agrees with other features of systems we have already reviewed above, specifically the
delineation between expansive or clarifying variants, and variants that bring a different
meaning to the text.
One feature of Dobrusin’s work that makes it unique among the models being assessed
here is that it attempts to contrast different texts from varying localities and periods, by
exposing all of the evidence to the same method of analysis. This is perhaps the reason
that Dobrusin’s system of categorisation is so much less complicated than, say, Cogan’s
or Polak’s. To make the methodology flexible enough to be used in differing contexts,
Dobrusin has kept her classification of variants broad and uncomplicated. This is some-
thing we will have to keep in mind when forming our own methodology, given that we
will face the same challenge of making our method adaptable to as many text forms as
possible.
In his critical edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh, George attempts to define the exact na-
ture of recensional variations between the first millennium manuscripts, coming to the
conclusion that “a methodology seeking to view variant readings as necessarily indicative
of recensional differences is exposed as naïve.”^73
George’s system of categorising variant types delineates between words or phrases that
are modified grammatically or completely replaced, words that are added or omitted, and
phrases and lines that are reworked. More infrequently whole lines can be omitted en-
(^73) A.R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts (^) (2
vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 431.