Text Typology
Incorporated Matter

One kind of junk that can accumulate in a text is matter incorporated from its edges. Notes or glosses written in the margin of a page, and meant to be associated with it but not to be part of it, may be included in it when the text is next copied. The difference from the Interpolated type is that there is no factor of intentionality, merely inadvertence.

In extenuation of the scribes, be it noted that if the corrector of a manuscript finds a missing phrase and adds it in the margin, the phrase is meant to be included, and the later scribe is right to include it. Of course, the later scribe may include it at the wrong position in the text.

Chinese Examples

Mencius 1B4. Kennedy pointed out that two binomial affective phrases in this passage are now followed by a pedantic definition of their two constituent characters. In his paraphrase, the comment claimed that "Friv means drifting downstream; olous meant drifting upstream; extrav means hunting too many wild animals; agant means drinking too much wine." The obvious aetiology is of an incorporated marginal gloss. The case is interesting as showing that the Mencius had been marginally glossed some time before the composition of its first extant commentary, by Jau Chi of Latter Han.

Other Examples

Romans 8:1 in the text of Westcott and Hort reads "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." The reader might be thought to wonder exactly who those are, and some glossarist therefore added the explanation (taken from 8:4) "who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit." This was incorporated into an ancestor of what became the Received Text, and it will be found in the King James translation, which was based on that text.

Lectionary use of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels led to reader aids such as eipen o kurios "Thus saith the Lord" being inserted into the margins of some copies. A few of these gradually found their way into the text proper; see for example Matthew 25:31 and Luke 7:31 in the older translations. Metzger has made a separate study of this type of incorporated matter.

Philology is Copyright © 2001- by E Bruce Brooks

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