From: l. j. swain (x99swain@wmich.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 08 2000 - 13:55:09 EDT
Theodore H Mann wrote:
>
> Thanks to all who responded to my query regarding the Eusebian tables.
> One other matter interests me concerning these tables. I notice they are
> printed in the introductory material to NA27, and I have a couple other
> books in which they appear. Because the tables are reproduced here and
> there, in important works, I assume they have some useful function for
> translators or textual critics; however, I can't figure out what that
> might be. Of what practical value are they?
>
> Many thanks.
>
I had answered before I saw this post. The Eusebian tables are
important because just about every manuscript from the fifth century on
used them, and further, the church used them--this is how they used the
pericope's for citation, for sermons, for liturgy and so on. Most
manuscripts , whether Latin, Greek, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, Armenian,
have some form of the tables in them--usually written at the beginning
and decorated, although interestingly enough not all the tables are
always reproduced. For instance, one manuscript may have tables 1-5,
10, and 12, while the next one produced at the same foundation will have
1-8, 10-12. This is in fact how the medieval period read the gospels,
in contrast to our chapter and verse divisions. It is often an
interesting study to read the gospels as they did, by the Eusebian (and
as Carlton(?) pointed out, the Ammonian) section number.
So what practical value are they to the textual critic? Vital. If one
is working on an edition using as many manuscripts as possible, it is
much easier when working on the Transfiguration to know which canon # it
is rather than reading through each manuscript to find the appropriate
section. That's one. Second, it also helps us see the gospels as those
who penned the manuscripts read them. That's two. Both seem to me to
be important.
Regards,
Larry Swain
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