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Textual corruption, of course, is a fascinating topic in itself. Textual critics have long recognized that it arises from a variety of causes,6 each of which can give us fascinating insights into the processes by which the textual data were received, handled, and passed on within the community where the texts were used. Scribal inability to read antiquated scripts, and changes in the way letters are pronounced—both can tell us about the historical development of written and spoken language. Unintentional omissions, additions, or transpositions, and errors "induced by the context" can reveal much about the mental processes of individual scribes, as can such things as "mistakes that betray the influence of Christian thought" on pre-Christian classical writings. Deliberate alterations and corrections, of course, can be even more illuminating. In the case of NY, however, the processes of textual corruption worked somewhat differently. Comparison of the original Latin liturgical text with its NY quotation offers a fascinating look at what can happen when texts are transmitted by people who neither understand nor value them, who are motivated instead by the needs of self-defense. In turn, the apparent transmission history of these quotations implies much about the processes by which NY itself was formed. Following the many clues and hints can, in the end, give us a sense of what medieval Christian worship looked like to Jews, though the result is not an extensive critique based on first-hand experience, but rather a reaction to what Christian preachers told Jews about it. The form that the Latin liturgical quotations exhibit in the extant state of the text suggests that their incorporation into the NY occurred in five "stages." It should be stressed, however, that these are logical stages, which need not necessarily correspond with distinct chronological stages. What actually happened historically may have been much more complicated; or it may have been simpler, with two or more logical "stages" effectively occurring at the same time. In the first stage, Christian polemicists extracted these quotations from their original contexts, and quoted them in oral or perhaps written presentations aimed at Jewish audiences. The oral presentations could have included sermons and disputations, as well as perhaps informal conversations and arguments. In the second stage, these quotations were collected by Jews, along with the much larger number of quotations from the Latin Bible. Somehow they were compiled so that they could be studied by Jews preparing to defend themselves against Christian proselytizers. In the third stage, which may have begun to happen simultaneously with the second or compiling stage, the Latin passages became corrupted as they were written down in Hebrew letters, then reread and reinterpreted by Jewish readers. Even under the best of circumstances the passage from an Indo-European alphabet to a Semitic one can be brutal, as it was for the many Greek ecclesiastical terms that have been incorporated into Christian Arabic, Syriac, and Ethiopic. But these circumstances were hardly the most favorable, for the Jewish compilers and copiers of the NY clearly had limited knowledge of both Latin and Christianity. In the fourth stage, the degraded Latin transliterations were translated into Hebrew and sometimes also German, often incorrectly. Explanations and refutations were added to show why the meaning of each Latin passage, or the Christian argument based on it, should be unconvincing to Jews. Sometimes these refutations were based on misunderstandings of what the Latin had originally meant before it was corrupted. In the fifth stage, the collection was edited into the NY as we know it. Attempts were made to correct and improve the text, though this often succeeded only in aggravating the damage. |
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