Re: I need help (DUHHH-correction!)

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Jun 10 2000 - 17:54:09 EDT


At 3:26 PM -0400 6/10/00, Randy Leedy wrote:
>Thanks for the correction Carl. In my hasty reading, two conjectural
>emendations occurred to me: change "like" to "hate" (less likely) or
>change "unworthy" to "worthy." Your "any" to "no" hadn't crossed my
>mind at all.
>
>My only reason for responding is that unravelling your original
>statement did serve as an interesting little textual exercise. My best
>guess was that, as you chose your word in the last part of the
>sentence, you were thinking that you had written "hate" rather than
>"like." On this reasoning, it would seem that my first conjecture
>might be better, but, further reflection leads to the conclusion that
>the beginning of the sentence, rather than the end, is more likely to
>reflect the text as it stood originally in your mind. Then, as you
>assumed the role of scribe in your typing, you made the easier slip
>and added the privative prefix to the originally intended "worthy"
>near the end.
>
>But your own emendation renders all this fine reasoning somewhat
>absurd, carrying, as it does, a certain authority that is yours as the
>author. UNLESS, that is, your emendation really does NOT reflect the
>original text as it existed in your mind but rather reveals the
>conclusions you reached as an, in this case rather blush-faced,
>textual critic of your own scribal work in rendering your own original
>thought. In that case, you would have little advantage over the rest
>of us attempting to reconstruct the original. In fact, the objectivity
>of your selection from among several possible emendations might very
>well have been compromised by a natural desire to reflect minimally on
>your scribal accuracy. Or could the thought have existed originally
>apart from any specific words so that the text of your first email
>actually IS the original text? In that case, no emendation is
>necessary, just the imputation of a simple error to the author. No
>theological problem, since inspiration is not in view here and since,
>at any rate, theological discussions are not allowed on this list.
>
>Now I'm 15 minutes further behind on the day's to-do list, but at
>least I had a little fun trying to put you at least 5 minutes further
>behind (less ahead?) on your own.
>
>Randy Leedy
>
>At 7:05 AM -0400 6/9/00, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>>
>>I'd like to think that any question that really focuses on Biblical
>Greek
>>language or a Biblical Greek text that someone finds puzzling is
>unworthy
>>of a response.
>
>That should, of course, be: "that NO question that really focuses on
>Biblical Greek language or a Biblical Greek text that someone finds
>puzzling is unworthy of a response." I really wouldn't want to be
>misunderstood about that.

Okay, let's back up and try that one more time:

"I'd like to think that any question posed on B-Greek is worthy of a
response, provided that it really focuses upon the Biblical Greek language
or upon a particular Biblical Greek text which someone finds puzzling."

I'm assuming, that is, that your exercise in textual criticism was not
really tongue-in-cheek; I might add also that what matters to me most is
not the syntax I may have started out with but rather getting clearly
stated -- ultimately -- what I really didn't want to be misunderstood.

--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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