Redaction is a form of

editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, or ...

in which multiple sources of texts are combined and altered slightly to make a single document. Often this is a method of collecting a series of writings on a similar theme and creating a definitive and coherent work. The word is also used in the different sense of removing sensitive information from a document, also known as sanitization. This article is about the literary usage.

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Documentary Hypothesis Sources Distribution English

On occasion, the persons performing the redaction (the redactors) add brief elements of their own. The reasons for doing so are varied and can include the addition of elements to adjust the underlying conclusions of the text to suit the redactor's opinion, adding bridging elements to integrate disparate stories, or the redactor may add a frame story, such as the tale of

Scheherazade Scheherazade () is a major female character and the storyteller in the frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the '' One Thousand and One Nights''. Name According to modern scholarship, the name ''Scheherazade'' der ...

which frames the collection of folk tales in ''

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

''. Sometimes the source texts are interlaced, particularly when discussing closely related details, things, or people. This is common when source texts contain alternative versions of the same story, and slight alterations are often made in this circumstance, simply to make the texts appear to agree, and thus the resulting redacted text appears to be coherent. Such a situation is proposed by the documentary hypothesis in the academic field of biblical scholarship, which affirms that multiple redactions occurred during the composition of the Torah, often combining source texts with different narratives, which have rival political attitudes and aims, together; another example is the

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

. Redactional processes are documented in numerous disciplines, including ancient literary works and biblical studies. Much has been written on the role of redaction in creating meaning for texts in various formats.For example, in the field of biblical studies, see John Barton, ''Anchor Bible Dictionary'', vol. 5: 644–647; or Odil Hannes Steck, ''Old Testament Exegesis'', 2nd edition (Atlanta: Scholars Press), 74–93.

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{{Reflist Editing Literary concepts Documentary hypothesis Metafictional techniques

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