Textual criticism

( " Different, set apart, choose " ancient Greek κρίνω KRINO ) The textual criticism or text- critical method is a method that can be worked out with the influences of the origin and tradition on the shape of traditional texts. It is used when there are different versions to construct a canonical version of the text ("Text Edition" ) from manuscripts or incunabula to (re - ). It belongs to the edition philology, which in turn is a part of the field of literary studies. The purpose of the edition is usually a critical edition of the text, which should be readable and at the same time noted the changes and decisions that have been made by the editors. Textual criticism is not interested in the interpretation of the text, but only provides the material, which is then analyzed in the exegesis or interpretation of the text content.

• 2.1 texts from classical antiquity
• 2.2 New Testament
• 2.3 from texts of the modern era

The text-critical method

Basics

On top of all textual criticism is the search for the text witnesses. This task is now much easier than the early days of printing, as most libraries and archives cataloged their manuscript holdings, many have documented on microfilm and photographs and recorded as scans. The text critics no longer have to travel around the world and individually each library Browse to find the text witnesses and written down individually by hand today. The results of textual criticism largely depend on the selection, quality and completeness of the textual witnesses. Basis of textual criticism is the collation, so the comparison of several hand-written or printed versions of a text. The texts are arranged chronologically - if possible - and then compared word for word, sentence by sentence together. For these versions, it is decided which text can be regarded as the more primitive. The reconstructed text is called Urtext or archetype. He is distinguished from the autographs and all alleged tradition stages.

If the original handwriting, the autograph is lost, the task of textual criticism is to reconstruct an archetype, that is, a text version, which should come closest to the original text. It is generally not possible, the original version, which envisaged the author to construct, but at best to reconstruct a version that has fanned out from where the tradition in copies (or Print). The possible intermediate steps between the autographs and the version from which the tradition has fanned, are methodologically inaccessible and must remain in the dark.

Method

The basic steps of textual criticism are as follows:

1 Heuristic: All received text witnesses, that is, manuscripts or early printed editions of the text are collected. Fragments and putative earlier versions can also be captured, such as secondary evidences, ie quotations from the text in question by later authors. Also, translations are secondary testimonies, as it depends on the adherence to the text of the translator only indirectly from the translation to the translation of the present version can be closed. The secondary witnesses are sometimes distinguished as " testimonies " of the primary witnesses conceptually.

2 collation: The existing text tools are compared and variants detected ( readings ).

3 Recensio: The variants are analyzed, especially with regard to their origin. Here, a family tree is created ( Stemma ), this provides information about which manuscript was copied from which. In Stemma well -developed versions (not resulting intermediate stages, Hyparchetyp called ) registered. Thereby following Korruptelen Experience has shown that found:

• Abschreibversehen: double sets, lines or words ( dittography )
• Exuberant sets, lines or words ( haplography ), especially when repeated sentences, words or phrases verbatim or almost verbatim
• Confusion between letters of similar shape or similar pronunciation
• Typing error

4 The presumed original wording of the text ( archetype ) is determined.

• Examinatio ( "review" ): The quality of the manuscripts will be judged on the criteria of language, style and the thought world of the text. The aim is to consider the readings against each other.

• Emendation ( " debug " ): The points are improved, the editor to his knowledge of the historic environment, the language used by the author and his time, the internal structure of the block being edited text, and its embedding in the literary environment ( intertextual references! ) defective as a high probability considered;
• Conjecture: The editor can also - carefully - make supplements that are occupied in any textual witnesses, or cut jobs, which probably date by another hand. Conjectures are the most controversial text-critical decisions. Conjectures are inevitably necessary if the text has gaps that are not covered by the tradition, for example, if the start or end of the manuscript is broken or if the text is so much corrupted that it gives a reasonable meaning in any traditional version, as well if the meaning of a word can not be opened today.
• Athetese: a traditional, but now recognized as incorrect reading is discarded.

Important criteria when creating the archetype are:

• The more original reading is the one that can best explain the occurrence of the other readings. ( This principle can be compared with the determination of the phylogeny of an organism in biology. )
• It applies the principle of lectio difficilior, that is, that the more difficult reading is probably the older and better. This principle is based on the assumption that when a copy of a text, it is rather simplified rendered as complex. At the same time there is the risk of complicating the unquestioned application of this mechanical principle a text artificially. Completely problematic, if not meaningless, is a follow-up to lectio difficilior in texts that belonged to no a priori high literary quality level.
• The older a textual witness, the less Abschreibefehler he is likely to contain. It is important to take into account of course that younger copies may also have had very old or high-quality templates and, conversely, that even very old manuscripts can be inferior if they were made by an incompetent writer.

Result

The result of text-critical method is a guess as to what the author might have written. The reviewer of a text-critical edition presents a reconstructed result, which he considers to be as close as possible to the archetype, according to the available lore. Although the core remains the reconstructed text, but is crucial to the text-critical apparatus - usually at the foot of the text - at which orient the reader and can compare different interpretations. Thus, the reader can keep track of one hand the approach of the editor, on the other hand take their own thoughts on the reconstruction of the text, for example if different readings of different directions resulting sense. Ultimately, it can therefore be no undisputed reconstruction of a text, if there is more than one tradition.

There are two possible representatives of a text- critical apparatus:

Characters that can appear in the body text:

Textual Criticism of different text types

While the basics of textual criticism are valid for all types of texts, there are various types of texts of different problems, which sometimes require different methods or priorities.

Texts from classical antiquity

For texts from the ancient textual criticism is faced with the problem that there is often only a few textual witnesses, which are such many centuries younger than the original. The bestbezeugte work is Homer's Iliad, with 700 text witnesses. Collation is thus a gear or task. On the other hand, the emendation plays an important role, as it often can not be assumed that the original form is actually included in one of the few variants.

New Testament

The New Testament is a special case for the textual criticism by the number of text witnesses. There are over 5,000 textual witnesses in Greek, over 10,000 Latin manuscripts and a further 10,000 manuscripts of translations into other languages ​​, there are countless quotes in other writings. Therefore, the creation of stemmata is very difficult and impossible in some cases. New Testament Textual critics around the problem by sorting the textual witnesses in groups called text - types, and proceed eclectic in the choice of variants. The main types are the Alexandrian text type, the Western type and the Byzantine type.

On the other hand, textual critic of the New Testament compared to other areas of textual criticism the advantage that it's probably the multitude of textual witnesses that the original shape is preserved in at least one of the witnesses to the text.

Texts of the modern era

Textual criticism is also found in modern literature apply when different versions of a text exist. Specific questions were doing when different manuscripts from the lifetime of the author contain different variants.

History of textual criticism

Even in ancient times, there were editions of texts with which they tried to get as close as possible to the original text. The Library of Alexandria is considered as the production site for the output of many Greek classics. Usually it is the modern textual criticism only possible to determine these unified in ancient writing, because it is the last (often fragmentary ) received version of a text.

In the Middle Ages the old classics were mainly cultivated in the Byzantine Empire and segregated poor variants. Similarly, Judaism sought at this time much about genuine sharing his scriptures, which culminated by the Masoretes in the period 780-930.

Today's text-critical method was developed in the 19th century of classical philology to ( partially fragmentary or very late transcripts, but instead are delivered in several lines of tradition ) to reconstruct ancient texts. Outstanding contributions to their methodology rendered the philologist Friedrich August Wolf, Karl Lachmann and FDE Schleiermacher.

Criticism of textual criticism

The text-critical method and especially the creation of stemmata assumes that each textual witness of one and only one predecessor starts. If a copyist several texts used as templates (called contamination ), it is not possible to assign the text to a specific text branch.

The method also assumes that only makes new mistakes a copyist and not improve the mistakes of predecessors. If this happens, the text is described as refined, but this makes it difficult to assign a text to a particular branch.

The stemmata method still requires that manuscripts are sorted by the mistakes and errors of correct spellings are separated, which is often attacked violently.

Joseph Bédier criticized the method already in 1928 and studied medieval French manuscripts that have been ordered by the Stemma method. He noted that most of the traditions were divided into two branches, although, strictly speaking, no reason why, why three or vierzweigige traditions should be rare. He concluded that this method is far from enough rigorous scientific standards, the actual history of the text can not correctly reflect and think leg too much subjective leeway.

Bernard Cerquiglini has emphasized in recent years that the tradition of vernacular medieval literature (Old French, Middle English, Middle High German ) principle not to be compared with the Latin and Greek " classic" and the sacred texts and not to apply the method of textual criticism on them, therefore, be. The medieval literature is a literature of variants in which a " Urtext " and the letters accurate reproduction of an original barely played a role. The creation of modern, without understanding the medieval background of such a turn of modern notions of copyright and authorship to ancient texts.

Many recent theoretical text and editorial attitudes represent the primacy of the search for the original text altogether. Textual criticism is here indeed used as a means of analyzing the tradition but rejected the construction of a text beyond the actually existing documents as Dehistorisierung. The authenticity of the tradition goes in these schools before the arbitrary authority of the complaining editorial text setting. The rejection of the critically constituted text and especially the mixture of witnesses to an eclectic text summarizes for the Anglo-Saxon Scholarly Editing David Greetham in the slogan of "text that never was " together.