Some thoughts on a new NA

Wieland Willker willker at chemie.uni-bremen.de
Mon Jul 8 10:52:30 EDT 2002


With the announcement of work on NA 28, here are some thoughts of a user:

Suggestions for NA 28

1) Consistent use of first order witnesses. Cite always Byz AND txt
witnesses. In NA 27 often only the Byz reading is given and the txt
witnesses have to be guessed from "ex silentio". This is very difficult.
E.g. it is not possible to know if an X* reading is corrected by XC1 or XC2
etc. At least in these cases the corrector should always be noted.

2) Reconsider list of first order witnesses e.g. from the T&T volumes
tables. Differentiate between each Gospel! Several very important minuscules
are not cited consistently. E.g. 892 in all Gospels, 1342 in Mk or 157,
1071, 1241 in Lk, Jo. These are only sporadically cited for txt. T&T also
shows 372 and 2737 to have good text.

3) It would be helpful to add a line in the apparatus which lists the
important witnesses which have a lacuna (see Swanson).

4) Reconsider f13! The reading of the group is not always clear, when
looking at the individual witnesses. A critical establishment of the text of
this family is difficult, because it is often divided. Only in cases where
the group reading is clear the group siglum should be given, else the
individual witnesses should be cited, or the subgroups f13a or f13b etc.
should be used. The Geerlings volumes are probably ok for the variants, but
the establishment of the text is doubtful.

5) Witnesses in brackets (=minor deviations) should be reconsidered in every
instance. In some cases they should be added as a separate reading.

6) All versional evidence should be reconsidered, if they really support the
given reading. If it is not 100% clear that a version supports the reading,
it should be omitted.

7) The versions ARM and GEO should be cited more consistently.

8) The indication of harmonization p) should be generally reconsidered and
re-checked. a) several clear harmonizations are not indicated as such, and
b) the parallel verse should always be named to which the harmonization
occurred.

9) Check and reconsider orthography. What about EIPAN and the like? And also
what is with movable Nu? It is not consistently used.

10) It would be very helpful for the reader's orientation to add headings
like those in the UBS GNT.

11) Words in brackets should be avoided. A better alternative are the bullet
points from the ECM. This would allow also to label different words or
word-order variants and not only omissions.



Suggestions for UBS:

1) Reconsider ALL variation units. I have found that quite a number of
serious translatable matter is not noted while OTOH several banal minutiae
have been retained. This edition must be completely reworked. The apparatus
has also more errors than NA.

2) Remove the unnecessary and quite worthless rating system.


Questions:
1) Is it good to have two separate editions like UBS and NA? Pro? Con?
2) Is it good to have more variants noted in the SQE compared to NA or
should the apparati be merged?
3) Is it ok to expand the apparatus of the NA to get say 1000 or so pages?
Pro? Con?


What do you all think?

Best wishes
    Wieland
      <><
---------------
Wieland Willker, Bremen, Germany
mailto:willker at chemie.uni-bremen.de
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie




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