What are red letters in Text Of The Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (CTENTM)

[David EppS]

What do the red letters mean in the Text Of The Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (CTENTM). I see grey text which apparently means it was reconstructed text that was completely missing (or not clear? which is it? both?) in the MSS. But what do the red letters mean? And the dots underneath the red letters - what does that mean?

[Michael Hanel]

What do the red letters mean in the Text Of The Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (CTENTM). I see grey text which apparently means it was reconstructed text that was completely missing (or not clear? which is it? both?) in the MSS. But what do the red letters mean? And the dots underneath the red letters - what does that mean?

Red texts with the underdot mean that the letter is present, but not entirely legible, so the letter represented in red with the underdot is what the editor thinks the letter is. Letters in gray are probable reconstruction based on how many letters fit per row of the papyrus, but they are places where the papyrus is missing, so they are complete reconstructions of the text rather than a transcription of what is seen.

[David EppS]

Red texts with the underdot mean that the letter is present, but not entirely legible, so the letter represented in red with the underdot is what the editor thinks the letter is. Letters in gray are probable reconstruction based on how many letters fit per row of the papyrus, but they are places where the papyrus is missing, so they are complete reconstructions of the text rather than a transcription of what is seen.

Thank You Michael!!

And what about the ^--- bars over certain words?

[Michael Hanel]

Thank You Michael!!

And what about the ^--- bars over certain words?

They are reproductions of what is written in the papyri. They usually happen in cases of nomina sacra or final nus (the Greek letter) that are not written but instead just that line over the letter is written.

[DavidR]

Pardon my ignorance, but how is this resource accessed in BW 9? I can't seem to locate it. I haven't used BW much for text criticism, and have just played around with the MSS tab in the Analysis Window a bit (but I don't find CTENTM there either).

A blessed Easter weekend to all!

[MGVH]

Pardon my ignorance, but how is this resource accessed in BW 9? I can't seem to locate it. I haven't used BW much for text criticism, and have just played around with the MSS tab in the Analysis Window a bit (but I don't find CTENTM there either).

A blessed Easter weekend to all!

Two ways to find it:
1) Click on Verse tab in Analysis pane and choose CNTTS Apparatus
2) From menu: Resources > Text Criticism > CNTTS

[DavidR]

Ah, thank you. I had indeed found it through the Resources > Text Criticism menu, but I wasn't sure this was the subject under discussion, because of the differing acronyms. I had puzzled over some of the codes there myself.

One last question: Michael or David, could one of you point me to a verse where gray text, red text, underdots, and overlines are present? I just want to view the thing for myself. I presume we're talking about transcriptions of individual MSS here. E.g., using the MSS tab I find that in Acts 28:4 in Codex Sinaiticus, the letters at the ends of two lines are obscured, and I would assume that these would be represented in red or gray in the transcription; and one of them looks to have a line over it representing a final nu.

[Michael Hanel]

Ah, thank you. I had indeed found it through the Resources > Text Criticism menu, but I wasn't sure this was the subject under discussion, because of the differing acronyms. I had puzzled over some of the codes there myself.

One last question: Michael or David, could one of you point me to a verse where gray text, red text, underdots, and overlines are present? I just want to view the thing for myself. I presume we're talking about transcriptions of individual MSS here. E.g., using the MSS tab I find that in Acts 28:4 in Codex Sinaiticus, the letters at the ends of two lines are obscured, and I would assume that these would be represented in red or gray in the transcription; and one of them looks to have a line over it representing a final nu.

I don't want to make things more confusing than they potentially are, but just for the record, we are talking about different kinds of resources. The original poster was talking about the Comfort and Barrett module (which is a great resource). This is not the same thing as what is available in the MSS tab. That is associated with the BibleWorks Manuscript Transcription Project which is BibleWorks' own baby.

So to try to answer your question. In Comfort and Barrett the red font for the underdot letters is a BibleWorks addition to help draw greater contrast between the underdot characters and the regular ones. In the preface (page 13), they only talk about underdots, not the red font:

We were urged by several scholars to employ dots beneath letters that are uncertain in any extant manuscript—a standard practice in transcriptions of ancient manuscripts. However, typesetting constraints stipulated by the first publisher kept us from doing this. In this revised edition, we now display these underdots.

If you click on P1, you can see a papyrus that uses both black font no dots (characters that are clearly read from the papyrus), red font with underdots (characters that are present but not clear) and gray font bracketed (characters that would fit on the papyrus but are not extant).

The same kind of conventions were not followed in the BibleWorks Transcription project. In the BW transcription, characters only are in one color. I don't off the top of my head know of a verse that uses underdots, but they are possible. Gaps are not filled in if they exist in the text, so there are no gray bracketed texts in the transcriptions.

[Michael Hanel]

E.g., using the MSS tab I find that in Acts 28:4 in Codex Sinaiticus, the letters at the ends of two lines are obscured, and I would assume that these would be represented in red or gray in the transcription; and one of them looks to have a line over it representing a final nu.

My guess is that there was some reticence by the transcriber of this text to have questionable readings. I think you could probably make a case that the end of the word κρεμαμενον should have an underdot, but it's also possible that the transcriber had access to a better image of Sinaiticus here and made the judgment call that it was really not disputable. The other interesting thing to note is that if you have this verse open in the MSS tab, you will see that the transcriber did leave a note about this reading in the Transcription Notes section (below the image if you have Sinaiticus active in the MSS tab):

Act 28:4 Transcription Notes
The reading kremameno›follows Tischendorf, Sinaiticum, 117*. [TBW]

[DavidR]

I don't want to make things more confusing than they potentially are, but just for the record, we are talking about different kinds of resources. The original poster was talking about the Comfort and Barrett module (which is a great resource). This is not the same thing as what is available in the MSS tab. That is associated with the BibleWorks Manuscript Transcription Project which is BibleWorks' own baby.

So to try to answer your question. In Comfort and Barrett the red font for the underdot letters is a BibleWorks addition to help draw greater contrast between the underdot characters and the regular ones....

If you click on P1, you can see a papyrus that uses both black font no dots (characters that are clearly read from the papyrus), red font with underdots (characters that are present but not clear) and gray font bracketed (characters that would fit on the papyrus but are not extant).

The same kind of conventions were not followed in the BibleWorks Transcription project. In the BW transcription, characters only are in one color. I don't off the top of my head know of a verse that uses underdots, but they are possible. Gaps are not filled in if they exist in the text, so there are no gray bracketed texts in the transcriptions.

OK, now I get it. I understand now why when I checked CTENTM in the Help system I could only find it in the copyrights list -- it refers to a module, Comfort and Barrett, that I haven't purchased (yet!). It does indeed look like an excellent resource, and a bargain at $30. Onto the list it goes.

Then your last paragraph about the BW Transcription project refers to the MS transcriptions that appear in the MSS tab in the Analysis Window. And the CNTTS apparatus is yet a third resource, appearing in the Verse tab. Wow. Talk about an embarrassment of riches!