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 →Category: When the Canons Collide
15 published records in this controlled archive.
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.
Open record →The CBGM and the Claim of the ‘Best Manuscripts’
The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method greatly strengthens the study of textual relationships, yet its local orientations remain editorial judgments and its output does not supply a theology of authority.
Open record →Manuscripts Give Readings, Not Rankings
A manuscript directly supplies a reading, but its age, independence, character, and weight are conclusions reached through further historical judgments.
Open record →The Canons Have No Umpire: Dabney Vindicated and Refined
Dabney’s 1881 criticism of the Revised Version sharpens the ecclesial issue, but his case must be retained without treating him as infallible or freezing nineteenth-century evidence.
Open record →R. L. Dabney’s 1871 Indictment of the Critical Canons
Dabney argued that nineteenth-century critics did not merely disagree over facts; they worked with rival codes whose rules could reverse one another and lacked a common umpire.
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