Text of the Book of Mormon Project and proceeded to gather still scattered fragments of the Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon and to have advanced photographic techniques applied to obtain fine readings from otherwise unreadable pages and fragments. He also closely examined the Printer's Manuscript (owned by the Community of Christ—RLDS Church in Independence, Missouri) for differences in types of ink or pencil, in order to determine when and by whom they were made. He also collated the various editions of the Book of Mormon down to the present to see what sorts of changes have been made through time. Thus far, Professor Skousen has published complete transcripts of the Original and Printer's Manuscripts, as well as a six-volume analysis of textual variants. Still in preparation are a history of the text, and a complete electronic collation of editions and manuscripts (volumes 3 and 5 of the Project, respectively). Yale University has in the meantime published an edition of the Book of Mormon which incorporates all aspects of Skousen's research.


Hebrew Bible

Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible compares manuscript versions of the following sources (dates refer to the oldest extant manuscripts in each family): As in the New Testament, changes, corruptions, and erasures have been found, particularly in the Masoretic texts. This is ascribed to the fact that early ''soferim'' (scribes) did not treat copy errors in the same manner later on. There are three separate new editions of the Hebrew Bible currently in development: ''
Biblia Hebraica Quinta The ''Biblia Hebraica Quinta Editione'', abbreviated as BHQ or rarely BH5, is the fifth edition of the '' Biblia Hebraica'' and when complete will supersede the fourth edition, the ''Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia'' (BHS). BHQ Fascicles and Edi ...
'', the '' Hebrew University Bible'', and the '' Oxford Hebrew Bible''. ''Biblia Hebraica Quinta'' is a diplomatic edition based on the Leningrad Codex. The ''Hebrew University Bible'' is also diplomatic, but based on the Aleppo Codex. The ''Oxford Hebrew Bible'' is an eclectic edition.


New Testament

Early
New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
texts include more than 5,800
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
manuscripts, 10,000
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages (including
Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
, Slavic, Ethiopic and
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
). The manuscripts contain approximately 300,000 textual variants, most of them involving changes of word order and other comparative trivialities. As according to Wescott and Hort:
With regard to the great bulk of the words of the New Testament, as of most other ancient writings, there is no variation or other ground of doubt, and therefore no room for textual criticism... The proportion of words virtually accepted on all hands as raised above doubt is very great, not less, on a rough computation, than seven eights of the whole. The remaining eighth therefore, formed in great part by changes of order and other comparative trivialities, constitutes the whole area of criticism.
Thus, for over 250 years, New Testament scholars have argued that no textual variant affects any doctrine. Professor D. A. Carson states: "nothing we believe to be doctrinally true, and nothing we are commanded to do, is in any way jeopardized by the variants. This is true for any textual tradition. The interpretation of individual passages may well be called in question; but never is a doctrine affected." The sheer number of witnesses presents unique difficulties, chiefly in that it makes stemmatics in many cases impossible, because many writers used two or more different manuscripts as sources. Consequently, New Testament textual critics have adopted eclecticism after sorting the witnesses into three major groups, called text-types. the most common division distinguishes:


Quran

Textual criticism of the Quran is a beginning area of study, as Muslims have historically disapproved of higher criticism being applied to the Quran. In some countries textual criticism can be seen as apostasy. Muslims consider the original Arabic text to be the final revelation, revealed to Muhammad from AD 610 to his death in 632. In Islamic tradition, the Quran was memorised and written down by Muhammad's companions and copied as needed. The Quran is believed to have had some
oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985) ...
of passing down at some point. Differences that affected the meaning were noted, and around AD 650
Uthman Uthman ibn Affan ( ar, عثمان بن عفان, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān; – 17 June 656), also spelled by Colloquial Arabic, Turkish and Persian rendering Osman, was a second cousin, son-in-law and notable companion of the Islamic prop ...
began a process of standardization, presumably to rid the Quran of these differences. Uthman's standardization did not eliminate the textual variants. In the 1970s, 14,000 fragments of Quran were discovered in the Great Mosque of Sana'a, the Sana'a manuscripts. About 12,000 fragments belonged to 926 copies of the Quran, the other 2,000 were loose fragments. The oldest known copy of the Quran so far belongs to this collection: it dates to the end of the seventh to eighth centuries. The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the eighth century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were
palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...
s which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied an evolving text as opposed to a fixed one. In an article in the 1999 '' Atlantic Monthly'', Gerd Puin is quoted as saying that: Canadian Islamic scholar, Andrew Rippin has likewise stated: For these reasons, some scholars, especially those who are associated with the
Revisionist school of Islamic studies The Revisionist school of Islamic studies, (also Historical-Critical school of Islamic studies and skeptic/revisionist Islamic historians) Hoyland, ''In God's Path'', 2015: p.232 is a movement in Islamic studies that questions traditional Muslim ...
, have proposed that the traditional account of the Quran's composition needs to be discarded and a new perspective on the Quran is needed. Puin, comparing Quranic studies with Biblical studies, has stated: In 2015, some of the earliest known Quranic fragments, containing 62 out of 6236 verses of the Quran and with proposed dating from between approximately AD 568 and 645, were identified at the
University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingha ...
. David Thomas, Professor of Christianity and Islam, commented: David Thomas pointed out that the radiocarbon testing found the death date of the animal whose skin made up the Quran, not the date when the Quran was written. Since blank parchment was often stored for years after being produced, he said the Quran could have been written as late as 650–655, during the Quranic codification under
Uthman Uthman ibn Affan ( ar, عثمان بن عفان, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān; – 17 June 656), also spelled by Colloquial Arabic, Turkish and Persian rendering Osman, was a second cousin, son-in-law and notable companion of the Islamic prop ...
. Marijn van Putten, who has published work on idiosyncratic orthography common to all early manuscripts of the Uthmanic text type has stated and demonstrated with examples that due to a number of these same idiosyncratic spellings present in the Birmingham fragment (Mingana 1572a + Arabe 328c), it is "clearly a descendant of the Uthmanic text type" and that it is "impossible" that it is a pre-Uthmanic copy, despite its early radiocarbon dating.


Talmud

Textual criticism of the Talmud has a long pre-history but has become a separate discipline from Talmudic study only recently. Much of the research is in Hebrew and German language periodicals.


Classical texts

Textual criticism originated in the classical era and its development in modern times began with classics scholars, in an effort to determine the original content of texts like
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's '' Republic''.Habib 2005, p. 239 There are far fewer witnesses to classical texts than to the Bible, so scholars can use stemmatics and, in some cases, copy text editing. However, unlike the New Testament where the earliest witnesses are within 200 years of the original, the earliest existing manuscripts of most classical texts were written about a millennium after their composition. All things being equal, textual scholars expect that a larger time gap between an original and a manuscript means more changes in the text.


Legal protection

Scientific and critical editions can be protected by copyright as works of authorship if enough creativity/originality is provided. The mere addition of a word, or substitution of a term with another one believed to be more correct, usually does not achieve such level of originality/creativity. All the notes accounting for the analysis and why and how such changes have been made represent a different work autonomously copyrightable if the other requirements are satisfied. In the European Union critical and scientific editions may be protected also by the relevant neighboring right that protects critical and scientific publications of public domain works as made possible by art. 5 of the
Copyright Term Directive Directive 2006/116/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights (codified version) is a consolidated version of the former EU Directive harmonising the te ...
. Not all EU member States have transposed art. 5 into national law.


Digital textual scholarship

Digital textual criticism is a relatively new branch of textual criticism working with digital tools to establish a critical edition. The development of digital editing tools has allowed editors to transcribe, archive and process documents much faster than before. Some scholars claim digital editing has radically changed the nature of textual criticism; but others believe the editing process has remained fundamentally the same, and digital tools have simply made aspects of it more efficient.


History

From its beginnings, digital scholarly editing involved developing a system for displaying both a newly "typeset" text and a history of variations in the text under review. Until about halfway through the first decade of the twenty-first century, digital archives relied almost entirely on manual transcriptions of texts. Notable exceptions are the earliest digital scholarly editions published in Budapest in the 1990s. These editions contained high resolution images next to the diplomatic transcription of the texts, as well as a newly typeset text with annotations. These old websites are still available at their original location. Over the course of the early twenty-first century, image files became much faster and cheaper, and storage space and upload times ceased to be significant issues. The next step in digital scholarly editing was the wholesale introduction of images of historical texts, particularly high-definition images of manuscripts, formerly offered only in samples.Shillingsburg, Peter, "Literary Documents, Texts, and Works Represented Digitally" (2013). Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities Publications. 3.


Methods

In view of the need to represent historical texts primarily through transcription, and because transcriptions required encoding for every aspect of text that could not be recorded by a single keystroke on the QWERTY keyboard, encoding was invented.
Text Encoding Initiative The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities, operating continuously since the 1980s. The community currently runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and main ...
(TEI) uses encoding for the same purpose, although its particulars were designed for scholarly uses in order to offer some hope that scholarly work on digital texts had a good chance of migrating from aging operating systems and/or digital platforms to new ones, and the hope that standardization would lead to easy interchange of data among different projects.


Software

Several computer programs and standards exist to support the work of the editors of critical editions. These include * The
Text Encoding Initiative The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities, operating continuously since the 1980s. The community currently runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and main ...
. The Guidelines of the TEI provide much detailed analysis of the procedures of critical editing, including recommendations about how to mark up a computer file containing a text with critical apparatus. See especially the following chapters of the Guidelines
10. Manuscript Description
an


Juxta
is an open-source tool for comparing and collating multiple witnesses to a single textual work. It was designed to aid scholars and editors examine the history of a text from manuscript to print versions. Juxta provides collation for multiple versions of texts that are marked up in plain text or TEI/XML format. * Th
EDMAC
macro package for Plain
TeX Tex may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr. Entertainment * ''Tex'', the Italian ...
is a set of macros originally developed by John Lavagnino and Dominik Wujastyk for typesetting critical editions. "EDMAC" stands for "EDition" "MACros." EDMAC is in maintenance mode. * Th
ledmac
package is a development of EDMAC by Peter R. Wilson for typesetting critical editions with LaTeX. ledmac is in maintenance mode. * Th
eledmac
package is a further development of ledmac by Maïeul Rouquette that adds more sophisticated features and solves more advanced problems. eledmac was forked from ledmac when it became clear that it needed to develop in ways that would compromise backward-compatibility. eledmac is maintenance mode. * Th
reledmac
package is a further development of eledmac by Maïeul Rouquette that rewrittes many part of the code in order to allow more robust developments in the future. In 2015, it is in active development.

written by Christian Tapp and Uwe Lück is another package for typesetting critical editions using LaTeX.
Classical Text Editor
is a word-processor for critical editions, commentaries and parallel texts written by Stefan Hagel. CTE is designed for use on the Windows operating system, but has been successfully run on Linux and OS/X using
Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...
. CTE can export files in TEI format. CTE is currently (2014) in active development.
Critical Edition Typesetter
by Bernt Karasch is a system for typesetting critical editions starting from input into a word-processor, and ending up with typesetting with
TeX Tex may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr. Entertainment * ''Tex'', the Italian ...
and EDMAC. Development of CET seems to have stopped in 2004.


Critical editions of religious texts (selection )

;Book of Mormon * ''Book of Mormon Critical Text'' – FARMS 2nd edition ;Hebrew Bible and Old Testament * '' Complutensian polyglot'' (based on now-lost manuscripts) * ''Septuaginta'' Rahlfs' 2nd edition * ''Gottingen Septuagint'' (Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum): in progress * ''
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, abbreviated as BHS or rarely BH4, is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex, and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes. It is the fourth edition in ...
'' – 4th edition * '' Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition – an ongoing product which is designed to be different from Biblia Hebraica by producing an eclectic text ;New Testament * '' Editio octava critica maior'' – Tischendorf edition * ''The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text'' – Hodges & Farstad edition * ''
The New Testament in the Original Greek ''The New Testament in the Original Greek'' is a Greek-language version of the New Testament published in 1881. It is also known as the Westcott and Hort text, after its editors Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828 ...
'' – Westcott & Hort edition * '' Novum Testamentum Graece'' Nestle-Aland 28th edition (NA28) * ''United Bible Society's Greek New Testament'' UBS 4th edition (UBS4) * ''Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine'' – Merk edition * '' Editio Critica Maior'' – German Bible Society edition ;Critical translations * ''The Comprehensive New Testament'' – standardized Nestle-Aland 27 edition * ''The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible'' – with textual mapping to Masoretic, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Septuagint variants * '' New English Translation of the Septuagint'', a critical translation from the completed parts of the Göttingen Septuagint, with the remainder from Rahlf's manual edition


See also


General

*
Authority (textual criticism) The authority of a text is its reliability as a witness to the author's intentions. These intentions could be initial, medial or final, but intentionalist editors (most notably represented by Fredson Bowers and G. Thomas Tanselle editing school) ...
* Close reading *
Diplomatics Diplomatics (in American English, and in most anglophone countries), or diplomatic (in British English), is a scholarly discipline centred on the critical analysis of documents: especially, historical documents. It focuses on the conventions, p ...
* Hermeneutics * Kaozheng (Chinese textual criticism) * List of manuscripts *
Palaeography Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...
* Source criticism


Bible

* ''
An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture ''An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture'' is a dissertation by the English mathematician and scholar Isaac Newton. This was sent in a letter to John Locke on 14 November 1690. In fact, Newton may have been in dialogue w ...
'' *
Bible version debate There have been various debates concerning the proper family of biblical manuscripts and translation techniques that should be used to translate the Bible into other languages. Biblical translation has been employed since the first translations we ...
* Biblical gloss * Biblical manuscript * Categories of New Testament manuscripts * John 21 * List of Biblical commentaries * List of major textual variants in the New Testament ** Textual variants in the New Testament *
List of New Testament papyri A New Testament papyrus is a copy of a portion of the New Testament made on papyrus. To date, over 140 such papyri are known. In general, they are considered the earliest witnesses to the original text of the New Testament. This elite status amo ...
* List of New Testament uncials * List of New Testament verses not included in modern English translations *
Mark 16 Mark 16 is the final chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It begins after the sabbath, with Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bringing spices to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body. There the ...
*
Modern English Bible translations Modern English Bible translations consists of translations developed and published throughout the late modern period () to present-day (). A multitude of recent attempts have been made to translate the Bible into English. Most modern translations ...
*
Jesus and the woman taken in adultery Jesus and the woman taken in adultery (or the ) is a passage ( pericope) found in John 7:53– 8:11 of the New Testament. It has been the subject of much scholarly discussion. In the passage, Jesus was teaching in the Second Temple after co ...
(''Pericope Adulteræ'') *
Wiseman hypothesis The Wiseman hypothesis, sometimes called the tablet theory, is a theory of the authorship and composition of the Book of Genesis which suggests that Moses compiled Genesis from tablets handed down through Abraham and the other patriarchs. Original ...
, dating the book of Genesis


Notes


References

* * * Bentham, George, Gosse, Edmund. ''The Variorum and Definitive Edition of the Poetical and Prose Writings of Edward Fitzgerald'', (1902), Doubleday, Page and Co. * * * Bradley, Sculley, ''Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems'', (1980), NYU Press, * * * * * * * * * Hartin, Patrick J., Petzer J. H., Manning, Bruce. ''Text and Interpretation: New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament''. (1991), BRILL, * Jarvis, Simon, ''Scholars and Gentlemen: Shakespearian Textual Criticism and Representations of Scholarly Labour, 1725–1765'', Oxford University Press, 1995, * Klijn, Albertus Frederik Johannes, ''An Introduction to the New Testament'' (1980), p. 14, BRILL, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* Epp, Eldon J., ''The Eclectic Method in New Testament Textual Criticism: Solution or Symptom?'', The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 69, No. 3/4 (July–October 1976), pp. 211–257 * * * Soulen, Richard N. and Soulen, R. Kendall, ''Handbook of Biblical Criticism''; Westminster John Knox Press; 3 edition (October 2001),


External links


General


An example of cladistics applied to textual criticism





Computer-assisted stemmatology challenge & benchmark data-sets

Searching for the Better Text: How errors crept into the Bible and what can be done to correct them
Biblical Archaeology Review


Society for Textual Scholarship.


by Mario Tonelotto : an example of critical edition from 4 different manuscripts (transcription from medieval paleography).


Bible


Manuscript Comparator
nbsp;— allows two or more New Testament manuscript editions to be compared in side by side and unified views (similar to
diff In computing, the utility diff is a data comparison tool that computes and displays the differences between the contents of files. Unlike edit distance notions used for other purposes, diff is line-oriented rather than character-oriented, but ...
output)
A detailed discussion of the textual variants in the Gospels
(covering about 1200 variants on 2000 pages)

with link to images

of The Gospel According to John in the Byzantine Tradition
New Testament Manuscripts
(listing of the manuscript evidence for more than 11,000 variants in the New Testament)

* ttp://greeknewtestament.net An Online Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament- transcription of more than 60 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament with a textual commentary and an exhaustive critical apparatus. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Textual Criticism Bibliography Exegesis Hermeneutics Papyrology Philology Textual scholarship