Representing Multiple Pathways of Textual Flow in the Greek Manuscripts of the Letter of James Using Reduced Median Networks

Authors: Spencer M.¹; Wachtel K.²; Howe C.J.¹

Source: Computers and the Humanities, Volume 38, Number 1, February 2004 , pp. 1-14(14)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

Many manuscripts of the Greek New Testament are influenced by multiple pathways of textual flow. This makes it difficult to reconstruct a stemma using traditional methods. We describe a novel application of the reduced median algorithm (developed in evolutionary biology) to reconstructing a stemma for selected Greek manuscripts of the Letter of James. This stemma is a network in which contamination is explicitly represented. It is consistent with the ideas that most variants arose early in the history of the Greek New Testament, that early manuscripts were often influenced by both oral and written traditions, and that later copies introduced fewer variants. Since similar problems of contamination occur in many text traditions, we expect methods of this kind to be widely useful.

Keywords: contamination; Greek New Testament; Letter of James; phylogenetics; reduced median networks; stemmata; text traditions

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:CHUM.0000009290.14571.59

Affiliations: 1: Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QW, UK, Email: ms379@cam.ac.uk 2: Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung, Georgskommende 7, D-48143 Münster, Germany, Email: wachtel@uni-muenster.de

Publication date: 2004-02-01