| Copyists and Morphers! |
| Copyists and Morphers! |
|
COPYISTS! The MAJOR problem in ANALYZING the Bible is its age. It has gone through so many copyings, you just don't know whether you're evaluating the writing or the copyist. And, computer analysis operates at a very subtle level ... right where copyists operate. Before the days of the printing press, getting a copy of a book was an expensive proposition. Someone had to sit there for hours and days grinding away, word by word and line by line. Couldn't give that chore to the gardener! At least in post-roman times, the massoretes (Old Testament) were professional and kept careful count of the words, center points and so forth to insure accuracy (of strong interest to their customers). The Christians, however, in the early days were catch-as-catch can. Later on with more acceptance (and money), the process became more professional. Who knows exactly about the process prior to the roman times. There are enough copies of the New Testament (complete and partials) that you can easily see alterations. Most are fairly minor and wouldn't bother a computer analysis (which are quite forgiving in running over miscellaneous errors etc). But you don't know what took place prior to the earliest copies that we have (about 150ce). From what I have seen in my analyses, the first 5-10 years of the writing's existence is the most 'dangerous' period. At that point there are both few copies, plus a possible comfort level with adding in what a second person thought they heard or wished to have heard verbally from the writer (thus in theory still belonging to the writer though later added). Also, as I've surmised before, I really suspect the gospels and Acts are a residual of lost pages and maybe replacement pages (the Christian New Testament was the first to be wholely papyri sheets, later bound into 'codeces' or books). I also surmise that persecution had an impact. Given the success with which the gnostic writings were destroyed by the Christians (virtually all until 1947 discoveries), I'd have to believe the roman persecutions at least had some sort of impact. The Old Testament is an even worse situation, since the hebrew base (massoretic text) is actually younger than the greek new testament copies. Comparisons have been made to the Dead Sea Scroll copies and the differences are not significant. However comparisons have also been made to an earlier greek translation of the Old Testament (LXX), where the differences would definitely impact computer analysis results (plus, apparently there were various versions of the LXX as well). So, conceptually it's hard to say whether you're analyzing the massoretes, the proto-hebrew-ists, some Egyptian LXX'ers, maybe Ezra, maybe some Josiah folks, maybe some Solomon folks and who knows who else. In other words, you're really 'flying blind' on the Old Testament. |
|
MORPH-TAGGERS AND STRONG'ERS There's actually another group of folks that potentially impact pattern analysis as well, but are not so obvious. That is today's folks that classify the words and their grammatical and functional use. Back in the days when scholars wished to give the public more access to the original languages of the Bible, they assigned numbers to the base hebrew and greek words. This allowed the easy creation of 'concordances' or lists of where a specific word was used, to better understand its meaning. 'Strongs' was one of the first and is still widely used today. However other numbering schemes have also been developed. Why several kinds? Words are words, right? Well, unlike english, hebrew and greek add prefixes and suffixes to their words to indicate their use. Indeed in greek you can just about mix up the sentence and still understand it. In any event, determining and assigning a unique number to the 'base' word is a decision process of just how much detail to include in the count. Generalizing is good at the start of Bible learning, but more detail becomes needed later. Unfortunately 'Strongs', the most common, is simply a 'straight' numbering system (no hierarchy to reduce/add detail). In like manner, 'morphological tags' which describe a word's use (eg noun, genitive, etc), are also a judgement call (the scheme). As a result, there are several classing schemes out there, some having a considerable amount of detail. But each represents a decision process of 'how much' detail to capture. Now, the actual assignment of vocabulary numbers (like Strongs) or grammatical 'morph-tags' is probably pretty stable. Many researchers look at them and periodically notice the need for minor corrections, especially where a passage is difficult to figure out. Where the problem occurs, for a computer analysis, is the scheme itself. The analyses use these numbers/tags in looking for writing patterns. And the researcher inevitably has included his own biases in what information needed to be captured. More often than not, it's going to be the most frequent usages (to produce indices). Unfortunately computers are quite 'smart' at what they do, and they can 'pick up' on the interaction of the classification scheme and its relation to the actual writing. Normally, this isn't a major issue since the classification scheme is used throughout either the hebrew or greek. But it does become a big question, if the researcher used one or more Bible books to design the classification scheme. For example the hebrew scheme might favor the Torah or first first five books since they have considerable interest by readers. Or alternatively 'the prophets', and so forth. In the New Testament, the problem is not as significant, since the writings are within a few years of each other, and center around one general subject (Christ). Later on, when we look at the results of the computer analyses, we'll discuss this issue a little more. Right now, I'm not entirely sure of the total impact of the morphing schemes. (next page) |
| Copyright ©, 2007, dmbarnhart |
| Prev Back Next |