@DoubleAA I am a little confused about why you are so concerned about saying that צדי could be a scribal error in the face of significant evidence. Surely with this argument, everyone ought to write a caveat for any conclusion based on virtually all texts made before the medieval period.

Randomly selected, I could argue that you cannot make this claim from absence, and it ought to be noted in your answer: judaism.stackexchange.com/a/25933/1499

judaism.stackexchange.com/a/22510/1499 ... Maybe these were all scribal errors!

You see what I mean here?

@Argon Expanding abbreviations is not just any scribal error but an incredibly plausible one.

@DoubleAA So is dropping out text from manuscripts! I could point you to entire paragraphs or more of texts from the LXX or DSS which were dropped out in the Masoretic text or vice versa.

Confusing yud and vav is also very common

If you wanted to bring a proof from some old manuscript about the spelling of a word with yud/vav then indeed you should be very careful about what you derive from the particular ms

I've also commented on this site numerous times to be careful about words like נכרי עכום גוי מין etc. since they were regularly exchanged by censors and such.

@DoubleAA Like this one? judaism.stackexchange.com/a/22510/1499 I don't understand what the difference is

@Argon Did I prove something from a manuscript there? I don't understand what the similarity is.

@DoubleAA Maybe they were the same word with a scribal error. Surely that is a (not unlikely) possibility which was unmentioned

@Argon Feel free to if you want. What does this have to do with your answer showing which spelling of the name of the letter צ was popular when?

@DoubleAA Why be makpid about this issue on some answers, when not on others? I made more of an effort to obtain many sources which were of high-quality---more than most responses on this site frankly.

On a going forward basis, is it necessary for me to indicate the chance of textual corruption when not using autograph manuscripts?

I also wrote it on other answers

As far as I know, we have no idea whatsoever of anything Rashi really said.

Or Ibn Ezra, or anyone Chazal, or anyone in Tanach

The claim was that my post was misleading because " it sounds like we have direct evidence that צדי was used by the authros of the Talmud"

Really?

Yep. From your answer I have no clue with what confidence we can say that spelling is original and not a later copyist's choice. Letter names and numbers especially are so commonly abbreviated that it's hard to just take any one edition alone as proof.

This is not the same thing as positing entire chunks of text were made up or deleted accidentally.

A copyist probably wouldn't consider himself negligent for writing ד אמות instead of ארבע אמות

@DoubleAA Why does the intention matter? It is still a change, it is still possible and it still happens

@Argon Copyists at least try not to be negligent.

(hopefully)

@DoubleAA So what? In fact I see the Samaritan Penteteuch, Vulgate and Peshitta have Penuel in Gen 32:31

It is not impossible peniel there is a scribal error

@Argon Have I claimed otherwise? Who are you arguing with?

@Argon Why are you showing me that link?

@DoubleAA It is an example where a scribal error could have seriously occurred, but it was not noted. Isn't that precisely your issue with my answer?

Is there scholarship that indicates that variable expansion of letter-names was, in fact, a feature found among medieval copyists, or is it just speculation to say that it could have been so?

@robev Cool!

The point is, it seems like a small matter to bring up (seeing that it is seldom brought up in other cases), and I did a lot of work to obtain many good sources, so I don't know why it becomes such an issue

I made the change, mind you. I just don't enjoy having these massive comment threads about what I think are minutae

It looks to me like @Argon's naming the specific manuscripts that the spelling citations are coming from is, on its face, sufficient to make the nature and age of these citations clear. A disclaimer indicating that any or all of these instances of spelling could well have originated in the copying process rather than when the authoritative source was originally written could be a nice feature to add to the answer, particularly if there's scholarship indicating that the spelling of letter names

in particular, is something that copyists are known to have imposed on their own.

@IsaacMoses Full disclosure: Those I added recently in response to the comments

@Argon I'm talking about features of the answer post itself, from my POV as a peer-editor thereof. I don't think there's any substantive disagreement here about what could have happened, though there could be some undefined disagreement about the probability. The main point of contention is what ought to be communicated as part of the answer.

@Argon just added: "Granted, all these manuscripts could have suffered from degrees of corruption. However, given the overwhelming sources, it is almost certain that the final kof is secondary." FTR

@Argon My issue with your answer is you appear[ed] to make too strong a claim that your evidence did not support. Your edits have greatly improved your post.