[Artemisia] Re: Scribal Errors...

[Dree Eno]

If I implied that I thought that the current manuscripts are exactly like
they were when they were "hot off the press" so to speak.  Then I apologize.
It was late at night.  Oh look...it's late at night again.   About the only
time I get to my e-mail these days.  <sigh>

In any case.  I did not mean that the current manuscripts are exact
duplicates.  But they are reasonably close--and given the context of the
content, we can make reasonable assumptions. Otherwise, how could we know
when a mistake was made at all?

My point was, we can know what was meant in the original based on what we
have today.

Hope this makes my point a little better.  :-)

Teleri

-----Original Message-----
From: artemisia-bounces at lists.gallowglass.org
[mailto:artemisia-bounces at lists.gallowglass.org]On Behalf Of Julia
Jackman-Brink
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 8:01 AM
To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list
Subject: Re: [Artemisia] Re: Scribal Errors...


Dree Eno wrote:

> And ask anyone in the
> scribes guilds what it takes to make a scroll and how exacting the scribes
> were in the middle ages.

I have to politely disagree with this very broad statement. I am not
going to touch the religious content debate, as it's not appropriate
here. But I can touch on the scribal aspect, and I am certain others
here can as well.

There are extant manuscripts from secular and religious orders of many
countries, that have "exact scribal duplication" as you put
it...complete with reused text, duplication of previous errors,
translation and transliteration errors, additions, contractions,
deletions and even marginalia and commentary from the actual scribe
producing the work in question.

To say that scribes were perfect and exacting is nice in theory, but in
real life, it didn't happen. Humans make mistakes, and even perpetuate
mistakes when not corrected. The Vatican has recently released some
wonderful examples of "goofs and textual errors" in their religious
manuscript collection. The V&A in London also has some great examples.
All one has to do is do a basic search or look up "scribal errors" in
any manuscript art, palyography or orthography text. Here is a simple
example, but works as an illustration:

http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/tools/errors.htm

Something to think about these aspects when making a broad statement
like "this is the way one has always done X, Y or Z", it may be so, but
again, it may not.  One only has to look at modern bookprinting to see
that errors occur. I sent an Icelandic Manuscript text back to DBBC
because the first 20 pages was repeated 5 times before the rest of the
book came along and then I noticed the pictures were mixed up from the
ID's.  DBBC recalled all of them and reprinted the book with the
corrections.

Errors happen...and not all of them are caught.

HE Juliana


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