![]() In fact, Tov has shifted towards a view that Jews conservatively copied the text and made popular versions of the text throughout the period in question. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible 3 rd ed., 2012: 174–80, esp. Although Tov may have held this multiplicity of texts view in 1982 (the article cited by the authors), his most up-to-date view is that text standardization or stabilization is a myth (E. Here it is appropriate to register criticism of this work. Cross’s theory of “local texts” and Emanuel Tov’s theory of “multiplicity of texts” for the two main explanations. What explains such a textual pluriform situation? The authors marshal Frank M. Manuscripts from Qumran reveal (1) a direct knowledge of the textual transmission at this time and (2) a real “textual variety in this period” so that the proto-MT (the basis of the later Masoretic Text) is now seen to be only one of many (p. “Pride of place for the manuscript evidence of this phase” belongs to Qumran. Rather, the knowledge we have of the Old Testament text during this period is of an indirect nature consisting of the history of the development of the language (the introduction of vowel letters known as matres lectionis or ‘the mothers of reading’, grammatical updating, and changes to the script) and also what we can learn about scribal activity from Mesopotamia and Egypt.įor the period of 300 BCE to 135 CE, Brotzman-Tully comment on the manuscript discoveries at Qumran, situated on the north-west corner of the Dead Sea. In fact there is no direct evidence of the text from this period, since, as the authors note, the silver scrolls from Ketef Hinnom (Numbers 6:24–26) were not intended as biblical texts but as amulets to be worn (p. ![]() The authors note that there is very little direct evidence of the text before 300 BCE. The chapter develops a history of the transmission of the text according to three major periods: the text before 300 BCE, the text from 300 BCE to 135 CE, and the text from 135 CE to 1000 CE (the authors continue the history from 1000 to 14 to the present but we will focus on the first three phases here). Scribal activity is foreign to modern text critics and therefore knowledge and reconstruction of their practices will aid the text critic in reconstructing the original text of the Old Testament.Ĭhapter 2 provides an overview of the transmission of the Old Testament Text. The authors show that writing systems and scribal activity are linked. In chapter 1, the authors provide an able survey of the history of writing, noting the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian writing systems in order to place alphabetic writing in its context. The work is replete with these types of notes for the beginner. 1QIsa a ), the authors stop and explain it on page 37 in footnote 3. For example, if the reader does not know the notation system of the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g. Readers will be thankful for the explanatory notes throughout this book. The book consists of eight chapters containing material on writing in the Ancient Near East, an overview of the transmission of the Old Testament text, Hebrew manuscripts, ancient translations, critical editions of the Old Testament, scribal changes, principles and practice of Old Testament textual criticism, and finally a textual commentary on the book of Ruth. The book is now in its second edition and Eric Tully of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is now coauthor of the work. ![]() Ellis Brotzman’s first edition of Old Testament Textual Criticism was published in 1994 as a practical entree into the field of textual criticism of the Old Testament. ![]()
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