31-07-2018, 11:58 PM
The hands in the MS are more complex than A vs B, but does the evidence really point towards one individual sliding from one end towards the other? It's not impossible, but I think the belief in a single author who did the whole thing might weigh on your judgement there. If there are two or more distinct hands in a MS, wouldn't the majority of cases be attributed to two or more writers?
About corrections: it's important to understand how mistakes were made. Scribing was a tedious process - especially copying or transcribing as in your example. The mere mechanic nature of the activity would cause errors like skipping a piece of a line or one or more complete lines. For example, it happens a lot that a few lines are omitted because the copyist's eye skipped to a lower line starting with the same word.
Corrections would be present if the scribe understood the text and was able to spot his mistake easily when rereading. A lack of corrections might just mean that the scribes were unable to understand what they were copying.
Or a neutral explanation, maybe they didn't care enough to correct every tiny mistake. Or maybe they took great care not to make any.
About corrections: it's important to understand how mistakes were made. Scribing was a tedious process - especially copying or transcribing as in your example. The mere mechanic nature of the activity would cause errors like skipping a piece of a line or one or more complete lines. For example, it happens a lot that a few lines are omitted because the copyist's eye skipped to a lower line starting with the same word.
Corrections would be present if the scribe understood the text and was able to spot his mistake easily when rereading. A lack of corrections might just mean that the scribes were unable to understand what they were copying.
Or a neutral explanation, maybe they didn't care enough to correct every tiny mistake. Or maybe they took great care not to make any.