Question about the N-A28 (or CNTTS) critical apparatus

[Donald Cobb]

Hello all,

 

I'm wondering if there's any way of searching the N-A28 or CNTTS critical apparati to find readings that are not retained in the text. For instance, if I take this critical note in Gal 2:16:

 

 ° ⁴⁶ A D² K P Ψ 0278✱. 33. 365. 630. 1505. 1739. 1881 sy^h ¦ txt ℵ B C D✱ F G H L 0278^c. 81. 104. 1175. 1241. 2464 lat

 

Is there any way of seeing other places where the reading of, e.g., P46 is rejected as the preferred reading? I'm thinking that some combination of <FOLLOWED BY> or some such might work, but it all seems a little complicated... Any help would be appreciated!

Edited November 23, 2019 by Donald Cobb

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi Donald,

 

  This is tricky. I cannot get the CNTTS to query quite the way I expect. In the Greek variants column I was expecting to be somehow able to search for OM indicating omission but I cannot figure out how. I cannot limit the reference or scripture to Galatians which is very odd. I can get hits for Major Variations searching M (which means minus - ie. omission) and Manuscripts P46. And that does find the example above. But if I set the tab display to Paragraphs so all the non-hits are excluded I lose the verse information. Adding titles just results in all the data being shown again. So I can see the variations but I cannot tell where they occur. If I open the tool browser that shows all the entries so that doesn't help to show me where the hits are located. So you are left with :

 

Manuscripts P46

Major Variations M

Set search scope to Paragraph

Navigating the hits with the hits arrows.

 

  I confess I am not very familiar with this tool so perhaps others can do better.

 

Thx

D

Edited November 23, 2019 by דָנִיאֶל

[Joel Brown]

This is what I came up with:

 

Manuscript search for '46'

Extra field: 'Variation code' set to 0.

Logic set to NOT

Scope set to Paragraph.

 

This means, find cases of P46 that are not the base text.

 

Is this what you are looking for?

 

[Donald Cobb]

Thanks Daniel and Joel,

 

Joel, for some reason, if I put in that exact same information, I only come up with two hits, both of them from the mss list at the end of the module. I can't see any reason for this except that I'm using the revised version of the CNTTS which, from your screen shot, doesn't appear to be the same as yours. Might a bug have gotten into the revised version?

 

Also, should I conclude from your response that the N-A apparatus is not really suited for that kind of search, and the the CNTTS one is more adapted?

 

One other thing: I tried Daniel's setup and put the N-A28 text in parallel with it, linking the two together to see the CNTTS info in the context of the text. However, when I go from one hit to the next, the N-A text doesn't follow. Can that be confirmed or am I doing something wrong here?

Edited November 23, 2019 by Donald Cobb

[Joel Brown]

I'm less familiar with the NA28 Apparatus module, but I think this search finds when p46 is the non-base reading:

 

(Witnesses field)

.¦ <FOLLOWED BY> 46

For the CNTTS, this is reliably working for me.  Perhaps post a screenshot so we can take a look as to what you are doing differently?

[Donald Cobb]

I'm less familiar with the NA28 Apparatus module, but I think this search finds when p46 is the non-base reading:

 

(Witnesses field)

.¦ <FOLLOWED BY> 46

For the CNTTS, this is reliably working for me.  Perhaps post a screenshot so we can take a look as to what you are doing differently?

 

Here's a screen shot. Coming back to this after the weekend gives me the same results. 

 

 

As for the N-A, I can't seem to reproduce the sigla in the search window. If I try doing a copy-paste, it just gives me a blank space. How can you reproduce them?

[Λύχνις Δαν]

 

 

One other thing: I tried Daniel's setup and put the N-A28 text in parallel with it, linking the two together to see the CNTTS info in the context of the text. However, when I go from one hit to the next, the N-A text doesn't follow. Can that be confirmed or am I doing something wrong here?

 

It won't work as a parallel but as a tied tab it does work but scrolling on the CNTTS tab results in changes in the NA tab only as you move fairly large distances. I don't know what the tie is keying off. I don't think it's as large a book but it might be each chapter. Oh it's not that either. It is based on the vss displayed in the text pane. You scroll the CNTTS until and the NA tab won't move until you get the CNTTS past the last vs displayed in the NA tab. That sort of makes sense for the screen full of NA text you scroll through all the corresponding CNTTS entries. But this only seems to work with scrolling through the results not using the hit navigation arrows. And only with the full CNTTS text displayed in the results.

 

Thx

D

[Donald Cobb]

Hi again Joel,

 

Thanks for getting back to me about my previous post when you can. I still am not getting the same results as you for the CNTTS module. Trying to go a little further on this, one specific question I actually had was this: is it possible to see when N-A28 preferred the majority text () over B (or ℵ)? I have noticed that on a few occasions, and would like to see how many documented occurrences there are. 

 

In my logic, that would look something like this:   B <FOLLOWED BY> ¦ <FOLLOWED BY> txt <FOLLOWED BY> [siglum for Majority text, which seems non reproducible in this forum format]

 

The problem, from what I see, is that this involves multiple fields (witnesses + signs/abbreviations). And since I haven't yet upgraded to v. 13, there is no "all text" option that would allow me to put those fields together in that way.

 

Any suggestions? It would be appreciated!

Edited November 28, 2019 by Donald Cobb

[Joel Brown]

Donald, thanks for pinging me back to this thread.  A few replies:

 

1) I'm not sure why earlier, a search for '46' was sufficient for me.  It seems searching for 'P46' also helps identify the manuscript in CNTTS and should get you your results (when combined with the other aforementioned steps).

 

2) It is easiest to find the broken vertical bar character in the MSS section of the character palette.  The palette also tells you what key combination it was.

 

3) For your last search, it will work fine, just do the vertical broken bar as a character search (i.e. precede it with a period [.]), with the rest defined in the manuscripts field.  Character searches are field-agnostic.

[Donald Cobb]

Donald, thanks for pinging me back to this thread.  A few replies:

 

1) I'm not sure why earlier, a search for '46' was sufficient for me.  It seems searching for 'P46' also helps identify the manuscript in CNTTS and should get you your results (when combined with the other aforementioned steps).

 

2) It is easiest to find the broken vertical bar character in the MSS section of the character palette.  The palette also tells you what key combination it was.

 

3) For your last search, it will work fine, just do the vertical broken bar as a character search (i.e. precede it with a period [.]), with the rest defined in the manuscripts field.  Character searches are field-agnostic.

 

 

Hi Joel,

 

Thanks for picking this up again. Re your 1) Does mean that going back and doing the search you did previously did not give you the same results a second time around? 

 

I think I've actually found the answer I was looking for in the CNTTS resource, though by another path. A couple things I've learned in doing it:

- in the "manuscripts" category, the "P" for papyrus needs to be included, but (there was a problem here) it has to be a capital P, i.e. "P46"

- The "not" command with "0" in "variation code" doesn't give me any kind of good results;

- However, if I begin with the "major variations" category and put in "R <OR> A (i.e., significant variants that are not retained in N-A28) and then in the following line use the "Manuscripts" category and add "P46", that will give me all the significant variations of P46 that are not included in N-A28.

- So, Eureka!

 

This is what the setup looks like. I'm being fairly detailed on this, because I'm thinking it may help others harness the capabilities of this resource:

 

 

Re your 2) Ok, I can do this in the N-A28 crit. app. Thanks! However, the example you gave on 24 November, doesn't work. If I do this:

 

 

I get a message saying "To search for a specific character, a non-blank character must follow the '.'" However, removing the space doesn't work either! What's wrong here?

 

Re your 3) Ok. I think that works now. I'll take a look at the results but at first glance, they seem good. Thanks!

 

So my big question remains for #2. Thanks for any answers, and again, many thanks for your help!

[Donald Cobb]

Hi again Joel,

 

Re your 2) again. I figured out where the problem was. I should have put the "." before the broken horizontal bar, rather than before "46". My bad. 

 

I'm continuing to work with this, slowly figuring out how these apparati work. This is the correct sequence to find (most of) the places where P46 has a reading that is not retained in N-A28:

 

 

Re your 3) this seems to be working well for B (i.e., Vaticanus). I haven't looked at all the results, but everything seems to be in order:

 

 

That being said, I'm getting a fairly high number of false results when I do the same search with א. This is the setup. Take a look at the results below:

 

 

Unless I'm missing something, this is a bug. Can you confirm this Joel?

 

Once more, many thanks for your help with all this!

 

[Joel Brown]

Hi Donald, lots to reply to!

 

Thanks for picking this up again. Re your 1) Does mean that going back and doing the search you did previously did not give you the same results a second time around? 

I finally realized my problem!  In the older CNTTS, the 'P' was separate from '46', which was where I did my search initially.  'P46' is correct in the CNTTS Revised.

 

- in the "manuscripts" category, the "P" for papyrus needs to be included, but (there was a problem here) it has to be a capital P, i.e. "P46"

Yeah, the manuscripts are definitely case sensitive.

 

- The "not" command with "0" in "variation code" doesn't give me any kind of good results;

Are you sure your scope was still set to paragraph?  It is back to Article in your screenshots, and it was giving me good results.

 

That being said, I'm getting a fairly high number of false results when I do the same search with א. This is the setup. Take a look at the results below:

Multiple successive boolean type commands, like your string of FOLLOWED BY can create odd ambiguous parsing situations, so I always *always* recommend avoiding situations of two or more of them, if possible.  Your query can actually built using a few extra fields, for clarity, and the results look good (to me):

[Donald Cobb]

 

Are you sure your scope was still set to paragraph?  It is back to Article in your screenshots, and it was giving me good results.

 

 

 

Multiple successive boolean type commands, like your string of FOLLOWED BY can create odd ambiguous parsing situations, so I always *always* recommend avoiding situations of two or more of them, if possible.  Your query can actually built using a few extra fields, for clarity, and the results look good (to me):

Screen Shot 2019-12-21 at 9.37.07 AM.png

 

Hi again Joel,

 

All this is very helpful, thanks. Re your first comment copied just above, I'm taking good note of the paragraph setting. I admit that this is something that hasn't often caught my eye up to now. I'll have to be more attentive to it! That being said, I think my setup allows for greater precision: what you suggest also gives me verses where P46 is listed among the lacunae. As such, it's not, strictly speaking a rejected reading, rather a non-existent one. Your setup also brings up minor differences such as nomina sacra, which aren't necessarily relevant to a search for reading that deviate from N-A28.

 

Re your second comment, I've gone back and tried a three stage search in the N-A28 apparatus. Yes, this is much better! It avoids the false positives I was getting with א (and also with B, once I began looking more closely at the results). There are, though, two categories this search doesn't pick up: 1) entries where there is only the negative apparatus, with no broken horizontal bar followed by the positive apparatus with "txt" (e.g., Matt 3:11 with P101 and versions) and 2) entries in which, e.g., aleph1 is in the negative apparatus, whereas aleph* is in the positive apparatus, along with Maj text. Do you have any suggestions for these? If so, do the searches need to be conducted separately, and the results combined manually?

 

This is all immensely helpful to me and opens up huge possibilities for using these resources. So, once again, many thanks Joel for your time and clarifications!