Collected Texts
Conflated

These are texts which are put together out of several pre-existing texts, where the structural integrity of the previous texts is not preserved (as it is in the Juxtaposed category). Rather, the material of the source texts is rearranged into a new whole. For the rearrangement of material within a single previous text, see instead under Rearranged.

Chinese Examples

Jan-Gwo Tsv. Conflated by Lyou Syang from six pre-existing texts (which he names). The six texts were evidently broken up and their constituent anecdotes reassembled along geographical and chronological lines. All six source texts are now lost, but it can be seen from traces in the present JGT that some of them were more historically responsible than others. It follows that they did not earlier form a single series, or stem from a single source. There were also some mid-Han series or collections (one of which took the literary form of a series of letters from the diplomat Su Chin) which were in turn combined with other material; one stage of such a combination is probably shown by the JGT-type texts recovered from the 0168 tomb at Mawangdwei. The six texts conflated by Lyou Syang belong to a later stage in the evolution of the Jan-Gwo Tsv literature.

Lyou Syang rearranged the JGT stories under the states with which they were most concerned; this was not the original order. A Sung dynasty scholar, following some clues that must originally have connected some of the stories, produced an edition of JGT which amounts to a partial reconstruction of some of the features of the source texts prior to Lyou Syang, but falls short of attempting to distinguish the source texts as such. It is thus a somewhat halfway affair, though indicating where further efforts at deconflation might eventually succeed.

Other Examples

Samuel. This extensively interwoven text would qualify as Conflated under the strict form of Julius Wellhausen's "Documentary" thesis; for our opinion, see Extended.

Thucydides' History, as we have it, is an editorial product in which several authorial versions of the same episode have been placed more or less side by side, among them the tyrannicides (1/20 vs 6/54-59). Possibly also, 1/23:1-3 is an early short version of 1/1-19 (thus Wade-Gery in OCD2). These conflation products detract from the concinnity of the work, though they would be quite in place in a variorium edition. The differences between them, and also the differences between the original ten-year war account (see under Redirected) and the units describing later wars, are in principle evidence for Thucydides' growth in conception and technique, but no present consensus exists as to what these differences actually have to teach us.

2 Corinthians. This supposed letter from Paul to the Church at Corinth has to be analyzed as a conflation of two separate letters, one rejoicing that an earlier appeal has been heeded, and the other bitterly accusing the church of wrong behavior. The crux is in the "severe" section 10:1-13:10. The indicated solution is that 10:1-13:10 are from the otherwise lost "earlier appeal," (Filson 271) to whose success the earlier part of 2Cor bears witness. Another passage less certainly belonging to the stern "earlier appeal" is the also harsh and contextually interruptive 6:14-7:1. Whether the concluding formulas, 13:11-14, are from the earlier or later letter has also been debated. The conflation was probably done by the owner of both manuscripts, namely the Church at Corinth. One motive will have been to disguise the unrelievedly severe character of the "earlier appeal" by diluting it with, and preposing it by, the later letter of joy and reconciliation. Philologically speaking, the "earlier appeal" letter, so far as it can now be reconstituted, needs to be labeled as 2Cor (fragmentary), and the remainder of our 2Cor needs to be relabeled as 3Cor (essentially complete). No other arrangement will adequately witness to the history of the early Church.

If, as some believe, the "earlier appeal" letter or its surviving portion is found only in 2Cor 10:1-13:14, that is, from chapter 10 to the end, then 2Cor would instead be classified as Juxtaposed.

Philippians. The notable shift in tone and address which takes place at 3:1b (or 3:2) suggest that two originally separate Pauline letters have been joined at this point. There are many variants of this theory, which include more or less additional material as originally belonging to a first or second (or perhaps third) letter. Reed rightly remarks that the outcome of this discussion affects the presumptive case for the proposed partition of 2 Corinthians, above. In this case and in that of Corinthians, the prevailing supposition is not that that spurious material has been added to genuine Pauline material, but that two pieces of genuine Pauline material have been later combined, more or less cogently, into a single letter.

 

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