Lectio difficilior potior

(Latin: "the difficult reading is stronger") is an important, internal criterion in textual criticism. When different manuscripts of a text conflict, this principle requires that the harder, unusual, more obtuse reading is to be preferred. It is based on the assumption that scribes are more likely to replace odd words in difficult places with more familiar vocabulary in more expected positions.Maurice A. Robinson, "New Testament Textual Criticism: The Case for Byzantine Priority", 2001.

It was one principle among many that became established in early 18th-century textual criticism, being part of an attempt by scholars of the Age of Enlightenment to provide a neutral basis for discovering an urtext that was independent of the weight of traditional authority.

History Rabbeinu Tam (1100 – 1171) expressed the idea in his responsa The Book of right (Heb. ספר הישר, Sefer haYashar),

Erasmus expressed the idea in his Annotations to the New Testament in the early 1500s,

According to Paolo Trovato, who cites Sebastiano Timpanaro, the principle was first codified by Jean Le Clerc in his Ars critica.Page 117 in Trovato, P. (2014). Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann's Method. libreriauniversitaria.it.

It was also laid down by Johann Albrecht Bengel as in his "Prodromus Novi Testamenti Graeci Rectè Cautèque Adornandi" in 1725 and employed in his "Novum Testamentum Graecum" in 1734.Noted in an observation by Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener in A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New testament (E. Miller, ed. 1894: vol. ii, p. 247) by W. L. Lorimer, "Lectio Difficilior", The Classical Review 48.5 (November 1934:171).

Otherwise, it is often attributed to Johann Jakob Wettstein.E.g. by H. J. Rose in The Classical Review 48 (126, note 2), corrected by Lorimer 1934.

Scholarly Use Many scholars considered the employment of an objective criterion that would even override other evaluative considerations.Tov 1982:432. The poet and scholar A. E. Housman challenged such reactive applications in 1922, in the provocatively titled article "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism."A. E. Housman, "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", Proceedings of the Classical Association 18 (1922), pp. 67–84. DOI https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8247611

On the other hand, taken as an axiom, the principle produces an eclectic text, rather than one based on a history of manuscript transmission. "Modern eclectic praxis operates on a variant unit basis without any apparent consideration of the consequences", Maurice A. Robinson warned. He suggested that to the principle "should be added a corollary, difficult readings created by individual scribes do not tend to perpetuate in any significant degree within transmissional history."Robinson 2001

A noted proponent of the superiority of the Byzantine text-type, the form of the Greek New Testament in the largest number of surviving manuscripts, Robinson would use the corollary to explain differences from the Majority Text as scribal errors that were not perpetuated because they were known to be errant or because they existed only in a small number of manuscripts at the time.

Most textual-critical scholars would explain the corollary by the assumption that scribes tended to "correct" harder readings and so cut off the stream of transmission. Thus, only earlier manuscripts would have the harder readings. Later manuscripts would not see the corollary principle as being a very important one to get closer to the original form of the text.

However, is not to be taken as an absolute rule either but as a general guideline. "In general, the more difficult reading is to be preferred" is Bruce Metzger's reservation.Italics supplied. Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, II.i.1, p. 209. "There is truth in the maxim: ('the more difficult reading is the more probable reading')," write Kurt and Barbara Aland.Aland, The Text of the New Testament, pp. 275–276; the Alands' twelve basic principles of textual criticism are reported on-line.

However, for scholars like Kurt Aland, who follow a path of reasoned eclecticism based on evidence both internal and external to the manuscripts, "this principle must not be taken too mechanically, with the most difficult reading () adopted as original simply because of its degree of difficulty."Aland 1995, p. 276. Also, Martin Litchfield West cautions: "When we choose the 'more difficult reading' ... we must be sure that it is in itself a plausible reading. The principle should not be used in support of dubious syntax, or phrasing that it would not have been natural for the author to use. There is an important difference between a more difficult reading and a more unlikely reading."West 1973, p. 51.

Responding to Tetyana Vilkul's review of his 2003 critical edition of the Primary Chronicle (PVL), Donald Ostrowski (2005) phrased the principle as follows: 'The more difficult reading is preferred to a smoother reading, except, again, where a mechanical copying error would explain the roughness. The rationale is that a copyist is more likely to have tried to make a rough reading smoother than to have made a smooth reading more difficult to understand.'

Lectio difficilior potior

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