Is the Harder Reading Better?
Lectio difficilior assumes that scribes smooth what troubles them. But errors also create difficulty, and the critic must define hard, identify its cause, and guard against smuggling a…
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Why Scribes Omit as Well as Add
Eye-skip, abbreviation, memory, deliberate pruning, and measured scribal habits show why the shorter reading may be secondary. The proper comparison is causal, not merely numerical.
Open record →Is the Shorter Reading Better?
Lectio brevior is plausible because texts can grow through glosses, titles, parallels, and liturgy. Yet length becomes evidence only after a real mechanism of expansion has been shown.
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