Showing posts with label differences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label differences. Show all posts

Thursday, May 31, 2018

Differences between ECM Acts and NA28

10
I need some help from your collective wisdom ...

On pp. 34*-35* of ECM Acts we find a table of Textual Changes, listing differences between ECM and NA28. This is followed by a list of passages with a split guiding line. Many of the textual changes are straightforward, but there is a grey area, signaled by the presence of two distinct lists rather than one.

(1) The entry 2,33/43 says ECM -, NA28 [και].
This is a textual change. The text that is printed is different in the two editions, though the two are not miles apart. It is not that ECM has adopted a reading that was offered as an equal possibility in NA28, which mistakenly we might assume given the square brackets around και in NA28, but the omission of και is signaled in the text. It is good to remember that square brackets do not give a full alternative but rather 'reflect a great degree of difficulty in determining the text', and 'the reading given in the text shows the preference of the editors' (NA28, 54*).
This change is slightly 'bigger' than the change in the next example.

(2) The variant unit 1,11/16 is not given as a textual change:
ECM εμβλεποντες, ΝΑ28 [εμ]βλεποντες
Both ECM and NA28 show the - identical - preference of the editors, though NA28 signals that its editors had a great degree of difficulty. There are no square brackets in the ECM, but do we have a split guiding line? Not here. The difficulty of the past was not large enough to result in a split reading in the present. Technically this is not a textual change. Still, even though there is no difference in the printed text, there is certainly a perceived difference in confidence.

(3) Now take 2,7/5, also not given as a textual change in the ECM list, though here I think there is in fact a change:
ECM - ♦ παντες, NA28 -
To me this looks like a change. A split guiding line means that the editors 'could not determine one variant which most likely represents the initial text' (ECM, 18*), which is close but not identical to the NA28 definition of the square brackets. The split guidance line is a material change to the text of NA28.

(4) The final example is 5,28/4
ECM ου ♦ -, ΝΑ28 [ου]
Since the definitions of square brackets and split guiding line differ subtly, I think technically there is a change here too. The ECM split line signals that there is no reading that is 'most likely', whilst the bracketed [ου] still signals the preference of the editors of the NA28 for the printed reading. Of course, most of us would be tempted to read ECM and NA28 as telling us the same, but I do not think they do.

Example (1) is found in the listing of textual changes in the ECM, example (2) is not listed in the print edition, and (3) and (4) are found in the listing of passages with a split guiding line.

My question after all this is, what is more accurate, to say that ECM differs from NA28 in 52 places and presents a split reading in a further 155 places, or that the text of ECM differs in 207 places from NA28? [warning: I counted the list manually, so I may be a little off, but I hope you get the question.]