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Re: orion ORION: Variations
>It would be far more interesting if there were _no_ orthographic
>variants in a scroll.
>
>The texts record speech, pronunciation. Scribes copying texts
>write what they see; scribes taking dictation write what they
>hear. There are differences in pronunciation from person to
>person and from dialect to dialect, so they correctly wrote
>what they heard.
So if scribes cannot be responsible for orthographic variation, how does it
happen? Presumably some non-scribes are involved. This seems a little
unlikely.
>>I asked about the definition of scribes, because I wondered
>>if it included authors........I take it that ancient authors
>>were very often scribes; are authors allowed to depart from
>>the rules? [Davies]
>
>We have no evidence that authors wrote their own texts.
We have evidence that a lot of texts were dictated. This does not mean we
have evidence that all texts were dictated. We just do not know, so such
assertions are not really factual. I t seems to me reasonable that
revisions to texts take place at the written stage (as wel as perhaps the
oral) so that some degree of authoring is being done by scribes.
Philip R Davies
Department of Biblical Studies
University of Sheffield