Let me start by saying that I have full confidence in Lisa Fagin Davis' identification of the five hands.
The second important point is that it is methodically wrong to base the number of scribes on textual statistics. There is no reason to believe that the two are linked to each other. In fact, people have been trying to find such a correlation since Lisa's results were published, so far without a clear correlation, apart from, of course, the original Currier A vs. Currier B correlation with his Hand 1 vs. Hand 2.
I did not make any statement about that claim. What I did say is that the evidence presented in the first paper mentioned in this post is not valid. The A and B languages are easy to distinguish. The intermediate forms (depending on which statistic is used) cover only a small part of the text.
Strangely enough, these correlate very strongly with the use of normal sized folios vs. foldout folios, which still lacks an explanation.
From what I have seen, there are a few jumps in the textual statistics rather than a continuous change, but the data are too noisy to be specific about it. I certainly don't feel confident about stating a cause (or excluding a cause) based on what we have.
The second important point is that it is methodically wrong to base the number of scribes on textual statistics. There is no reason to believe that the two are linked to each other. In fact, people have been trying to find such a correlation since Lisa's results were published, so far without a clear correlation, apart from, of course, the original Currier A vs. Currier B correlation with his Hand 1 vs. Hand 2.
(22-08-2023, 02:23 AM)Torsten wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If not, where exactly do you see a contradiction between your observations and our claim of a "gradual evolution of a single system from 'state A' to 'state B'"?
I did not make any statement about that claim. What I did say is that the evidence presented in the first paper mentioned in this post is not valid. The A and B languages are easy to distinguish. The intermediate forms (depending on which statistic is used) cover only a small part of the text.
Strangely enough, these correlate very strongly with the use of normal sized folios vs. foldout folios, which still lacks an explanation.
From what I have seen, there are a few jumps in the textual statistics rather than a continuous change, but the data are too noisy to be specific about it. I certainly don't feel confident about stating a cause (or excluding a cause) based on what we have.