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that is, as a form (see Eco 1976:3.7.4 on the "overcoding of the expression"). In fact, the generic notion of material support must be further analyzed into subsystems and subsystems of subsystems. For instance, in a manuscript, writing is the substitute of the linguistic substance, inking is the support of the graphemic manifestation (to be seen as a form), the parchment is the support of the inked manifestation (to be seen as a form), the physico-chemical features of the parchment are the support of its formal qualities, and so on and so forth. In a painting, brush strokes are the support of the iconic manifestation, but they become in turn the formal manifestation of a pigmentary support, and so on. |
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6.2. Proofs through Linear Text Manifestation |
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The Linear Text Manifestation of a document must conform to the normative rules of writing, painting, sculpting, and so on, holding at the moment of its alleged production. The Linear Text Manifestation of a given document must thus be compared with everything known about the system of the form of the expression in a given periodas well as with what is known of the personal style of the alleged author. |
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Augustine, Abelard, and Aquinas were confronted with the problem of determining the credibility of a text from its linguistic characteristics. However, Augustine, whose knowledge of Greek was minimal and who knew no Hebrew, advises in a passage on emendatio that when dealing with biblical texts one should compare a number of different Latin translations, in order to be able to conjecture the "correct" translation of a text. He sought to establish a "good" text, not an "original" text, and he rejected the idea of using the Hebrew text because he regarded this as having been falsified by the Jews. As Marrou (1958:432434) remarks, "ici réapparait le grammaticus antique. . . . Aucun de ses commentaires ne suppose un effort préliminaire pour établir critiquement le texte. . . . Aucun travail préparatoire, nulle analyse de la tradition manuscrite, de la valeur précise des différents témoins, de leur rapports, de leur filiation: saint Augustin se contente de juxtapose sur la table le plus grand nombre de manuscrits, de prendre en considération dans son commentaire le plus grand nombre de variants." The last word lay, not with philology, but with the honest desire to interpret and with the belief in the validity of the knowledge so transmitted. Only in the course of the thirteenth century did scholars begin to ask converted Jews in order to obtain information on the Hebrew original (Chenu 1950:117125, 206). |
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Saint Thomas paid attention to the usus (by which he understood the lexical usage of the period to which a given text refers; see Summa |
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