I started a thread Interpolation in Pliny about an earlier suggestion that part of the letter (a part which is not witnessed by Tertullian nor replied to by Trajan) is not original.Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 1:42 pmMy biggest issue with Tuccinardi's article (and I am more than happy to change my position on this if more research is published on the matter) is that while Tuccinardi may find non-Plinian elements in the text, we are not told where the elements occur. And without knowing that, it does not seem particularly helpful. The reason being, since Pliny in the text is reporting on a tradition he has not reported on elsewhere, and therefore using terms he hasn't elsewhere, of course there will be a larger degree of non-Plinian style and language in the text. He never talks of Christians elsewhere, and as he is reporting what he gathered from interrogating Christians, we would expect non-Plinian language. So, where the interpolations supposedly occur in the text based on stylometric analysis is important. If it occurs in the sections where he broadly reports on Christianity, then it may not be an indication of interpolation at all, but of borrowed language from those he interrogated.neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 1:09 pmWhat are your objections to Tuccinardi's analysis?Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 11:18 am ... which gives Pliny ample opportunity to share his knowledge on Christians. I think it would be fair to say he knows more than what was put in a letter, given he did interrogate Christians and such.
Which leads to me to another problem which is that we have proven that author's can consciously alter their style (in fact a very interesting study was published on adversarial techniques to undermine stylometric analysis, see https://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~sadia/p ... ometry.pdf) and also their styles change over time and under various influences. So, I am actually unsure about the entire presupposition of Tuccinardi's paper that "each author owns distinctive writing habits, independent of his/her will, and [...] the author cannot intentionally alter these features."
I think that Tuccinardi's analysis is a really intriguing start for interpolation theories, but until more work is published on the matter, I remain unconvinced of interpolation so far.
Andrew Criddle