Editing Textual criticism (section)

== Stemmatics ==
=== Overview ===
[[File:Howald-sigerist.png|thumb|right|250px|Scheme of descent of the manuscripts of [[Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius]] by [[Henry E. Sigerist]] (1927)]]
'''Stemmatics''' or '''stemmatology''' is a rigorous approach to textual criticism. [[Karl Lachmann]] (1793–1851) greatly contributed to making this method famous, even though he did not invent it.<ref>Sebastian Timpanaro, ''The Genesis of Lachmann's Method'', ed. and trans. by Glenn W. Most (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) [trans. from ''Genesi del metodo del Lachmann'' (Liviana Editrice, 1981)].</ref> The method takes its name from the word ''stemma''. The [[Ancient Greek]] word {{Lang|grc|στέμματα}}<ref name="Liddell & Scott">Liddell, H.G. & Scott, R. (1940). ''A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press.</ref> and its [[loanword]] in [[classical Latin]] {{Lang|la|stemmata}}<ref name="Liddell & Scott"/><ref name="Lewis & Short">Lewis, C.T. & Short, C. (1879). ''A Latin dictionary founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press.</ref><ref name="Saalfeld1884">Saalfeld, G.A.E.A. (1884). ''Tensaurus Italograecus. Ausführliches historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Griechischen Lehn- und Fremdwörter im Lateinischen.'' Wien: Druck und Verlag von Carl Gerold's Sohn, Buchhändler der Kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften.</ref> may refer to "[[family tree]]s". This specific meaning shows the relationships of the surviving witnesses (the first known example of such a stemma, albeit without the name, dates from 1827).<ref>Collín, H. S. and C. J. Schlyter (eds), ''Corpus iuris Sueo-Gotorum antiqui: Samling af Sweriges gamla lagar, på Kongl. Maj:ts. nådigste befallning'', 13 vols (Stockholm: Haeggström, 1827–77), vol. 1, table 3; the volume is available at [https://archive.org/details/corpusiurissueo09swedgoog the internet archive] but the scan unfortunately omits the stemma. William Robins, 'Editing and Evolution', ''Literature Compass''<nowiki> 4 (2007): 89–120, at pp. 93–94,</nowiki> {{doi|10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00391.x}}</ref> The family tree is also referred to as a ''[[cladogram]]''.<ref name="isbn90-272-2153-7">Mulken & van Pieter 1996, p. 84</ref> The method works from the principle that "community of error implies community of origin". That is, if two witnesses have a number of errors in common, it may be presumed that they were derived from a common intermediate source, called a ''hyparchetype''. Relations between the lost intermediates are determined by the same process, placing all extant manuscripts in a family tree or ''[[stemma codicum]]'' descended from a single ''archetype''. The process of constructing the stemma is called ''recension'', or the Latin ''recensio''.<ref name="isbn0-19-814371-0">Wilson and Reynolds 1974, p. 186</ref>

Having completed the stemma, the critic proceeds to the next step, called ''selection'' or ''selectio'', where the text of the archetype is determined by examining variants from the closest hyparchetypes to the archetype and selecting the best ones. If one reading occurs more often than another at the same level of the tree, then the dominant reading is selected. If two competing readings occur equally often, then the editor uses judgment to select the correct reading.<ref name="isbn0-312-21713-7">Roseman 1999, p. 73</ref>

After ''selectio'', the text may still contain errors, since there may be passages where no source preserves the correct reading. The step of ''examination'', or ''examinatio'' is applied to find corruptions. Where the editor concludes that the text is corrupt, it is corrected by a process called "emendation", or ''emendatio'' (also sometimes called ''divinatio''). Emendations not supported by any known source are sometimes called [[conjecture (textual criticism)|''conjectural'' emendations]].<ref name="isbn0-8006-0471-7">McCarter 1986, p. 62</ref>

The process of ''selectio'' resembles eclectic textual criticism, but applied to a restricted set of hypothetical hyparchetypes. The steps of ''examinatio'' and ''emendatio'' resemble copy-text editing. In fact, the other techniques can be seen as special cases of stemmatics in which a rigorous family history of the text cannot be determined but only approximated. If it seems that one manuscript is by far the best text, then copy text editing is appropriate, and if it seems that a group of manuscripts are good, then eclecticism on that group would be proper.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol07/SWH2002/|title=The Greek Vorlage of the Syra Harclensis|website=rosetta.reltech.org|access-date=2 May 2018|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303205218/http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol07/SWH2002/|archive-date=3 March 2016}}</ref>

The Hodges–Farstad edition of the Greek New Testament attempts to use stemmatics for some portions.<ref>[http://www.skypoint.com/members/waltzmn/CriticalEds.html Critical Editions of the New Testament] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090414211207/http://www.skypoint.com/members/waltzmn/CriticalEds.html |date=2009-04-14 }} at the ''Encyclopaedia of Textual Criticism''</ref>

=== Phylogenetics ===
[[Image:Canterbury Tales.png|thumb|200px|''[[Canterbury Tales]]'', Woodcut 1484]]
[[Phylogenetics]] is a technique borrowed from [[biology]], where it was originally named ''phylogenetic systematics'' by [[Willi Hennig]]. In biology, the technique is used to determine the [[evolution]]ary relationships between different [[species]].<ref>Schuh 2000, p. 7</ref> In its application in textual criticism, the text of a number of different witnesses may be entered into a computer, which records all the differences between them, or derived from an existing apparatus. The manuscripts are then grouped according to their shared characteristics. The difference between phylogenetics and more traditional forms of statistical analysis is that, rather than simply arranging the manuscripts into rough groupings according to their overall similarity, phylogenetics assumes that they are part of a branching family tree and uses that assumption to derive relationships between them. This makes it more like an automated approach to stemmatics. However, where there is a difference, the computer does not attempt to decide which reading is closer to the original text, and so does not indicate which branch of the tree is the "root"—which manuscript tradition is closest to the original. Other types of evidence must be used for that purpose.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

Phylogenetics faces the same difficulty as textual criticism: the appearance of characteristics in descendants of an ancestor other than by direct copying (or miscopying) of the ancestor, for example where a scribe combines readings from two or more different manuscripts ("contamination"). The same phenomenon is widely present among living organisms, as instances of [[horizontal gene transfer]] (or lateral gene transfer) and [[genetic recombination]], particularly among bacteria. Further exploration of the applicability of the different methods for coping with these problems across both living organisms and textual traditions is a promising area of study.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221145935 |title=Chi-Squares and the Phenomenon of "Change of Exemplar" in the Dyutaparvan. (PDF Download Available) |access-date=2017-05-16 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170816060750/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221145935_Chi-Squares_and_the_Phenomenon_of_Change_of_Exemplar_in_the_Dyutaparvan |archive-date=2017-08-16 }} Wendy J. Phillips-Rodriguez*, Christopher J. Howe, Heather F. Windram "Chi-Squares and the Phenomenon of 'Change of Exemplar' in the Dyutaparvan", Sanskrit Computational Linguistics, First and Second International Symposia Rocquencourt, France, October 29–31, 2007 Providence, RI, U, May 15–17, 2008 Revised Selected and Invited Papers; Windram,  H. F., Howe, C. J., Spencer M.: "The identification of exemplar change in the Wife of Bath's Prologue using the maximum chi-squared method".  ''Literary and Linguistic Computing'' 20, 189–-204 (2005).</ref>

Software developed for use in biology has been applied successfully to textual criticism; for example, it is being used by the [[Canterbury Tales Project]]<ref>[https://www.canterburytalesproject.org/ The Canterbury Tales Project Official Website]</ref> to determine the relationship between the 84 surviving manuscripts and four early printed editions of ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''. Shaw's edition of Dante's ''Commedia'' uses phylogenetic and traditional methods alongside each other in a comprehensive exploration of relations among seven early witnesses to Dante's text.<ref>[http://www.sd-editions.com/Commedia/index.html Commedia] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170531035812/http://www.sd-editions.com/Commedia/index.html |date=2017-05-31 }} Shaw edition, 2010</ref>

=== Limitations and criticism ===

The stemmatic method assumes that each witness is derived from one, and only one, predecessor. If a scribe refers to more than one source when creating her or his copy, then the new copy will not clearly fall into a single branch of the family tree. In the stemmatic method, a manuscript that is derived from more than one source is said to be ''contaminated''.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

The method also assumes that scribes only make new errors{{mdash}}they do not attempt to correct the errors of their predecessors. When a text has been improved by the scribe, it is said to be ''sophisticated'', but "sophistication" impairs the method by obscuring a document's relationship to other witnesses, and making it more difficult to place the manuscript correctly in the stemma.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

The stemmatic method requires the textual critic to group manuscripts by commonality of error. It is required, therefore, that the critic can distinguish erroneous readings from correct ones. This assumption has often come under attack. [[W. W. Greg]] noted: "That if a scribe makes a mistake he will inevitably produce nonsense is the tacit and wholly unwarranted assumption."{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=20}}

[[Franz Anton Knittel]] defended the traditional point of view in theology and was against the modern textual criticism. He defended an authenticity of the [[Jesus and the woman taken in adultery|Pericopa Adulterae]] (John 7:53–8:11), [[Comma Johanneum]] (1 John 5:7), and [[Testimonium Flavianum]]. According to him, [[Desiderius Erasmus|Erasmus]] in his [[Novum Instrumentum omne]] did not incorporate the ''Comma'' from [[Codex Montfortianus]], because of grammar differences, but used [[Complutensian Polyglot Bible|Complutensian Polyglotta]]. According to him, the ''Comma'' was known for [[Tertullian]].<ref>Knittel, ''Neue Kritiken über den berühmten Sprych: Drey sind, die da zeugen im Himmel, der Vater, das Wort, und der heilige Geist, und diese drei sind eins'':  Braunschweig 1785</ref>

The stemmatic method's final step is ''emendatio'', also sometimes referred to as "conjectural emendation". But, in fact, the critic employs conjecture at every step of the process. Some of the method's rules that are designed to reduce the exercise of editorial judgment do not necessarily produce the correct result. For example, where there are more than two witnesses at the same level of the tree, normally the critic will select the dominant reading. However, it may be no more than fortuitous that more witnesses have survived that present a particular reading. A plausible reading that occurs less often may, nevertheless, be the correct one.{{sfn|Tov|2001|pp=351–368}}

Lastly, the stemmatic method assumes that every extant witness is derived, however remotely, from a single source. It does not account for the possibility that the original author may have revised her or his work, and that the text could have existed at different times in more than one authoritative version.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}