I do not think that the inconsistency you think you see is really present. It is often the case that scholars embellish, but the general tendency is for them to embellish in ways that conform to existing preconceptions, and this is compatible with the principle of the difficult reading. Some (contrived and imperfect) examples follow:ez4u wrote:"Lectio difficilior potior (Latin for "the more difficult reading is the stronger") is a main principle of textual criticism. Where different manuscripts conflict on a particular word, the principle suggests that the more unusual one is more likely the original. The presupposition is that scribes would more often replace odd words and hard sayings with more familiar and less controversial ones, than vice versa (Carson 1991)..."
"Lectio brevior (Latin for "shorter reading") is one of the key principles in textual criticism, especially biblical textual criticism. The principle is based on the widely accepted view that scribes showed more tendency to embellish and harmonise by additions and inclusions than by deletions. Hence, when comparing two or more manuscripts of the same text, the shorter readings are more likely to be closer to the original..."
Pretty obviously you get to pick whichever fits the argument you would like to make. BTW, just Google on "textual criticism" and peruse the results. Obviously this field is dominated by biblical studies, so it is no surprise that the blog noted above deals with it as well. As always YMMV.
In the year 3000, we may have two accounts, one saying that Paul Erdos (or Chuck Norris) was nearly 9 dan at go, another silent on his strength--we will use Lectio Brevior to favor the first one--that he was an amazing go player is a plausible thing for an admiring writer to add.
On the other hand, if you read one account that is silent, and another that calls Erdos a patzer, there is some ground to believe it authentic, on the grounds that people rarely make up such surprising things.
If you have all three accounts, then the principles will pull in opposite directions, and *drumroll* you will not be particularly confident . That's true of all directives for interpreting anything contestable. Compare the situation to go proverbs--they conflict all the time. Where they speak in unison, it's strong reason to believe a move is good or bad. Where they conflict, you just have to keep looking for deeper reasons to judge that a move is right or wrong. But only a few of us conclude that proverbs are worthless for that reason.
Jts: I'm not sure why you think that the Bible is such a bad target for textual criticism: surely many people do come to the subject with various axes to grind, but there's a ton of work on the bible from textual critics, and I had thought that it much of it was considered good work.
