Re: Getting a GNT off the Internet

Kevin W. Woodruff (cierpke@utc.campus.mci.net)
Wed, 27 Nov 1996 23:07:57 -0500 (EST)

Dear Jonathan:

The NA27th gives a greater variety of variants that the UBS4th. The UBS4th
gives greater testimony to the individual readings that it does cover. The
editors of the UBS4th have made a lot of textual decisions for you and do
not indicate those in the text. They have chosen to put the variants that
they feel are important for translators to see, but on the whole, the NA27th
is better at giving the differemt variety of readings that actually do
exist. The UBS is better at giving the evidences for the the variants that
they list. Until the UBS4th came out, I like the typeface better than the
NA27th, but now that the 4th is out (with that yucky type-face) I have had
my NA27th bound with my Biblica Hebraica in a leather cover and use it.

At 09:45 PM 11/27/96 -0500, you wrote:
>At 05:10 PM 11/27/96 -0800, KEN LITWAK wrote:
>>From time to time, someone comes looking for a Greek NT essentially
>>for free. I'd just like to make a comment. I don't know anything about
>>these individuals and or what their intentions are. I would say,
>>however, that considering the relatively low price of the UBS GNT,
>>andyou can probably pick up a third edition for cheap, that if possible
>>one ought to get one. Any version of the GNT you can get off the 'Net
>>is probably not going to have a text-critical apparatus.
>
>Ken,
>
>I agree and I disagree. The UBS text doesn't contain the lemmatization, which
>makes it much easier for relative beginners to parse the text, check the tense
>of verbs, etc. However, the CCATT lemmatization isn't completely reliable -
I've
>found several mistakes in it.
>
>Still, there are lots of reasons for wanting to have a text in electronic
>form. You
>can print it out in different formats and color it with colored pencils,
you can
>manipulate it in various ways...I've gotten *lots* of mileage out of my
>electronic
>texts. And it really is a good starting point. Who needs a text-critical
>apparatus
>when you are just getting started? Beginners are having a hard enough time
>struggling
>with the text, and never get to the variant readings.
>
>That said, I do use the UBS 3rd edition, and keep it next to me when I use any
>computerized text, and once I got an electronic Bible with the Gramcord
>database and
>search engine, I pretty much stopped using these other editions. But the free
>databases got me started in the first place, and I think that they are a good
>starting point for some people.
>
>>Since there is
>>no such thing as "The Greek NT" but approximations by scholars with
>>various perspectives that lead them to take various readings as most
>>probably correct (and this is not any sort of judgment about those
>>reasons -- just an observation about their existence), one should not
>>blithely equate any given text with a critical edition.
>
>Of course, reading any reconstruction is reading the average of dozens of
>texts, which means that you aren't really reading what *any* of the texts
>says. Recently, I was able to read some passages as they appear in Codex
>Vaticanus, P66, etc. I wonder how our perception and interpretation of
>texts is shaped by reading reconstructions which do not correspond to
>any "real" text that has ever been found?
>
>I do look at major textual variations from time to time, but I find it
>next to impossible to get any idea how a text would read in any one source
>by using a critical edition.
>
>I'm not arguing against the use of critical editions, I almost always do,
>and I think this is the way to go.
>
>>I myself have about both the UBS and Nestle-Aland critical editions
>
>I have only UBS. I keep looking at Nestle-Aland and wondering if I should pick
>it up. When would I want to use the additional textual apparatus in
>Nestle-Aland?
>What does it do that UBS doesn't?
>
>Jonathan
>
>***************************************************************************
>Jonathan Robie
>POET Software, 3207 Gibson Road, Durham, N.C., 27703
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>email: jwrobie@mindspring.com, jonathan@poet.com
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>
>

Kevin W. Woodruff
Reference Librarian
Cierpke Memorial Library
Temple Baptist Seminary
Tennessee Temple University
1815 Union Ave.
Chattanooga, TN 37404
423/493-4252 (phone) 423/493-4497 (FAX)
Cierpke@utc.campus.mci.net