Hi Ken,Ken Olson wrote: ↑Tue Apr 30, 2024 3:03 pm If I knew nothing else about The Letter to Theodore and you had sent me images of the three pages and asked me what the word in dispute on III 18 is, I would almost certainly have said it was γυμνοί with a final Iota because one of basic rules of Greek is that accents go over vowels. That's the quick and easy answer. If you sent me the same images of the three pages and the same question along with the the statement from Venetia Anastasapoulou's report that the accents in the manuscript are placed either over the letter or to the right of the letter in and provided me with comparanda such as εὐθὺς and τὸν on III 2, in which the accent is placed over the letter following the vowel, my immediate response would likely have been that I can't be sure what the disputed word is, I would need to look at it some more.
I know you wanted to simulate something analogous to a 'veil of ignorance' so as not to skew the answers in favor of Smith's opinion (as I take it you think has happened in the field), but I think you have skewed the results in the opposite direction. I would weigh the opinion of scholars who have addressed the entire manuscript (Smith, Tselikas, Pannanen and Viklund, and Adams) more heavily than those were asked for and/or gave an opinion on the single word under consideration or just a few words.
Best,
Ken
Added note: I once asked Ulrich Schmid to look at a reading I was interested in and justified it by saying I wanted the opinion of 'an expert on textual criticism'. I thought he'd be flattered that I had so high an opinion of his expertise. His reply was something like: 'You can't be an expert on textual criticism. You can only be an expert on a particular manuscript'. (He did give me his opinion on the reading though).
I do think it can be a credible "awakener" for some (not you, as you have been generous with your time working through all of this) who have not yet started to reconsider seriously the previous majority view on this point, which is thinly argued in the literature. It's not just me and my buddy Randy here on the forum (and the paleographer Tselikas, who also considered it a forgery) who think they can say that this is an iota instead of a sigma. It's remarkable that nobody so far has volunteered to say it's a sigma, even for example the expert(s) who wrote that accents can be placed rapidly and incorrectly.
But, yes, this is literally the first thing that I thought too, or as I put it in my words to Pantuck, who's been following this:
It's not a complete explanation of the responses that don't mention the accent and do mention other aspects (the other two points I mentioned). But, fundamentally, I agree. I'm not saying that this e-mail polling answers the question conclusively here.
It sounds like you're saying that it would be better if I followed up, providing an apparatus of comparanda for iotas, sigmas, and accents and including a note about the placement of accents in this manuscript. This would help to overcome the most severe limitations of not personally undertaking a detailed study. Finding all the relevant data in the manuscript takes time.
Hypothetically we could even try to work together to construct a neutrally worded apparatus and presentation of relevant examples here, if you're willing to help.
Would you help with this?
I can do the work of collating. I just would appreciate some help declaring it sufficiently neutral.
Thanks,
Peter