An important aspect of Polak’s analysis is that he delineates between variants that are
similar in nature but different in length. Two categories exist for the omission or addition
of material: those that involve single syntactic slots, and those that involve whole phrases
or sentences. This is an important delineation, and one that will be recalled when we for-
mulate our own methodology.
Variants in Comparative Approaches to Non-Biblical Texts
Cogan’s examination of the annals of Ashurbanipal identifies two separate figures behind
ancient scribal activity: authors and copyists.^65 However, as no holographs are discern-
able amongst the evidence, the treatment of all sources as copies is demanded.^66 This is
something akin to the argument that a level playing field must be established between all
alternative readings. Further to this, variants are divided into orthographic level variants
and word level variants. This is comparable to Young’s designation of orthographic and
non-orthographic variants.
Other aspects of Cogan’s system are more finely tuned than many other models. He dis-
tinguishes between scribal errors,^67 variants that occur within copies of a single edition of
the text, and variants that occur within parallel texts in different editions.^68 Variants from
each of the latter two groups are then described as linguistic (changes in verb conjuga-
tion), expanding, condensing, and parallelisms (changes in sequence or rephrasing). An
(^65) See M. Cogan, "Some Text-Critical Issues".
(^66) M. Cogan, "Some Text-Critical Issues," 3-4.
(^67) Scribal errors are divided into five categories: dittography, omission, interchange of graphically similar
symbols, spelling error, and difference in sequence. See M. Cogan, "Some Text-Critical Issues," 6-7. 68
M. Cogan, "Some Text-Critical Issues," 19.