for_new_coders [CATSS Variants Wiki]

The following steps describe the procedures for editing a particular biblical book.

Variants are entered word by word in a “vertical text” format. Each variant consists of three types of information:

 (1) the type of variant -- minus (>), plus (+), alternative (:) -- 
 (2) the substance of the variant -- excepting minuses -- and 
 (3) the witnesses attesting the variant (manuscripts, versions, quotations).

Tools:

A computer capable of editing large files, using unicode Greek.

Internet access, intermittent or steady, is useful although not crucial.

Liddell-Scott-Jones-MacKenzie Dictionary [VW]

BASIC TEXT

Step 1 Get the base Greek text of your biblical book in “vertical format” (one word per line) from the CATSS web site

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/text/religion/biblical/lxxvar/

Step 2 Digitize the variants either by

a. scanning them into the computer, or

b. typing them in by hand, either to a separate computer file or directly to the vertical file.

Step 3 Split the variants apart and locate them with the lemma (text word) to which they apply. You will encounter various problems at this stage, since the apparatus you have encoded does not deal with all variants on a word by word basis. Multi-word groups will need to be atomized (broken apart). See the instructions manual [Ruth]. As noted above, there are basically three types of variant for any single word: (1) minuses, (2) plusses, and (3) alternative text.

Step 4 Encode the witnesses (manuscripts, versions, quotations) in a consistent manner, consulting the relevant style guide.

NOTE For your exemplar of the combination of text and variants, take either

a. Ruth as revised in this wiki, if source for the variants is the Brooke-McLean (Cambridge) Edition, or

b. Minor Prophets [Obadiah] or Genesis - well-worked-out examples from the Göttingen Edition

REFINING THE BASIC TEXT

Clue 1

a. If you are working with a Cambridge edition, become familiar with the basic groupings of texts that recur throughout the variants for your chapter/section/book [VW].

b. If you are working with the Göttingen edition, again, become familiar with the manuscripts and manuscript groupings, and the sigla for the groupings.

Clue 2 Learn the existing conventions for variants abbreviations from the section on abbreviations of Wevers’s Introduction to Exodus, available on this wiki.