Great moments in textual transmission.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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mlinssen
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Re: Great moments in textual transmission.

Post by mlinssen »

DCHindley wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2020 11:08 am Something that struck me about the alternate meanings Milk/Butter & Leaven is that both fatten things up (leaven makes bread or cake rise, and for newborn men or beasts milk/butter in their diet makes them grow up stronger). The basic meaning, then, might be simply fattening something up.

DCH (taking my union mandated afternoon break, boss ... :goodmorning:)
Oww, I think you did it now. Yes, colostrum is very rich milk,
Colostrum has especially high amounts of bioactive compounds compared to mature milk to give the newborn the best possible start to life
It is meant, naturally, for growth. A fluid form, and a fixed form
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mlinssen
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Re: Great moments in textual transmission.

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2020 10:43 am
mlinssen wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2020 10:37 amI'm not sure about that, because a root distinguishes itself by phase, form, anything. Curdled or sour milk already is very close to butter and leaven, and most certainly past the stage that colostrum is in.
Okay, but none of those is just plain milk. That is what I am saying.
Well, what exactly is plain milk but something that first starts out as colostrum?
Perhaps it is like this:

ⲥⲓⲣ means colostrum as root: the very first form of milk, its root form, the Ur-form. Then it splits into two different applications: one fluid(ish) and wet / moist (butter or cheese), and one fixed and dry (leaven). Don't have in mind our solid yellow cheeses, but more the Greek feta

In the line of your previous reasoning: had Thomas wanted to use leaven he could have used https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C4778, ⲑⲁⲃ, or https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C1098, ⲕⲱⲃ

And milk would be https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C708, ⲉⲣⲱⲧⲉ just like you said. Knowing Thomas there are additional parameters to his words of choice such as sound, likeness to others, and combined heritage (CITE COTE CATE for example), but let's assume that this very word here was picked for its meaning alone, or at least mostly - especially giving his metamorphosis model of change between starkly contrasting begin and end states, and the fact that this logion narrates about exactly such a process.
It is an agent of some kind, although I think that everyone agrees on that, it's just the word and its very definition or meaning that has set us on this journey

And from your diligent samples it is clear that the word in Thomas belongs to the top definition, the fluid and wet one - no use found of it meaning leaven other than in the translation by Smith. Well that and all the Coptic scholars who translated the text, as well as the pretentious opportunistic one-time only supposed Coptic scholars like Gathercole and DeConick, who know diddly of Coptic and demonstrate that at length with their transcription and interpretation of Thomas
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Great moments in textual transmission.

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mlinssen wrote: Fri Oct 30, 2020 12:47 amThen it splits into two different applications: one fluid(ish) and wet / moist (butter or cheese), and one fixed and dry (leaven). Don't have in mind our solid yellow cheeses, but more the Greek feta
(Just to be clear, clabber is not "fixed and dry." It can be almost like a cheese. It can also be soupy and lumpy or creamy and spoonable almost like mayonnaise. The consistency is not what makes it clabbered milk.)
In the line of your previous reasoning: had Thomas wanted to use leaven he could have used https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C4778, ⲑⲁⲃ, or https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C1098, ⲕⲱⲃ

And milk would be https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C708, ⲉⲣⲱⲧⲉ just like you said. Knowing Thomas there are additional parameters to his words of choice such as sound, likeness to others, and combined heritage (CITE COTE CATE for example), but let's assume that this very word here was picked for its meaning alone, or at least mostly - especially giving his metamorphosis model of change between starkly contrasting begin and end states, and the fact that this logion narrates about exactly such a process.
It is an agent of some kind, although I think that everyone agrees on that....
I agree, and well put. It definitely looks like an agent. What do you think it is "agens" (= Latin for "doing") in the saying?
Well that and all the Coptic scholars who translated the text, as well as the pretentious opportunistic one-time only supposed Coptic scholars like Gathercole and DeConick, who know diddly of Coptic and demonstrate that at length with their transcription and interpretation of Thomas
What do you think motivates people who have no expertise in Coptic to give such seemingly authoritative yet misguided interpretations of a text like Thomas? Is it just some kind of incentivizing in the academy, or what does one stand to gain by it?
mlinssen wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2020 7:59 amGathercole, like Deconick, has little understanding of Coptic, if any. He has 12 transcription errors in his book, still better than the dozens that others have. April starts her booklet with misspelling the word hidden in the prologue, she has a ⲧ where it says ⲡ.
Transcription errors can be frustrating. How many transcription errors does Crum have? You and I found one similar kind of error already (ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲣⲉ for ⲥⲁⲓⲣⲉ). Are there others? If so, roughly how many? A lot or a little? Better or worse than Gathercole?

And then there is Westendorf, clubbing together, as you pointed out, spelling variants that Crum had kept separate. What do you make of that? (I neither know Coptic nor am very familiar with Coptic studies; I know the big names and many of their conclusions, of course, but am not in much of a position to properly evaluate their work.)

You know, what is interesting is that the spelling variant in Thomas exactly matches only one other instance (so far):

Summary Thus Far.png
Summary Thus Far.png (41.22 KiB) Viewed 8143 times

The only perfect match is in 1 Samuel 17.18, where it is translating a word that means "cheese."

What if, then, the variant ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲣ simply means cheese? Something just beyond curds. I had thought before that perhaps butter was a viable option, but the results above have perhaps pointed in another direction. Perhaps the woman is tucking cheese into her dough. What do you think of that?

ETA: I know it is just an editable online resource, but Wiktionary appears to condone this viewpoint:

ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲣ = cheese.
ⲥⲁⲓⲣⲉ = butter.

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Gathercole copies DeConick's transcription error

Post by mlinssen »

The word is ⲁⲙⲏⲉⲓⲧⲛ, https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C84
Crum: http://coptot.manuscriptroom.com/crum-c ... 0&pageID=7

And this is what it is erroneously transcribed as - twice!

Logion_90.png
Logion_90.png (295.58 KiB) Viewed 7502 times
So indeed, that is Simon Gathercole (2014) incorporating a transcription error of April DeConick (2006)

There are 18,825 characters in the text, so what are the chances here? And what are the chances of Gathercole reading only the papyrus yet making the exact same error as April?

Scribal work - seriously underestimated business!
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