Talk:Jeremiah 30

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Ancient witnesses

Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

All the Jeremiah chapter-by-chapter articles have a statement describing the Codex Cairensis (895), the Petersburg Codex of the Prophets (916), Aleppo Codex (10th century), Codex Leningradensis as "ancient witnesses". Whilst clearly historic, I don't think it is accurate to describe documents of these dates as "ancient". The article on ancient history states that "the ending date of ancient history is disputed[:] some Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD (the most used), the closure of the Platonic Academy in 529 AD, the death of the emperor Justinian I in 565 AD, the coming of Islam, or the rise of Charlemagne", king of the Franks from 768, as the end of ancient and Classical European history. So I would suggest that the word "ancient" here should be replaced with "historic".

What do others think? - BobKilcoyne (talk) 05:57, 21 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

The Masoretic Text version is considered an "ancient witness" from the 2nd century and is known by Jerome in 4th century. Its extant manuscripts, however, are only from the 9th century at the earliest. How can we formulate an acceptable description for this? Can we use "traditional witnesses"? - JohnThorne (talk) 04:15, 22 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

I agree, the Masoretic Text itself is ancient, but the codices which we have which bear witness to it, as listed, date from 895. I'm not sure what status the codices have in "tradition" in the sense of their being passed down or of being actively used over the centuries. The article on the Aleppo Codex speaks of the "Ben-Asher masoretic tradition" quite specifically and the article on the Leningrad Codex refers to "the Tiberian textual tradition" so the word "traditional" has some varying uses. An alternative might be to call them "early witnesses" or to avoid reference to time and call them "documentary witnesses"? - BobKilcoyne (talk) 05:12, 22 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Using "early witnesses" may be the most appropriate in this case, because it does not close the possibility of older extant manuscripts such as Dead Sea Scrolls. JohnThorne (talk) 14:11, 22 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Yes, "early witnesses" is very sensible - thanks, BobKilcoyne (talk) 03:56, 23 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

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