Editing Textual criticism (section)

=== Limitations and criticism ===

The stemmatic method assumes that each witness is derived from one, and only one, predecessor. If a scribe refers to more than one source when creating her or his copy, then the new copy will not clearly fall into a single branch of the family tree. In the stemmatic method, a manuscript that is derived from more than one source is said to be ''contaminated''.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

The method also assumes that scribes only make new errors{{mdash}}they do not attempt to correct the errors of their predecessors. When a text has been improved by the scribe, it is said to be ''sophisticated'', but "sophistication" impairs the method by obscuring a document's relationship to other witnesses, and making it more difficult to place the manuscript correctly in the stemma.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

The stemmatic method requires the textual critic to group manuscripts by commonality of error. It is required, therefore, that the critic can distinguish erroneous readings from correct ones. This assumption has often come under attack. [[W. W. Greg]] noted: "That if a scribe makes a mistake he will inevitably produce nonsense is the tacit and wholly unwarranted assumption."{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=20}}

[[Franz Anton Knittel]] defended the traditional point of view in theology and was against the modern textual criticism. He defended an authenticity of the [[Jesus and the woman taken in adultery|Pericopa Adulterae]] (John 7:53–8:11), [[Comma Johanneum]] (1 John 5:7), and [[Testimonium Flavianum]]. According to him, [[Desiderius Erasmus|Erasmus]] in his [[Novum Instrumentum omne]] did not incorporate the ''Comma'' from [[Codex Montfortianus]], because of grammar differences, but used [[Complutensian Polyglot Bible|Complutensian Polyglotta]]. According to him, the ''Comma'' was known for [[Tertullian]].<ref>Knittel, ''Neue Kritiken über den berühmten Sprych: Drey sind, die da zeugen im Himmel, der Vater, das Wort, und der heilige Geist, und diese drei sind eins'':  Braunschweig 1785</ref>

The stemmatic method's final step is ''emendatio'', also sometimes referred to as "conjectural emendation". But, in fact, the critic employs conjecture at every step of the process. Some of the method's rules that are designed to reduce the exercise of editorial judgment do not necessarily produce the correct result. For example, where there are more than two witnesses at the same level of the tree, normally the critic will select the dominant reading. However, it may be no more than fortuitous that more witnesses have survived that present a particular reading. A plausible reading that occurs less often may, nevertheless, be the correct one.{{sfn|Tov|2001|pp=351–368}}

Lastly, the stemmatic method assumes that every extant witness is derived, however remotely, from a single source. It does not account for the possibility that the original author may have revised her or his work, and that the text could have existed at different times in more than one authoritative version.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}