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SPECIAL TO THE EX OPERE
Our own Dr. Carroll Osburn received the following letter recently, dated January 31, 2002. The letterhead was from the "Institute for Biblical Research"; the unsigned letter came from the president of the organization, one Daniel I. Block from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.
Dr. Can-oil T. Osburn [emphasis ours]
Abilene Christian University
Abilene, TX 79699
Dear Dr. Osburn:
At the business meeting of the Institute for Biblical Research held on November 17, 2001, in Denver, Colorado, your application for membership as a Fellow was received and approved.
[ ... ]
Personally, I am delighted to welcome you to membership in IBR. I am look [sic] forward to many years of service together in this society, and wish you the Lord's richest blessing in your own research, teaching, and other aspects of your ministry for the kingdom of God.
Cordially yours in Christ,
Daniel I. Block
Dr. Osburn's Response: [editors' note: if you haven't noticed to whom Dr. Blockhead sent the letter, look back at the top of the page!]
Dear Daniel:
Today I received the enclosed, unsigned letter from you regarding my acceptance as a fellow in the Institute for Biblical Research. I am indeed Dr. Osburn, but my name is Carroll D. Osburn, not Can-oil T. Osburn, as you put it.
Usually when my name is misspelled, an "r" or an "l" is omitted, an "e" added, or I am wrongfully addressed as "Mrs." or "Ms.," and I simply overlook it. However, I am inclined in this instance to pay some attention to the matter. As an NT text critic, I can envisage the possibility of an "error of hearing" on the part of a typist, due to hearing it pronounced in a thick, Southern drawl by the speaker or perhaps played on a Dictaphone with low batteries that slowed it to the level of a Southern drawl.
Attributing the error to "faulty eyesight" would involve a typist's attempt to make sense of an original, hand-written script so distorted as to defy comprehension. I suppose, too, if one conjectures a list of "things to do" lying nearby, it is possible that a typist's eye could have jumped from "Carroll D." in the original document to "can-oil" in the adjacent list, making parablepsis the reason for the misspelling. Even so, the "T." would require some explanation, possibly postulating Texaco, for instance, as the brand of oil desired. The hyphen would be puzzling only to someone north of the Mason-Dixon line, and should be of no continuing concern.
Another possibility would be an "error of the mind," in which the typist was holding in mind the thought of "picking up some oil (Texaco)" that intruded between the glance at the manuscript to be copied and the actual typing of what he/she saw there. On the other hand,
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