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Monday 27 March 2017

Random measurements of progress

I have an audit mechanism as part of the software I am using, (GX-LEAF). While taking a backup of critical files, I discover that I have made approximately 22,000 changes in the last 11 days, in the word table that I am working with in this translation exercise I am doing. These are gloss adjustments, domain adjustments, and other changes related to the 9 chapters read since mid-month. The 9 chapters comprise roughly 250 verses. Other verses are also affected outside the boundary of these chapters, especially since I have been reviewing the work I did in 2015 (I am currently up to December and two books, the rest of the Song, and Ruth, will be re-posted in April when I am away from my desk and take no work with me on holidays).

There is no possibility that this control could have been done without the computer and all its worldwide capacity. How, I wonder, did the LXX translators in the 2nd and 3rd centuries before the common era control their reading?  How even, do copyists control their work?

And my text is itself marginally unique. Though most of it comes from a single source (tanach.us), I do add and change words from the DSS if I think it is suitable. (E.g. the missing N verse in Psalm 145.)

So here is a little of what is written at the end of my Tanakh for Deuteronomy
חזק
נשלמו חמשה חומשי תורא. תהלה לאל גדול ונורא׃
סכום פסוקי דספר דברים תשע מאות וחמשים וחמשא הנץ סמין׃ וחציו ועשית על פי הדבר אשר יגידו לך׃  ופרשיותיו אחד עשר אסרו חג בעבותים סימן

Hurrah,
The five books of Torah were completed. Praise to God, great and fearful.
The verses of Deuteronomy (devarim) are nine hundred and fifty-five.

But I count nine-hundred and fifty-nine verses (though I am not yet finished looking at them all).

What follows next is odd? - הנץ סימן
then it reads: and you will do what they tell you.
and its portions were eleven,
 אסרו חג בעבותים סימן ???

Anyone care to try the questions? or the next bit?

וסדריו עשרים ושבעה יפיה אמונה יגיד צדק סימן׃

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