Baker withdraws Comfort book

Thomas J. Kraus tj.kraus at gmx.de
Tue Sep 21 09:21:53 EDT 1999


On 21 Sep 99, at 8:07, Jim West wrote:

> Two people "reviewed" the book.  One on the TC list (and you should have
> seen the number of posts which essentially said "see, we told ya it was not
> going to be any good"- and these by people who had not bothered to look at
> the book).  The other for the online TC Journal.  BOTH of these critiques
> were responded to quite clearly and precisely by David Barrett.  The TC
> Journal nevertheless has still not posted the response by Barrett.
> The authors admit there are a few minor errors.  And there are.  But no more
> than in any other book.
> What motivated the cruel and unjustified attacks?  Only God knows (though i
> have an idea or two which I shared with Baker in some detail).
> Simply put, Baker is wrong to pull the book.  When a child makes a few
> mistakes you dont kill it.
 
For a long time I remained hesitant to dulge into the discussion 
about Comfort´s and Barrett´s book, and when I noticed that the 
case was settled I decided to leave that issue at rest. Actually, 
what you, Jim, call "a few minor mistakes" may be no problem for 
those who are simply interested in transcriptions of papyri. But 
neither did Comfort/Barrett stick to the indispensable Leiden 
system to reproduce a critical transcription of papyri, nor did they 
provide any notes to accord their transcriptions. Out of a 
papyrological view these shortcomings disqualify the book from its 
very start for scholarly discussion, i.e. as a disputable publication 
to be of any help to those who cannot travel around the world to 
look at every original by themselves (even papyrologists 
occassionally rely on the transcriptions by somebody else as long 
as there are critical notes as well as critical signs to indicate 
problems within the text transcribed).
Sorry, but the case of Comfort´s and Barrett´s book is not under 
any circumstances similar to the mistakes a child might make. 
This publication may serve its purpose, but is of doubtful worth for 
scholarly discussion.
For those of you on B-Greek, who are interested in the problems 
(uncritical) transcriptions may cause, read:
S. E. Porter, The Greek Apocryphal Gospels Papyri. The Need for a Cr 
itical Edition, in: Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, 
Berlin 1995 (APF.B 3), Berlin 1997, 795-803,
where Porter presents the case of P.Vindob.G 2325 (the socalled 
Fayum-Gospel), which was transcribed many times (above all by 
Bickell, and in the very end corrected by Wessely) and of which 
nowadays translations exist, which are not backed by any 
seriously defended and acceptable transcription.
[Furthermore, I wonder whether a review of a book should in any 
case be followed by the justifications an author wants to give later 
on.]
Never mind, Jim.

Yours (best wishes),

Thomas J. Kraus

tj.kraus at gmx.de
http://www.01019freenet.de/tjkraus



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