skepticdude

In NT scholarship, "conjectural emendation" is the best hypothesis one can come up with for what the original wording of a bible verse was, when face with two different readings in the mss. that both boast of early and wide attestation.

I'd like to do an exercise to illustrate how it works by using a secular issue to illustrate the practice, not a biblical test.

Patricia Ondrovic was an EMT at ground-zero on 9-11. She gave official eyewitness testimony before the WTC Task force on October 11, 2001. But starting at the bottom of page 9, certain portions of her testimony are blacked out.

I'd be interested to hear from anybody here, Christian or otherwise, who would be willing to perform "conjectural emendation", to try and figure out, from the immediate context of her words which surround the blacked out portions, what those blacked out portions most likely said.

YES, this is a speculative venture, and that's the whole idea. Are we at a complete loss as to what she likely said in the deleted portions? Or is there enough surrounding context to justify forming a hypothesis about what she said, that is something less than crazy?

The official transcript is in pdf format, at http://graphics8.nytimes.com/package...IC/9110048.PDF

...and her later interview where she revealed she told the WTC commission that day about explosions in the WTC buildings that couldn't be linked with jet crashes or collapsing buildings, is at http://killtown.blogspot.com/2006/02...nside-wtc.html

Help me out man! What could she POSSIBLY have witnessed at ground-zero that the government thought best to delete from the official record?

I start my speculation by dispensing with the "redundant testimony" theory. They leave in lots of instances of her saying things that would not be important to the official 911 inquiry. SO what they deleted wasn't mere rambling and must thus be "important" stuff.

Did she see things that, if made public knowledge, would be feared by the government as having the capacity to compromise our national security?

If so, then what is there in President Bush's version of events for 911, that leaves any room for civilian eyewitnesses to see things that could compromise national security if made public knowledge? All of us already know about the planes, the jet fuel fires, the people caught in the smoke and dust, etc. etc. Unless Bush's version of 911 is false, what would an eyewitness at ground-zero have possibly seen that would enable the knower to hurt our national security, so much that testimony about it would be deemed better to be blacked out by the officials?

Is it not most irresistable to conclude, that what the WTC Task Force wished to withhold from public knowledge was not her observation of things that involve national security, but her observation of things that would conflict with the offical White House version of what happened on 911?

Conjectural Emendation is FUN.

The Evil One

But you don't have two different MSS with variant readings. You've got one "MSS" with bits blacked out, and a separate "document" by the same author (airquotes because both are transcribed speech and neither is truly an MS).

I fail to see how this exercise is parallel to the type of biblical criticism exercise you mention.

I suspect your real point is that the government is lying. Well, duh - that's what governments do. In other news, a bear was today observed shitting in the woods. Film at eleven.