La mise en oeuvre de la cohérence pré-généalogique dans le cadre de la Coherence- Based Genealogical Method : évaluation critique

Abstract

While the Alexandrian text is generally followed in New Testament editions, the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (= CBGM) unexpectedly revalues many Byzantine readings in the Editio critica maior. After a history of the method and a presentation of pregenealogical coherence, the article offers a critical evaluation to understand the dysfunction of pre-genealogical coherence. The criteria for pre-genealogical coherence depend as much on the high homogeneity of the Byzantine witnesses as on their plethora and thus generate a bias in their favour, to the detriment of other text types. The revaluation of the Byzantine readings is thus caused more by the criteria adopted by the promoters of the CBGM than by the sources themselves. The pre-genealogical coherence is subordinated to the accidents of the manuscript tradition where the number of preserved manuscripts becomes preponderant. Its
claim to rule on how a reading was copied in the manuscript tradition is not sustainable. Our evaluation shows that it is actually reduced to detecting the characteristic (or not) readings of a textual group, while ignoring the existence of textual groups other than the Byzantine text. The CBGM claims to conclude that there is a strong coherence when it shows that the closest witnesses share the same reading, whereas it in fact only identifies the characteristic reading of a text type. However, since the Byzantine text type has the highest homogeneity due to its high agreement percentages, its characteristic readings inevitably have, according to this approach, the highest coherence. This explains the inevitable revaluation of the Byzantine readings and the dysfunction of the pre-genealogical coherence.