In the very first sentence of verse 3, the word “country” appears (“… get thee out of thy country …”). Mr. Metcalfe transcribes the word as: count[ ]y
Yes, because the "r" is clearly missing. How is this an "incorrect transcription"? Had Brent transcribed it as "county," without further comment, I could see how this could be called an error. But he was being cautious and pointed out the missing letter because it is missing. Whether the scribe intended the word to be understood as "country" is beside Brent's point, I think. I think the point is that there is a discrepancy between the two paragraphs, and intended discrepancy or not, the discrepancy is there.
The brackets indicating that the “r” was omitted.
The "r" is not there so technically Brent is not in error to point this out. The photo Will provided doesn't prove otherwise, even if the scribe really did intend to write country. You cannot assume existence based on intent. If I intended to take out the trash, it isn't safe to assume I actually did it. Here is an example of 18th century ligatures, which involve two distinct letters:
Now here is the example of a ligature according to Will:
And to be precise, the brackets signify that "X is missing in this text, but present in a parallel text" and this furthers the point Brent was making, which seems to have completely escaped Will.
However, having previously examined this particular portion of the document with much care, it was evident to me that, in fact, what we are seeing here is a “ligature,” which in text-critical parlance indicates an example where two or more letter-forms (in this case, the "ry" pair) are joined as a single glyph.
But without two letters joining to become one, there can be no ligature. Where is the "r"? Now the "r" was clearly intended to be there, but intention is beside the question of existence. Will can insist that the scribe was rushing through the process and just left it out due to haste, but that is fine and perfectly consistent with the critical model. In fact, I'm pretty sure that is part of Brent's point; that the scribe was rushing. Brent never denied that the scribe intended to transcribe "country." Of course that was his intention. I intend to sign my name legibly too, but I rarely do.
Brent was simply being cautious and was not giving in to "bombastic certitude"; something William can't refrain from as evidenced in this thread.
That we are dealing here with a ligature seems quite certain, for in the example of “country” in the preceding paragraph, we can see that Williams comes close to replicating the ligature in question:
How does this make his previous ligature "quite certain"? In this photo one can see the "r" is clearly present. In the former it is absent.
I wanted to address another argument Will is making over the flock/flocks discrepancy:
Our readers may recall that the page in question contains a duplicated paragraph of the text for Abr. 2:3 – 5. Why a document that Metcalfe purports to be the product of an oral dictation would contain a repeated paragraph is a question we have and will yet again consider, but for now let’s merely examine the third transcription error I have identified. In the first instance of the paragraph, Frederick G. Williams writes the word “flocks”:
Will wants to take credit for something I had previous noted on the 23rd of May and something Dan Vogel pointed out almost two years ago!!
Last week I said: "I would only add that the first paragraph says Sarai while the second Sarah and the first says flocks while the other flock."
In October of 2006, in a debate with Will, Dan Vogel said:
"If Williams had simply recopied the same paragraph, why does the first read "Sarai" but the second "Sarah"? Another variant is flocks/flock. This is hard to explain if he was copying the same MS Q twice."
And Will is over at MADB gloating that he just "identified" it through his "careful" examination! Hilarious.
But in any event, if Brent thinks both are flocks, at least Brent is not interested in counting this as evidence in favor of the critical argument, with bombastic certitude. How does it help the apologetic argument if one says flock and teh other flocks?
Will is so deaf, dumb and blind in his ambition to retaliate against Brent, he has lost all sight of the apologetic he is supposedly defending. He doesn't realize that he is only making the critical argument stronger by pointing out yet another discrepancy between the two paragraphs. Nowhere in his rant does he explain for us how any of this stuff strengthens a particular apologetic argument. It appears to be nothing more than a "gotcha" to show everyone that Brent is quite human.
Having said all that, it remains to be proved if Will has really shown Brent to be in error. I'll let Brent speak on his own behalf.