Editing Lectio difficilior potior (section)

==Usefulness==
Many scholars considered the employment of {{lang|la|lectio difficilior potior}} an objective criterion that would even override other evaluative considerations.<ref>Tov 1982:432.</ref> The poet and scholar [[A.&nbsp;E. Housman]] challenged such reactive applications in 1922, in the provocatively titled article "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism".<ref>A.&nbsp;E. Housman, "[http://cnx.org/content/m11803/latest/ The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism]", ''Proceedings of the Classical Association'' '''18''' (1922), pp. 67–84. DOI https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8247611</ref>

On the other hand, taken as an axiom, the principle {{lang|la|lectio difficilior}} produces an [[eclectic text]], rather than one based on a history of manuscript transmission. "Modern eclectic [[praxis (process)|praxis]] operates on a variant unit basis without any apparent consideration of the consequences", [[Maurice A. Robinson]] warned. He suggested that to the principle "should be added a corollary, difficult readings created by individual scribes do not tend to perpetuate in any significant degree within transmissional history".<ref>Robinson 2001</ref>

A noted proponent of the superiority of the [[Byzantine text-type]], the form of the Greek New Testament in the largest number of surviving manuscripts, Robinson would use the corollary to explain differences from the [[Majority Text]] as scribal errors that were not perpetuated because they were known to be errant or because they existed only in a small number of manuscripts ''at the time''.

Most textual-critical scholars would explain the corollary by the assumption that scribes tended to "correct" harder readings and so cut off the stream of transmission. Thus, only earlier manuscripts would have the harder readings. Later manuscripts would not see the corollary principle as being a very important one to get closer to the original form of the text.

However, {{lang|la|lectio difficilior}} is not to be taken as an absolute rule either but as a general guideline. "''In general'' the more difficult reading is to be preferred" is [[Bruce Metzger]]'s reservation.<ref>Italics supplied. [[Bruce Metzger]], ''The Text of the New Testament'', II.i.1, p. 209.</ref> "There is truth in the maxim: {{lang|la|lectio difficilior lectio potior}} ('the more difficult reading is the more probable reading')", write Kurt and Barbara Aland.<ref>Aland, ''The Text of the New Testament'', pp. 275–276; the Alands' twelve basic principles of textual criticism are [http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/text_crit.html reported on-line].</ref>

However, for scholars like [[Kurt Aland]], who follow a path of reasoned eclecticism based on evidence both internal and external to the manuscripts, "this principle must not be taken too mechanically, with the most difficult reading ({{lang|la|lectio difficillima}}) adopted as original simply because of its degree of difficulty".<ref>Aland 1995, p. 276.</ref> Also, [[Martin Litchfield West]] cautions: "When we choose the 'more difficult reading' ... we must be sure that it is in itself a plausible reading. The principle should not be used in support of dubious syntax, or phrasing that it would not have been natural for the author to use. There is an important difference between a more ''difficult'' reading and a more ''unlikely'' reading".<ref>West 1973, p. 51.</ref>

Responding to [[Tetyana Vilkul]]'s review of his 2003 [[Textual criticism of the Primary Chronicle|critical edition of the ''Primary Chronicle'' (PVL)]], [[Donald Ostrowski]] (2005) phrased the principle as follows: 'The more difficult reading is preferred to a smoother reading, except, again, where a mechanical copying error would explain the roughness. The rationale is that a copyist is more likely to have tried to make a rough reading smoother than to have made a smooth reading more difficult to understand.'{{sfn|Ostrowski|2005|p=49}}