Navigating the Edition page

The Edition page has two main areas: “SahidicBible” and “Edition” (see, e.g., Deuteronomy). The former contains the edition text, i.e. the critically reconstructed earliest version of the Sahidic Old Testament. The latter displays the apparatus.

You “enter” the edition by clicking on the little grey button displaying the abbreviated name of the book in question, e.g., Isa for Isaiah. This will make a list of all the chapters of that book that have already been worked on appear. A progress bar will instantly tell you how much of the apparatus for a certain chapter has already been constructed. Selecting an available chapter from the list will load the first verse of that chapter in the “SahidicBible” area and show you its apparatus in the “Edition” area. You can move on to other verses by simply clicking on any verse number in the “SahidicBible” area.

The edition text and the apparatus are connected in two ways. On the one 
hand, they are connected by word addresses. On the other hand, they are connected in the digital edition by color codings, so that hovering over a segment in the apparatus will highlight the words in the edition text that the segment refers to in red. 

Word addresses are even numbers from 2 onwards in consecutive order with one number for every single “word” (= semantically segmented token group). For every single verse these word addresses start afresh. In the apparatus the word addresses are used to identify the variation units that we also call text segments or segmentations, in relation to the edition text, e.g., 2-6 (i.e., the first three words of the verse), 8-10 (i.e., words four and five), etc. For additions to the edition text, either from the Sahidic text tradition or from the LXX, we use odd numbers from 1 onwards to place those additions exactly at the spot where they occur. 

In the apparatus, after the numbers that identify the variation unit/segment in relation to the edition text, we use lower case letters in alphabetical order as reading identifiers or reading designators, the “a”-reading always being the reading of our Critical Edition text. (For more details about the assessment of variation, see Prolegomena…). A “Proper Variant” receives its own reading designator “b”, “c”, etc. 

For apparatus segments with only “a”-readings we were not able to document proper variation from the Sahidic text tradition beyond the edition text because all of the available witnesses were deemed to essentially represent the a-reading. Such segments are nevertheless presented in the apparatus for two reasons. First of all, our apparatus is supposed to document the Sahidic text in relation to its presumptive Greek Vorlage which requires it to be presented together with the Greek even in cases where no Sahidic variation exists. Secondly, we also aim to document lacunae and regularizations within our Sahidic witnesses below the verse level. Hence, it was necessary to break up longer stretches of unvaried Sahidic text into smaller segments in the apparatus that are easier to digest. 

Lacunae and missing text more generally are documented on the verse level by listing every manuscript that is part of our edition of Sahidic Isaiah yet not contributing a single word to this verse under “Fully non-extant witnesses:” Below the verse level we document lacunae underneath every segment/variation unit after a dash - (Note: A manuscript can appear as witness to a reading and in the lacuna row after the dash because it is partially available for this segment.)

The manuscript witnesses are presented in the apparatus by their siglum or sa-number. (Descriptions of the manuscripts can be found on the respective Catalogue pages.) The sigla can appear “naked”, in which case the manuscript(s) read(s) the text that is presented verbatim, or with suffixes (r, V, f, H, A, etc.) in which case the reading has been adapted and/or evaluated a certain way. In cases with suffixes, the exact text of the reading in question is available as a tooltip in the hover over. 

List of suffixes used in the apparatus:
r - regularized: The text of the reading has been adapted to our standard presentation of the edition text. 
V - reconstructed: The text of the reading involves at least one damaged or doubtful letter. 
f - error: The text of the reading is considered to be mistaken. The “correct” reading, however, is easily identified. 
H - haplography: The text of this reading involves what appears to be an omission/lacuna due to haplography.
A - lacunose due to abbreviation: The text of the reading appears to be shortened due to the constraints of the manuscript type. This applies to commentary manuscripts and lectionaries where lemmata or reading sections appear to be deliberately abbreviated.
S - supplemental manuscript portions: The text of this reading comes from a different hand and/or supplemented leaves that appear not to have been part of the original production unit. 
Short definitions of the suffixes are available in the apparatus when hovering over the blue i-button in the upper right corner.   

Clicking on the siglum of a manuscript in the apparatus (safe for “Fully none-extant witnesses") will load the transcription of the page that contains the verse in questtionon the right hand side. In addition the option to load the image(s) of that page is presented either in the “Manuscript Workspace” view or a simple “Image” that opens in a separate window.