Corpus-Paul

[Jill and Dale Walker <jilldale AT rcn.com>]

Richrad,


> Dale, if letters or letter fragments were fused together as often as you
> suggest,

This exaggerates what I have said.


> To say that letter editors/collectors had individual charactistics does not
> really add anything. You would need to show that they often had the
> particular characteristic of combining letters.

And I disagree with this. I should say that in the best case scenario, I
would agree with it. If we could line up a dozen examples of partitioning,
we wouldn't be having this conversation. But in this case I can't. So, instead
I'm looking at the broader picture of what editors did. From what I can see,
editors adapted their work to whatever it was they were doing, in terms of
objective, genre, and content. Observing that ancient editors had 
individual ways
of going about their work is entirely relevant because it demonstrates that
the methods of any one cannot be predicted by observing the methods of all.
Each did what he did given the project he worked on. I think in saying this I
add a broader context to the question, and that context undermines the value
of demonstrating they often had any particular characteristic.

Best,
Dale