Towards the Solution for Bédier’s Paradox in the Critical Editions of Greek Writers

Abstract

Even though textual critics have tried to resolve Bédier’s paradox in various ways, it still remains an open question for philology. Most philologists argue that the prevalence of bipartite stemmata is a real feature of manuscript transmission. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the defect of the common-error method itself, which inevitably leads to bifurcation at every level of the stemma or to recourse to contamination. It will also become evident that the factor that has complicated the problem is a bottleneck in transmission that occurred in the 9th–10th century. The failure of editors to recognise this could account for many false bipartite stemmata and even some false multipartite stemmata. The case of John Chrysostom’s panegyrics serves as an illustration of how this may deceive an editor.