Some musings on Rich Leiter and Lee Ryans comments--
I think we can find plenty of other examples of textual referencing other
than the Bible that are not page-bound. I recall that other scriptural texts
that I have looked at like the Koran and the Upanishads are not page-bound,
nor are citations to plays, Shakespeare's sonnets, and many other texts.
Even in law, we have no problem with uniform citation for the federal and
many state code versions, e.g., California.
When I was writing on Goethe, a great frustration was the lack of an
authoritative citation for the many, many editions of his works. (I always
referenced the Sophien-Ausgabe, which I considered the most important and
complete of all the editions.) Some type of standard citation would have
been extremely useful there.
On the other side of the coin, I deplore the way in my church it is becoming
customary to cite to pages in the scriptures, rather than chapter and verse
citations. It presumes we are all reading the same "authorized" edition,
which the church of course, has a monopoly on (shades of West!). I prefer
using my older, well-marked and annotated edition, and sometimes even other
translations.
Lee Warthen
University of Utah Law Library
WARTHEN@ADMN1.LAW.UTAH.EDU
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