The particular difficulty and a new methodological approach

Apart from fragments with only small amounts of text not two of the manuscripts contain an identical text. At the end of the textual history a text form was dominant which is indeed transmitted in manuscripts with relatively few variants; yet, the further one goes back in the textual history, the more the texts differ from each other. Among the oldest strata of a textual tradition, in particular, the differences are quite considerable.

In addition to the substantial variations of the texts there is the problem that they are highly contaminated, i.e. the scribes have always incorporated readings which were not part of their master copy, but which they knew from other manuscripts. This complicates the genealogical analysis radically. Conventional methods are inadequate in dealing with contaminated traditions. Therefore a new method (Coherence-Based Genealogical Method) had to be developed by means of which genealogical connections can be detected even in extensive contaminated material.