Well-Behaved Variants Seldom Make the Apparatus: Stemmata and Apparatus in Digital Research

This article describes computer-assisted methods for the analysis of textual variation within large textual traditions. It focuses on the conversion of the XML apparatus into NEXUS, a file type commonly used in bioinformatics. Phylogenetics methods are described with particular emphasis on maximum parsimony, the preferred approach for our research. The article provides details on the reasons for favouring maximum parsimony, as well as explaining our choice of settings for PAUP. It gives examples of how to use VBase, our variant database, to query the data and gain a better understanding of the phylogenetic trees. The relationship between the apparatus and the stemma explained. After demonstrating the vast number of decisions taken during the analysis, the article concludes that as much as computers facilitate our work and help us expand our understanding, the role of the editor continues to be fundamental in the making of editions.

You’re Collating Just Fine and Other Lies You’ve Been Telling Yourself

Although textual scholars agree that collation is a crucial component of the editing process, it often goes undefined and only briefly explained. This article defines the term, explains different kinds of collation, and explores some of its applications. We emphasize stemmatology and medieval textual traditions. By drawing from editorial examples and the theoretical frameworks of projects centred on works such as the Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, Dante’s Commedia and the Greek New Testament, the article seeks to compare manual and computer-assisted approaches to collation methods. We delineate the scope of this activity and argue that computer-assisted collation minimizes the risk of missing out on relevant data. We examine the advantages of full-text collation over sample collation and conclude that no decisions about stemmatically significant variation can be made a priory and that variant distribution is the major factor weighing on significance.

The Motif of the Angel(s) of Death in Islamic Foundational Sources as an Element of Cultural Diffusion

The article harks back to the publication entitled “The Motif of the Angel(s) of Death in Islamic Foundational Sources” (VV 38/2 [2020]), which was devoted to the analysis of the eponymous theme in the foundational sources of Islam: the Quran and the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the motif of angel(s) may have been borrowed from two monotheistic traditions that came before. The verification of the thesis that the motif of the angel(s) of death underwent diffusion was carried out in several steps. First, the motif was identified in the textual traditions of Judaism and early Christianity (i.e. sets of texts that were known and, in all likelihood, widespread in the Middle East during the formative period of Islam). As a result of the analysis, most of the themes recognised in the foundational texts of Islam were found. The next step was to identify possible routes of their transmission and percolation into the Islamic tradition and to determine the “ideological demand” for the motif of the angel(s) of death in the burgeoning Islam. Although Jewish and Christian imagery and beliefs about angels are an important (if not the primary) source of influence on Muslim angelology, there was most likely a two-way interaction between the monotheistic traditions, albeit to a limited extent.

Race and Blackness in Premodern Arabic Literature

The signal works of poetry that prominently feature racialized Blackness in early Arabic literature (c. ad 500–1250) include works composed by authors of Afro-Arab heritage as well as by Arab authors who satirized and panegyrized Black subjects. These poets include the pre-Islamic author ʿAntarah ibn Shaddād and the ʿAbbasid-era figures al-Mutanabbī and Ibn al-Rūmī, and thus reflect the shift, across an extensive timeline, from a local, Bedouin poetics to a self-styled cosmopolitan, courtly aesthetic characterized as muḥdath, or modernist. The works are situated not only within the changing conventions of genre, but also within an arc that traces the emergence of new race concepts and racialized social institutions in the transition from the pre-Islamic era to Islam and from the early conquests to ʿAbbasid imperialization. Critical instances of these works’ intertextual movements demonstrate how racial logic accretes in various Arab-Muslim textual traditions, showing how poetry intersects with popular epic as well as high literary geographical, ethnological, and commentarial corpuses. As verse moves across a myriad of later literary forms, its context-specific representations of racial difference are recontextualized and received in ways that contribute to a broader transregional and transtemporal discourse of racialized Blackness.

Nebuchadnezzar and Narrative Repair in the Court Tales of Daniel

During the second half of the first millennium BCE, innovative portrayals of Nebuchadnezzar began to emerge within Jewish circles that reshaped and reimagined his role in their history. Such reconstruals were part and parcel of the lively negotiations among Babylonian and Hellenistic scribes over the representation of bygone Mesopotamian monarchs. In this essay, I examine the reimagination of Nebuchadnezzar in the court tales of Dan 2–6 as a unique example of how scribes sought to reshape the haunting memory of Nebuchadnezzar. By comparing Nebuchadnezzar’s narrative portrait with various texts from Jewish prophetic traditions, I argue that the redactor of the court tales constructed a counter-memory of Nebuchadnezzar in which the traumatic experience of Judah’s humiliation, deportation, and restoration was creatively mapped onto Nebuchadnezzar. In order to construct this counter-memory, the redactor drew upon and repurposed specific language, imagery, and motifs borrowed from these textual traditions.

The Allure of the Mystical

Alma M. Karlin (1889–1950), a world traveller and German-language travel and fiction writer, cultivated a keen interest in religious beliefs and practices of the places she visited, believing in the Romantic notion of religion as the distilled soul of nations as well as in the Theosophical presumption that all religions are just particular iterations of an underlying universal truth. For this reason, the topic of religion was central to both her personal and professional identity as an explorer and writer. This article examines her attitudes to East Asian religio-philosophical traditions, by focusing on the two versions of her unpublished manuscript Glaube und Aberglaube im Fernen Osten, which presents an attempt to turn her successful travel writing into an ethnographic text. The content and discourse analyses demonstrate the influence of both comparative religious studies of the late 19th century, and of the newer ethnological approaches from the turn of the century. On the one hand, Karlin adopts the binary opposition of religion (represented by Buddhism, Shintoism, Daoism and Confucianism) or the somewhat more broadly conceived belief, and superstition (e.g. wondering ghosts, fox fairies), and assumes the purity of textual traditions over the lived practices. At the same time, she is fascinated by what she perceives as more mystical beliefs and practices, which she finds creatively inspiring as well as marketable subjects of her writing.

Beyond Reception History: The Qur’anic Intervention into the Late Antique Discourse about the Origin of Evil

The article advocates a new approach to the Qur’an: To look at the text as a transcript of the earliest community’s intervention into major debates of its time. Rather than earlier textual traditions (“reception history”), particular burning theological questions that were en vogue in the epistemic space of Late Antiquity are identified as the essential trigger of particular Qur’anic proclamations. Thus, the new—Late Antique—perception of evil (epistemic troubles experienced in the innermost selves of individuals—which cropped up during the sectarian strife in Middle Mecca) is etiologically explained through the primordial rebellion of Diabolos/Iblīs. This figure is portrayed in the Qur’an as a daring “dissenter in heaven”—a dignity that he had proven in various Biblical contexts (Book of Job, Gospels, etc.) before. His main characteristic is his eloquence and logical reasoning, which has earned him the epithet of the “inventor of qiyās/syllogism” in later Islamic tradition. His Qur’anic development is projected against the backdrop of rabbinic, patristic, and poetic exegeses, which together attest the vitality of a most diversified “epistemic space of Late Antiquity”.

The translation and transmission of ‘diatribal’ verbs in the textual traditions of the Zlatostruj collection

The ‘diatribe’ is a dialogical mode of exposition, originating in Hellenistic Greek, where the author dramatically performs different voices in a polemical-didactic discourse. The voice of a fictitious opponent is often disambiguated by means of parenthetical verba dicendi, especially φησί(ν). Although diatribal texts were widely translated into Slavic in the Middle Ages, the textual history of the Zlatostruj collection of Chrysostomic homilies especially suits an investigation not only of how Greek ‘diatribal’ verbs were translated, but also how the Slavic verbs were transmitted or developed in different textual traditions. Over time, Slavic redactional activity led to a homogenization of verb forms. The initial variety of the original translation was partly eliminated, and the verb forms "Equation missing" and "Equation missing" became more firmly established as prototypical diatribal formulae. Especially the (increased) use of the 2sg form "Equation missing" has theoretical consequences for the text’s dialogical structure. Thus, an important dialogical component of the diatribe was reinforced in the Zlatostruj’s textual history on Slavic soil.

Print Cultures in the Making in 19th- and 20th-Century South Asia: Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

The study of the history of print technology in South Asia is a multidisciplinary enterprise which involves attentive consideration of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region, as well as of the historical time in which print technology was massively adopted, namely the colonial period. Here, we focus on the complex fabric of relationships between print and modes of recording and using texts in long present oral and manuscript cultures, also pointing out the limits of applying interpretative models based on the cultural history of Europe to the histories of print in South Asia. Furthermore, we present aspects of the formative stage of print cultures concerning Vedic, Limbu, Nepali, Newari, and Tamil textual traditions—which are studied in the essays of this special issue. This multi-layered perspective helps making sense of social and cultural dynamics concerning the uses of printed books, the (new) meanings associated with them, and the formation of hegemonic configurations within literary and religious traditions.

The Multiple Dialectics of a Text and Author—A Study on Seng Zhao’s Non-Complete Emptiness (Bu zhenkong lun)

In discussing the arrival of Buddhism to China, Erik Zürcher describes the meeting of “a jungle of Buddhist metaphysics” with other local philosophies and practices. This period was a transformative encounter with wide-ranging ramifications, including for textual traditions. Non-complete Emptiness (Bu zhenkong lun 不真空論), written by Seng Zhao 僧肇, is one product of this encounter. While explaining the principle of emptiness, Non-complete Emptiness incorporates Daoist and Confucian terminologies and elements. Nevertheless, the text is considered formative for the development of Buddhist writing and practice during the critical period of Buddhism’s assimilation into China in the third to fifth centuries AD. This study of Non-complete Emptiness looks at the philosophical and cultural relevance of the text. It suggests a methodological solution to some of the tensions that have arisen from Seng Zhao’s notion of emptiness. The article begins by looking into the historical and hermeneutical tendencies in the scholarship of Non-complete Emptiness. The following section provides a textual and cultural analysis of the text and its author, viewing the sage as an “open entity”, to understand Seng Zhao’s idea of emptiness. This analysis suggests that a multiple dialectic approach should be followed to improve the understanding of the text’s Buddhist message and Seng Zhao’s position as a scholar-monk in medieval China.