The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament

The Transmission of the Hebrew Text by Dr. John H. Skilton. Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia Article by F. Buhl. NOTE: This article, published nearly a century ago,
does not reflect the general confirmation given to the traditional masoretic text by the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947.

Hebrew Poetry by T. Witton Davies Acrostics in the Hebrew Bible by Michael Marlowe. Introduction to the Old Testament by Sir Godfrey Driver. Early Printed Editions of the Hebrew Text by A. J. Maas Old Testament Bibliography The Hebrew Alphabet The Aleppo Codex Resources on other sites

The following discussion of the transmission of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is excerpted from the article by Dr. John H. Skilton, "The Transmission of the Scriptures," in The Infallible Word: A Symposium by the Members of the Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary, edited by N.B. Stonehouse and Paul Woolley, revised ed. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967).

The Transmission of the Hebrew Text

by John H. Skilton
The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them. The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.8 WE WILL never be able to attain the sacred writings as they gladdened the eyes of those who first saw them, and rejoiced the hearts of those who first heard them. If the external words of the original were inspired, it does not profit us. We are cut off from them forever. Interposed between us and them is the tradition of centuries and even millenniums. These strange words are taken from a remarkably confused passage in an article written many years ago by Dr. C. A. Briggs. 1 Dr. Briggs further asserts in the same passage: Doubtless by Gods singular care and Providence they [the Scriptures] have been kept pure in all ages, and are therefore authentical. (Conf. of Faith, 1.8) Doubtless throughout the whole work of the authors the Holy Spirit was present, causing His energies to flow into the spontaneous exercises of the writers faculties, elevating and directing where need be, and everywhere securing the errorless expression in language of the thought designed by God (Art. Inspiration, Pres. Rev. II. 231), but we cannot in the symbolical or historical use of the term call this providential care of His word or superintendence over its external production Inspiration. 2 Conservative scholars, whatever their disagreements with Dr. Briggs may be, will readily grant that we cannot in the technical use of the term call Gods providential care of his Word inspiration. Their viewpoint in this matter is that which is reflected in the Westminster Confession of Faith. According to the Confession, the canonical books were given by inspiration of God (1.2). The Old Testament in the Hebrew and the New Testament in the Greek the Scriptures in the languages in which they were given were immediately inspired by God (1.8). Quite distinct from the inspiration of the original manuscripts have been the care and providence whereby the Scriptures have been kept pure. It is by virtue of these two separate considerations the immediate inspiration of the sacred writings in their original form and the singular divine care and providence that the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek are to be regarded as authentical (1.8). Indeed, far from confusing these two matters, conservative scholars would insist on making a very sharp distinction between them. If then we do not call Gods care and providence by the name of inspiration, must we grant that the centuries have cut us off forever from the words of the original and that there is now no profit for us if those words were inspired? We can grant no such things. We will grant that Gods care and providence, singular though they have been, have not preserved for us any of the original manuscripts either of the Old Testament or of the New Testament. We will furthermore grant that God did not keep from error those who copied the Scriptures during the long period in which the sacred text was

transmitted in copies written by hand. But we must maintain that the God who gave the Scriptures, who works all things after the counsel of his will, has exercised a remarkable care over his Word, has preserved it in all ages in a state of essential purity, and has enabled it to accomplish the purpose for which he gave it. It is inconceivable that the sovereign God who was pleased to give his Word as a vital and necessary instrument in the salvation of his people would permit his Word to become completely marred in its transmission and unable to accomplish its ordained end. Rather, as surely as that he is God, we would expect to find him exercising a singular care in the preservation of his written revelation. That God has preserved the Scriptures in such a condition of essential purity as we would expect is manifestly the case. The Hebrew text of the Old Testament has survived the millenniums in a substantially and remarkably pure form. Among the extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible from the Christian era there is an extraordinary agreement. Kennicott in his edition of the Hebrew Bible with variant readings deals with consonantal variants in more than six hundred manuscripts. 3 Dr. Robert Dick Wilson has pointed out that there are about 284,000,000 letters in the manuscripts considered by Kennicott and that among these manuscripts there are about 900,000 variants, approximately 750,000 of which are the quite trivial variation of w and y. 4 There is, Dr. Wilson remarks, only about one variant for 316 letters and apart from the insignificant w and y variation only about one variant for 1580 letters. The variants for the most part are supported by only one or by only a few of the manuscripts. Dr. Wilson has elsewhere said that there are hardly any variant readings in these manuscripts with the support of more than one out of the 200 to 400 manuscripts in which each book is found, except in the full and defective writing of the vowels, a matter which has no bearing on either the pronunciation or the meaning of the text. 5 The agreement which exists among the extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament which date from the Christian era is a sign of the extraordinary care exercised in the transmission of the text by the Jews. It is true that the oldest of these witnesses are relatively late. Among the earliest are the Leningrad Manuscript of the Prophets, which has been dated A.D. 916, and a manuscript of the Pentateuch in the British Museum, which has been thought to date back to the ninth century or earlier.
6

It was the practice of the Jews to place worn manuscripts in a receptacle called the Geniza and to use newer copies, which had been made with incredible care. 7 In natural course the discarded manuscripts perished. 8 But though our extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament from the Christian era are rather late, the text which they contain can he traced to a considerably earlier time. The text of our Hebrew Bible goes back, first of all, to the Masoretes, a succession of Jewish scholars, notably connected with a school at Tiberias, whose painstaking work on the text began about A.D. 600 or before. The Masoretes introduced into the text an intricate system of accent and vowel notations. Since the Hebrew alphabet was entirely consonantal and since in earlier times no full-fledged system of vowel notation had been employed in the manuscripts, readers had been required to supply vowels to the text. The Masoretes also provided notes on the text, notes of such abundance and detail that from them alone it is possible to a considerable extent to reconstruct the text. 9 They mentioned even what they regarded as unusual accents, vowel points, and spelling. They recorded a number of variant readings on the average of about one to a page of a printed Hebrew Old Testament 10 and they made reference to eighteen corrections attributed to the scribes before them. 11 But the Masoretes did not originate the Hebrew traditional text. 12 They received from their predecessors a text already traditional which they treated with great reverence. Their high regard for the text that had come down to them is evidenced by their placing in the margin readings which they believed to be correct and leaving the text itself unaltered.

The Masoretes were heirs of the text in use when the Talmud was written, a text which, as is clear from the Talmud itself, had previously been in a relatively fixed condition. The Aramaic versions or paraphrases (the Targums), the Syriac Peshitto version, the Latin Vulgate version of the Old Testament, and quotations of the Old Testament in the writings of Jerome and Origen, and the Hexapla of Origen, with its Hebrew text and Greek versions, bear witness, like the Talmud, to the existence of a Hebrew text for several centuries before the time of the Masoretes which closely resembled their text. Rabbi Akiba, who died about A.D. 132, had a high regard for exactness and fixity of text, and has been credited with inspiring measures toward the settling of the text in the early second century. 13 The view of P. de Lagarde that after A.D. 130 all manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible were closely fashioned after one archetype which had been decided on not long before that date has not been accepted by all; but it is at least the case that a type of text basically that of the Masoretes existed around A.D. 100 and that this text subsequently overcame whatever competitors it had. Biblical texts which have been discovered recently at Wady el-Murabaat in southern Palestine, which have been dated in the second century A.D., are in notable agreement with the Masoretic text. 14 Kenyon thinks that since the end of the first century A.D. the text has not been altered in any material way. 15 Tracing the investigation still further back, Dr. Wilson maintains that citations of the Old Testament found in the New Testament, in the writings of Josephus and of Philo, and in the Zadokite Fragments bear witness to the existence of a text quite similar to the Masoretic from A.D. 40 to 100. 16 The state of the text of the Hebrew Bible about the time of Christ and somewhat earlier has been illumined in the last two decades by the discovery of a great many manuscripts in the area of the Dead Sea. A particularly significant scroll, containing the entire book of Isaiah, in all probability dates from 100 B.C. or earlier. Here is a Hebrew text of substantial length which is about a millennium older than the manuscripts dating from the Christian era mentioned above and it gives striking support in the main to the Masoretic text. Another scroll, which contains portions of the Hebrew text of Isaiah and which dates from perhaps 50 B.C., gives even stronger support to the traditional text. A commentary on Habakkuk, dating probably from the first century B.C., contains a text closely akin to the Masoretic. Fragments of Leviticus, which go back at least to the second century B.C., provide a firm witness to the traditional text. Certain fragments among the scrolls, however, have some significant agreements with types of texts which diverge to some extent from the traditional or Masoretic, such as those of the Samaritan Pentateuch and of the Septuagint. Texts somewhat out of the main line of transmission can, of course, contribute to our knowledge of the history of transmission and when carefully studied and utilized may at times make important contributions to our knowledge of the nature of the original text itself. Mention might also be made of an ancient manuscript of the Hebrew text which was discovered before the Dead Sea scrolls came to light and which gives support to the traditional text. This witness is the Nash Papyrus, which was written perhaps around 50 or 100 B.C. and which contains portions of the text of Exodus 20 and of Deuteronomy 6. W. F. Albright has held it to be certain and recent discoveries give support to his position that the Hebrew text between c. 150 and c. 50 B.C. was already fixed and that the variations between it and our Hebrew Bibles today are rarely of significance. 17 Studies of the textual situation in the centuries just before Christ must take careful account of the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament into Greek, which was made up of a number of distinct translations of different books or sections made at different times. The Pentateuch, the oldest section of the Septuagint, dates back to about 250 B.C. Although agreeing in the main with our received Hebrew text, the Septuagint does contain differences worthy of study which are of importance to the textual critic. There is a danger in magnifying these differences and in drawing false inferences from their presence. When the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament was made, the Hebrew text used was,

of course, not marked with the vowel points which the Masoretes later placed in their text. And it is to be observed that the great majority of the variations between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text arise from the fact that the translators supplied different vowels to the consonantal text from those which the Masoretes employed. In numerous other instances the translators had before them the same text as that of the Masoretes, but mistook it, misunderstood it, or interpreted it differently. At times it is clear that the translators were not at all sure what the Hebrew text before them meant and it is quite possible that at some other times, when they did feel sure of the meaning of the text, they were mistaken. Furthermore on some occasions, they attempted to throw light on the original by the addition of material. Comparative Semitic philology has shown that numerous supposed variations in the Septuagint from the Masoretic text do not represent any difference at all in the basic text. 18 Dr. Green calls attention to the fact that Origen and Jerome place on translators or transcribers of the Septuagint the responsibility for the variations of the Septuagint from the Hebrew text known to them and do not entertain any belief that the Hebrew text had been altered. 19 Pfeiffer expresses the opinion that Origen was misled by reason of a virtual fixation of the Hebrew text which had occurred before his time and by reason of the notable agreement among the available Hebrew manuscripts. 20 But it is nevertheless important to observe that neither Origen nor Jerome nor any other early writer evidences any suspicion that a real revision or a fixation of the Hebrew text had occurred after the time of the Septuagint. Dr. Green does not deny the possibility that the Septuagint may have been made from a Hebrew text considerably, if not substantially, different from the text in use in Origens day. He thinks it quite possible that there may have been some inferior manuscripts of the Old Testament in use, especially among Jews outside of Palestine; but he holds that, even if this were the case, it would not follow that no authoritative text then existed and that there were no standard copies from which the traditional text has descended. He states a truth quite important in this connection that reverence for the Scriptures and regard for the purity of the sacred text did not first originate after the fall of Jerusalem. 21 Although conceding the possibility that the Septuagint was made from a text considerably different from the traditional text, he thinks that the differences between the Septuagint and the received Hebrew text are more satisfactorily explained if attributed to the translators. 22 The distinctive readings of the Septuagint at times prove superior to readings which have come down in the Masoretic text, and are naturally of importance for textual criticism, as has been mentioned; but they do not indicate that the Hebrew text underlying the Septuagint was basically superior to the traditional text or even radically different from it. Wilson holds that in the Septuagint and also in the citations found in Ecclesiasticus, the Book of Jubilees, and other writings, we can find evidence of the existence of a text substantially the same as our Masoretic text back as far as about 300 B.C. 23 He would trace the Hebrew text to a yet earlier date through the evidence which he believes is furnished by the Samaritan Pentateuch. 24 Dr. Green would accept the reading of the Septuagint when it differs from the received Hebrew text only if the Hebrew text were subject to doubt on other grounds. 25 There is furthermore much in favor of the view that the Hebrew text was faithfully transmitted from the time of the collection of the canon in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The scribes undoubtedly watched carefully over the text. 26 The high regard in which the sacred books were held called for accuracy in copying. Dr. Green places in the period between Ezra and the Masoretes the counting of the letters, words, verses, and sections in all the books, the noting of the location of the middle letters and words of every book, and the marking of them at times by a letter of abnormal size. He remarks that the Talmud regards all this as old and as performed by the early scribes. He holds that some exacting rules designed to guard the text from error in transmission were formed and followed in this period. 27 We may be confident, according to Albright, that the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible has been transmitted with remarkable accuracy. 28 He maintains that the Masoretic text of the earlier books of

the Bible can be followed back to the Babylonian Exile, when he believes they were edited. After the Exile, he holds, these fixed texts were taken back to Palestine. There the consonantal text was copied and transmitted with exceptional fidelity. 29 In the period from the writing of the earliest books to the collection of the canon, some scribal errors undoubtedly were made; 30 nevertheless a study of the text which has come down to us will bring forth much to support the belief that it has been preserved from the very beginning with exceptional accuracy and faithfulness. Some evidence to the contrary might be thought to be found in parallel passages, especially in variations of names and numbers. But many of the variations in these passages may not be due to scribal errors. For one reason or another, these passages may not originally have been identical. 31 We should also guard against erroneous conclusions drawn from the failure of the text at times to meet the readers expectations as to structure and from its refusal to satisfy the requirements of some artificial theories. 32 Dr. Wilson in A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament mentions a number of considerations which clearly evidence the noteworthy reliability of the traditional text. He calls attention, for example, to some important instances of its demonstrable accuracy in difficult transmission. In its correct spelling of the names of numerous kings of foreign nations, the Hebrew text, as it has been transmitted, is almost unbelievably accurate. The spelling of the names of twenty-six or more foreign kings in our Hebrew text can be compared with the spelling on the monuments of the kings and in documents of their own times. In no case is the spelling in our Hebrew text demonstrably wrong; rather in practically every case it is demonstrably right. Likewise the names of many of the kings of Israel and Judah are found spelled in Assyrian contemporary documents agreeably to the fashion in which they are spelled in our Hebrew Bibles. Wilson observes that in 143 cases of transliteration from Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Moabite into Hebrew and in 40 cases of the opposite, or 184 in all, the evidence shows that for 2300 to 3900 years the text of the proper names in the Hebrew Bible has been transmitted with the most minute accuracy. That the original scribes should have written them with such close conformity to correct philological principles is a wonderful proof of their thorough care and scholarship; further, that the Hebrew text should have been transmitted by copyists through so many centuries is a phenomenon unequalled in the history of literature. 33 He reasons further that since it can be shown that the text of other ancient documents has been reliably transmitted and that the text of the Old Testament has been accurately transmitted for the past 2,000 years, we may rightly suppose that the text of the Old Testament has been accurately transmitted from the very beginning. 34 On the basis of varied evidence Wilson concludes: The proof that the copies of the original documents have been handed down with substantial 35 correctness for more than 2,000 years cannot be denied. That the copies in existence 2,000 years ago had been in like manner handed down from the originals is not merely possible, but, as we have shown, is rendered probable by the analogies of Babylonian documents now existing of which we have both originals and copies, thousands of years apart, and of scores of papyri which show when compared with our modern editions of the classics that only minor changes of the text have taken place in more than 2,000 years and especially by the scientific and demonstrable accuracy with which the proper spelling of the names of kings and of the numerous foreign terms embedded in the Hebrew text has been transmitted to us. 36 It does appear that we may rightfully say that the singular care and providence of God has kept the text of our Old Testament in an essentially and remarkably pure condition. We may agree with Green that no other work of ancient times has been transmitted as accurately as the Old Testament has been. 37 And we can be grateful that, along with our Hebrew texts, the care and providence of God have provided versions and other aids for the important and necessary work of textual criticism.

Notes
1. C. A. Briggs, Critical Theories of the Sacred Scriptures in Relation to their Inspiration, The Presbyterian Review, II (1881), 573f. 2. Ibid., p. 574. 3. B. Kennicott, Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum, cum variis lectionibus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1776, 1780). 4. Robert Dick Wilson, The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament, The Princeton Theological Review, XXVII (1929) See pp. 40f. 5. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament (Chicago, [1959]) , pp. 61f. Used by permission, Moody Press, Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. 6. Frederic Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, (4th ed. New York, 1940), p. 44. 7. Ibid., pp. 38f. 8. Ibid., pp. 42f. 9. William Henry Green, General Introduction to the Old Testament The Text (New York, 1899), pp. 153, 165. 10. Wilson, op. cit., p. 62; Robert H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York and London, 1941), pp. 93ff. 11. Pfeiffer, ibid., pp. 84f.; Green, op. cit., p. 151. Green remarks that according to Buxtorf they are passages in which one might suppose from the connection that the writers meant to express themselves differently from the way in which they actually did; but in which the scribes adhere to the correct reading. In a footnote, he says: The passages in question are Gen. xviii.22; Num. xi.15, xii.12; 1 Sam. iii.13; 2 Sam. xvi.12, xx.l; 1 Kings xii.l6; 2 Chron. x.l6; Jer. ii.11; Ezek. viii.17; Hos. iv.7; Hab. i.12; Zech. ii.12; Mal. i.13; Ps. cvi.20; Job vii.20, xxxii.3; Lam. iii.20. As specimens it is said that in Gen. xviii.22 they changed The Lord stood yet before Abraham to Abraham stood yet before the Lord; 2 Sam. xx.1, Every man to his gods to Every man to his tents; Hos. iv.7, They have changed my glory into shame to I will change their glory into shame. All which looks like frivolous punning upon the text by ingenious alterations of its meaning, and casts no suspicion upon the correctness of the received text (pp. 151f.) 12. Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 89. 13. Ibid., pp. 76ff. 14. Ibid., pp. 78f.; Otto Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction, tr. Peter R. Ackroyd (New York and Evanston, [1965]), p. 684; Edward J. Young in Robert Dick Wilson, A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament (Chicago, [1959]), p. 178; Charles F. Pfeiffer, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, 1962), pp. 16, 92f. 15. Op. cit., p. 35.

16. Op. cit., pp. 62f. Wilson maintains: These citations show those who used them had our present text with but slight variations. The numerous citations in the Hebrew of the Zadokite Fragments are especially valuable as a confirmation of the Hebrew text of Amos and other books cited (ibid.). 17. The Old Testament and the Archaeology of Palestine, in The Old Testament and Modern Study, ed. H. H. Rowley (Oxford, 1951), pp. 24f. 18. Wilson says: The differences between the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Greek Septuagint are often grossly exaggerated. The vast majority of them arise merely from a difference of pointing of the same consonantal text. The real variants arose from errors of sight such as those between r and d, k and b, y and w, or from errors of sound such as between gutturals, labials, palatals, sibilants, and dentals, or from different interpretations of abbreviations. There is a goodly number of transpositions, some dittographies, many additions or omissions, sometimes of significant consonants, but almost all in unimportant words and phrases. Most of the additions seem to have been for elucidation of the original (op. cit., p. 63) . See also R. D. Wilson, The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament, The Princeton Theological Review, XXVII (1929), 49-59; D. Winton Thomas, The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament, in ed. H. H. Rowley, op. cit., pp. 242f. 19. Op. cit., pp. 172f. 20. Op. cit., p. 108. 21. Op. cit., p. 173. 22. Ibid., pp. 173f. Green says in this passage: The same causes which lead to a modification of the text in transcription would be operative in a translation in an aggravated form. A freedom might be used in rendering the Scriptures into another language which would not be thought of in transcribing the original. A measure of discretion must be allowed in a translator for which a copyist has no occasion, and which would not be permissible in him. And in this first attempt at making a work of such magnitude intelligible to those of a different tongue, no such rigorous rendering could be expected as would be demanded from a modern translator. The sacredness and authority of the original would not attach to an uninspired version. Accordingly, accurate precision was not aimed at so much as conveying the general sense, and in this the translators allowed themselves a large measure of liberty. When to this is added an imperfect knowledge of Hebrew, conjectural renderings or paraphrases of words and passages not understood, slips arising from want of care and the like, it is easy to understand how the general correctness of the Septuagint might consist with very considerable deviations from the original text. See Edward J. Young in Wilson, Scientific Investigation, pp. 180f. on the willingness of the Alexandrian Jews and the Samaritans, who did not adhere to a strict Judaism, to introduce minor modifications in the text. For a discussion of the Dead Sea manuscripts on Septuagint studies and on the transmission of the Hebrew text, see Patrick W. Skehan, The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Text of the Old Testament, The Biblical Archaeologist XXVIII (1965), 87-105. 23. Op. cit., p. 63. 24. Ibid., pp. 63f. Wilson holds that the Samaritan Pentateuch carries the evidence for our Pentateuchal text back to at least 400 B.C. The text of the Samaritan Pentateuch varies from the Masoretic text in about 6,000 instances. In 1900 of these variants the Samaritan text agrees with the Septuagint (Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 101; Green, op. cit., pp. 134f; and see Green, pp. 139ff. for a helpful treatment of the significance of the agreements of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint) . A great many of the variants in the Samaritan text are quite unimportant and do not modify the meaning. The extant manuscripts have not been copied so carefully as those produced by the Jews and vary considerably

among themselves. None of them has been shown to be earlier than the tenth century A.D. The Samaritans at Nablus have claimed that a roll of the Pentateuch in their possession dates back to the thirteenth year after the conquest of Canaan; but the roll has not been made available for proper study (Kenyon, op. cit., pp. 51f). Gesenius has maintained that with few exceptions the distinctive readings of the Samaritan text are intentional modifications. On the literature concerning the Samaritan Pentateuch, see Eissfeldt, op. cit., pp. 694f. 25. Op. cit., p. 174. Dr. Green holds that there is a general agreement among careful scholars that, while this version is to be highly esteemed for its antiquity, and the general testimony which it renders to the integrity of the existing text, and the aid which it furnishes in the rendering of obscure and doubtful passages, the Masoretic text is on the whole vastly superior to it, and should not be corrected by it, except where there are stringent reasons for so doing; and that in the great majority of cases where a divergence exists, the presumption is strongly in favor of the Hebrew and against the Septuagint. Neither the original character of the latter, nor the history of its preservation, nor the present state of its text entitles it to the precedence. Only in cases where there are independent reasons for suspecting the accuracy of the Hebrew, can emendations by the Septuagint be reasonably admitted. On the textual criticism of the Old Testament, see Archer, op. cit., pp. 47-58; Ernst Wrthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, tr. Peter R. Ackroyd (Oxford, 1957); Eissfeldt, op. cit., pp. 669-721. 26. Green, op. cit., pp. 146f. On the work of the Sopherim, 400 B.C. to A.D. 200, in the transmission of a standard text, see Gleason L. Archer, Jr., A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago, [1964]), pp. 36, 54f. 27. Green, op. cit., pp. 146ff. 28. Op. cit., p. 25. 29. Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands (New York, [1955]), pp. 133f. On the question of early recensions of the Old Testament see W. F. Albright, New Light on Early Recensions of the Hebrew Bible, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 140 (1955), 27-33, and Frank Moore Cross, Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies (Garden City, 1959), pp. 12445. 30. Green, op. cit., p. 144. Green maintains that the veneration with which the sacred writings were regarded as the product of inspiration and invested with divine authority, has effectually operated in preserving them from destruction . . . and it doubtless led to special care in their transcription, though it is probable that the excessive scrupulosity of later times was not brought into requisition until actual experience of the existence of divergent copies had demonstrated its necessity. 31. Ibid., pp. 145f. Green thinks that some variations in duplicate passages may be explained otherwise than as errors of transcription. Villages may be included in the lists which are not counted as cities in the enumeration; or cities which subsequently grew up in the districts described, may have been inserted to complete the lists without a corresponding change of the numbers. The differences occurring in the duplicate Psalms, such as Ps. xviii. compared with 2 Sam. xxii., may be in part attributable to the mistakes of copyists, but in the main they are better explained as the result of a revision by the author himself or by others, or as Ps. xiv. and liii., an adaptation to another occasion. The inference sometimes drawn from such passages of a lack of care in transcribing the sacred books during this period is wholly unwarranted. Green further says: An improper use has been made of duplicate passages on the assumption that they must originally have been identical in every word and phrase, and that every deviation of one from the other is a textual error requiring correction. Thus Num. xxiv. 17b shall smite through the corners of Moab and break down all the sons of tumult, is

repeated with variations in Jer. xlviii. 45b, hath devoured the corner of Moab and the crown of the head of the sons of tumult; but these variations are not errors of transcription. One inspired writer in adopting the language of another did not feel bound to repeat it verbatim, but in the confidence of his equal inspiration modified the form at pleasure to suit his immediate purpose. So the Psalms that occur more than once with some change in the expressions by no means warrant the conclusion that only one of them has been accurately preserved, or that neither has, and the true original must be elicited by a comparison and correction of both. Both copies are authentic; and their very discrepancies are proof of their careful preservation, and the conscientious pains both of the collectors of the Canon and of subsequent transcribers in retaining each in its integrity and keeping them from being assimilated to each other. Ps. liii. is not an erroneous copy of Ps. xiv., nor vice versa; but an adaptation of an earlier Psalm to a new situation. As Delitzsch correctly remarks, a later poet, perhaps in the time of Jehoshaphat or Hezekiah, has given to Davids Psalm a reference to the most recently experienced catastrophe of judgment. Ps. xviii. and 2 Sam. xxii. are two different forms of the same Psalm, the former as it was sung in the sanctuary, the latter most probably as it was current in the mouths of the people when the Books of Samuel were written (pp. 175f.). 32. Ibid., pp. 176f. 33. Op. cit., p. 71. For other evidences of the accurate transmission of the text see pp. 74-86. 34. Ibid., pp. 79-82. 35. Ibid., p. 84. Wilson explains that by substantial he means that the text of the Old Testament and of the other documents have been changed only in respect to those accidental matters which necessarily accompany the transmission of all texts where originals have not been preserved and which consequently exist merely in copies or copies of copies. Such changes may be called minor in that they do not seriously affect the doctrines of the documents nor the general impression and evident veracity of their statements as to geography, chronology, and other historical matters. 36. Ibid., p. 84. On the bearing of the Lachish ostraca on the general reliability of the Masoretic text, see D. Winton Thomas, op. cit., pp. 239f.; and for further evidence of the essential accuracy of that text see the Appendixes by Edward J. Young in Wilson, op. cit., pp. 164-84. 37. Op. cit., p. 181.

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Schaff-Herzog Article

Text of the Old Testament

The article below is taken from The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908-1912). Please note: This article, published nearly a century ago, does not reflect the general confirmation given to the traditional masoretic text by the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947.

1. The Premasoretic Period. 1. The Masoretic Text. 2. The Earlier Text. 3. Change in Style of Writing. 4. Attempts to Fix the Text 5. The Pronunciation Fixed, but the Text Still Unvocalized 6. Word-Division 7. Division into Verses 8. Division into Sections 2. The Masoretic Period 1. The Masoretes 2. Their Work 3. Codices 3. The Postmasoretic Period 1. The Chapter-Division 2. Old Testament Manuscripts 3. The Printed Text 4. Critical Works and Commentaries

1. The Pre-masoretic Period

1. The Masoretic Text

The extant Hebrew text of the Old Testament text is commonly called the Masoretic, to distinguish it from the text of the ancient versions as well as from the Hebrew text of former ages. This Masoretic text does not present the original form but a text which within a certain period was fixed by Jewish scholars as the correct and only authoritative one. When and how this official Masoretic text was fixed was formerly a matter of controversy, especially during the seventeenth century. One party headed by the Buxtorfs (father and son), in the interest of the view of inspiration then prevalent, held to the absolute completeness and infallibility, and hence the exclusive value, of the Masoretic text. They attributed it to Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue, who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were supposed to have purified the text from all accumulated error; added the vowel points, the accents, and other punctuation-marks (thus settling the reading and pronunciation); fixed the canon; made the right division into verses, paragraphs, and books; and, finally, by the providence of God and

the care of the Jews, the text thus made was believed to have been kept from all error, and to present the veritable Word of God. This view of the text prevailed especially when Protestant scholasticism was at its height, and may be designated as the orthodox Protestant position. It was opposed by another party headed by Jean Morin and Louis Cappel, who, in the interest of pure historicity or in Antiprotestant polemics, combated these opinions, maintained the later age of the Masoretic text, and sought to vindicate value and usefulness for the old versions and other critical helps. They fell into many errors in respect to the details of the history of the text and overrated the value of Extramasoretic critical helps; but their general view was supported by irresistible arguments and is now universally adopted. This view, instead of deriving the existing text from a gathering of inspired men in Ezra's time, assigns it to a much later date and quite different men, and, instead of absolute completeness, claims for it only a relative one with a higher value than other forms of the text. A glance at the history of the text will show how this agreement has been brought about.

2. The Earlier Text

Concerning the oldest history of the text of the Old Testament writings there exists almost no positive information. The books were written probably upon skins, perhaps also on linen; as paper was used from very early times in Egypt, it is possible that it was employed; parchment appears to have been used later. The roll seems to have been the usual form (Ps. xl, 8; Jer. xxxvi, 14 sqq.; Ezek, ii, 9; Zech. v, 1); the pen was a pointed reed (Jer.viii, 8; Ps. xiv, 1); the character was the Old Hebrew, which was almost identical with the Phenician and Moabitic (on the Moabite Stone, q.v.). Specimens of this writing are also preserved in the Siloam inscription (c. 700 B.C.), on gems (of the eighth or seventh century), on coins of the Hasmoneans and those belonging to the time of the Jewish-Roman war, and, in somewhat different form, in Samaritan writings. Like the Phenicians and Moabites, the Hebrews separated the words by a point or stroke, but these signs do not seem to have been used regularly, since the Septuagint often makes word-divisions different from those of the Masoretic text. Jewish tradition mentions several passages in which the separation of words was regarded as doubtful. The difference between ancient and modern texts consisted in this, that the former were written without vowels and accents. The Hebrew writing, like Semitic writing in general, was essentially consonantal; vowels were not written. While the language lived, this occasioned no difficulty to the speakers or readers. No details are at hand concerning the way in which the text was multiplied and preserved; but inasmuch as the writings did not then have in popular estimation the character they came later to possess, it is likely that they were less carefully handled, and that the same amount of pains was not taken in copying them. This statement rests upon the fact that those parts of the Old Testament which we possess in double forms vary in ways that indicate a corruption of the text reaching back to precanonical times when copies were neither made nor corrected so laboriously.

3. Change in Style of Writing

A new epoch commenced after the Exile, when the holy writings were raised to canonical dignity and as holy writings were venerated and handled with ever-increasing care and conscientiousness. This veneration was not accorded to all Biblical writing at once, but only to that part of the canon called the law. The epoch begins with Ezra, and extends to the close of the Talmud, c. 500 A.D. During this period not only were the form of writing and the text fixed, but also the pronunciation and division; in short, the major part of the present Masorah was collected in verbal form. A change of an external kind was the development of a sacred writing, under the influence of the Aramaic character, the so-called "square" or "Assyrian" character. Jewish tradition ascribes the introduction of the square character to Ezra, and calls it expressly an Aramaic writing that the Jews adopted in place of their Hebrew, which they left to the Samaritans. A study of Assyrian, Persian, and Cilician seals and coins, of the Aramaic monuments from the third to the first century B.C., and of the Palmyrene inscriptions from the first to the third century A.D. has permitted the tracing of the development of the present Hebrew alphabet

through a thousand years, back to the eighth century. Ezra, therefore, may have influenced the use of the Aramaic alphabet, but the square character was not developed in his day, nor for centuries afterward; nor was the Aramaic alphabet then used outside of the narrow circle of the scribes. For not only did the Samaritans retain the ancient script for their Pentateuch, but among the Jews also it must have been used for a long time, since it is found on coins down to the time of Bar Kokba. Matt. v, 18 proves that the Aramaic writing had become popular by the time that Gospel was written, since in the ancient Hebrew the letter "yodh" was by no means the smallest. Taking all in all, it may be assumed with certainty that the use of the new alphabet in Bible manuscripts of the last Pre-christian centuries was general, a result which is also confirmed by a careful examination of the Septuagint with reference to the manuscripts used by the translators (especially must this have been the case with the Tetragrammaton retained in many copies of the Greek translation, which was no doubt written in the Aramaic script, since it was read erroneously by the Christians). Considering this development it may be assumed that the latest Old Testament writings were written, not in the ancient Hebrew but in Aramaic, by the authors themselves. After the Aramaic writing was once in use among the Jews, it soon took the form in which we now have it. The descriptions which Jerome and the Talmud give of the different letters fully harmonise with the form which is still found in manuscripts. The minute rules laid down by the Talmud as to calligraphy and orthography made further development of the square writing impossible, and therefore the writing of the manuscripts varies scarcely at all through centuries (excepting perhaps that the German and Polish Jews have the so-called Tam script, which is somewhat angular, whereas the Spanish Jews have the Welsh or more rounded script).

4. Attempts to Fix the Text

The veneration shown for the canonical writings during this period naturally led to a greater care in treatment of them and above all to perception of the necessity of critically fixing the text. As soon as the ancient writings obtained canonical authority, were used in divine service, and became the standard of doctrine and life, the necessity of having one standard text naturally asserted itself. The preparation of such a text began with the law; the other two divisions (the prophets and the hagiographa) became authoritative only in the course of centuries (see CANON OF SCRIPTURE, I), and naturally their text did not receive attention in the earlier period. However, criticism during that period was of little value. There is no doubt that faithful and correct copies existed, especially of such books as were publicly read, but this could not prevent errors and mistakes from creeping into copies which were generally circulated. When Josephus (Contra Apion, I, viii) and Philo (cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica, VIII, vi, 7) speak of the great care bestowed by the Jews upon their sacred writings, this can not be referred to earlier centuries, and concerns more the contents than the linguistic minutiae of the text. In the oldest critical documents--the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint--there is evidence (about 500-100 B.C.) to show that the manuscripts most approved and most widely diffused contained many verbal differences. And these variations are not to be charged, as was formerly done, to carelessness or wilfulness on the part of the Hellenistic Jews and Samaritans, but are explained by the lesser importance attached to exact uniformity of text and to the existence of mistakes in the current copies. And when the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch agree in good readings, and still oftener in bad ones, against the Masoretic text, it may be concluded that these readings were spread by many copies current among the Palestinian Jews, and are therefore not to be regarded as offensive. But after the destruction of Jerusalem, when Judaism was subject to the authority of the rabbis, it became possible to prepare a uniform standard text, although this idea was not realized until many generations had worked upon it. The Greek versions of the second century had already fewer variations from the Masoretic teat. Still nearer the latter text is the Hebrew text of Origen and Jerome. The Talmud itself bears witness, by the agreement of its Biblical quotations with the Masoretic teat, that the consonantal text was practically finished before the Talmudic era closed. It is not possible to say upon what principles the text was treated; but the way in which the custodians presented the individuality of the several authors, books, and periods is remarkable, and proves that intentional and arbitrary changes of the text were not made by these critics. That they changed passages for dogmatic, especially for Anti-

christian, reasons, as has sometimes been asserted, has long ago been acknowledged to be a baseless accusation. Where they mention changes, they make clear than they followed the testimony of manuscripts, the number of which was probably not very great. The fact that in the first centuries after Christ the text approximates our present Masoretic reading shows that a certain recension became authoritative which was possible only after a certain manuscript had been taken as the norm. Of such a standard codex, copies could easily be made, or one could correct his own copies in accordance with it. Scholars like Olshausen and Lagarde speak therefore of some such archetype, which was slavishly followed in every respect. The critical apparatus of the time is concealed in dissociated fragments in the later Masorah, but can not be separated from the other matter. The Talmud and the older midrashim allow a little insight into the critical efforts of the time. Thus mention is made of the "corrections of the scribes," of the "removals of the scribes" (meaning that in five passages a falsely introduced "and" was removed), and of the points in the Hebrew text over certain words to show that these words were critically suspected, such as the inverted "nun," Num. x, 35, and the three kinds of reading (keri; see KERI AND KETHIBH), viz., "read but not written," "written but not read," and "read [one way] but written [another]." The three kinds of reading have, it is true, for the most part only exegetical value; e.g., they give the usual instead of the unusual grammatical forms, show where one must understand or omit a word, or where the reader should use a euphemistic expression for the coarse one in the text; they are therefore scholia upon the text. It is possible that these "readings" are also fragments of the critical apparatus. However this may be, it is evident that at that period the text was fixed and that the matter in question concerned only subordinate details of the text.

5. The Pronunciation Fixed, but the Text Still Unvocalised

The development of the pronunciation or of the vocalization and the division of words, verses, and sections kept pace with the settlement of the text. That the ancient writing had no vowel-points has already been stated; but even during this entire period to the close of the Talmud the sacred text was without vowels and other points. The old versions, particularly the Greek, and Josephus depart so widely from the Masoretic text that they could not possibly have used the present pointed text. The expedient which charges the translators with these differences is of no avail, since it is not any one version which alone shows such differences; they all differ. Origen, too, published a Hebrew text in the Hexapla which differed from the Masoretic. Jerome knew nothing about vowel-points, not even the diacritical point making the difference between "s" and "sh." The Talmud and the modern ecclesiastical or ritual manuscripts of the Jews present an unpointed text. There is no doubt that, as Elias Levita stated, the Masoretic system of punctuation is of later origin, and that during this entire period the sacred text was without points. But this does not mean that during the same period the reading of the unvoweled text was still unsettled among the Jews; it must rather be assumed that with the official fixing of the text there was developed also a certain mode of understanding and reading it. Of course time was required to bring it into vogue; but before the end of the period it was so firmly established that Jerome's pronunciation differed very little from the Masoretic, and he was so sure of its correctness that he appeals to it against the text of the versions; and the Talmud gives it throughout correctly. Before the Masoretes the pronunciation was fixed, not yet written, but handed down by word of mouth, although some scholars may have used signs in their books to assist their memory.

6. Word Division
Closely connected and mutually dependent were pronunciation and the division of words. The latter must have been finally settled at this period. The sign of division was the small space between words. The final letters, being limited in number, can not be regarded as word-separating signs. Jerome used a text with a division of words and knew the final letters; in the Talmud, Menahot 30a states how large must be the space between the words; the synagogue scrolls, though still without vowels, have nevertheless the division by spaces, following the custom of the ancient manuscripts from Talmudic

time; and the fact that a number of "readings" correct the traditional division of words speaks again in favor of the high antiquity of the division of words in the present texts.

7. Division into Verses

The division into verses is by no means contemporary in origin with the vocalization, but much earlier. The verse division depends in poetry upon the paralelism, in prose upon the division of sentences and clauses. That the latter were not marked in oldest times is certain; in poetical texts the members may have been distinguished either by space or by breaks of the line. This mode of writing poetical texts was formerly general, and is found in the older Hebrew manuscripts; for the poetical texts, Ex. xv; Deut. xxxii; Judges v; and II Sam. xxii, it is even prescribed (Shabbat 103b; Sopherim xii), and is therefore still customary. With the introduction of the Masoretic accents, poetry was written close, like prose. This verse-division was taught in the schools; but no rules are given for its writing, nor did any punctuation marks indicate it in this period.

8. Division into Sections

Earlier than the division into verses is that into larger or smaller sections; these were more necessary for the understanding of the Scriptures and for their reading in divine worship. Perhaps some of them were in the original text. The sections of the law were at least Pre-talmudic; for they are mentioned in the Mishnah and frequently in the Gemara; in the latter they are traced to Mosaic origin; in Shabbat 103b, Menahot 30 care is enjoined as to the sections in copying the law, and therefore they occur also in synagogue-rolls. They are indicated by spacing; the larger sections by leaving the remainder of the line at their close unfilled, the next great section beginning with a new line, on which account they were called "open"; the smaller sections were separated from each other by only a small space, and were therefore called "closed" or "connected." Thus not only the law but also the other two parts of the canon were divided. For the division of the whole canon, and the arrangement of the books, see CANON OF SCRIPTURE, I. From what has been said, it follows that the reading of the text, the vocalization, the division into words, verses, and sections depend upon the gradual settlement by the scribes; their reading can claim neither infallibility nor any absolutely binding power; and though their labor betrays a thorough and correct understanding of the text, the necessity may yet arise when the exegete must deviate from tradition. Extraordinary pains were taken to perpetuate in its purity the text thus divided and vocalized. Signs of this care, such as the rules for calligraphy and for writing the extraordinary points, have already been mentioned. The Post-talmudic treatises Mosseket sopherim and Masseket sepher torah contain full details for copying. Nevertheless fluctuations are met with in the Masoretic period, and it must therefore be assumed that learned labor had not yet covered all details or made final settlement.

2. The Masoretic Period

1. The Masoretes
The third period of the textual history is usually reckoned as extending from the sixth until the eleventh Christian century (when Jewish learning was transferred from the East to North Africa and Spain); it embraces the age of the Masoretes proper, and has for the Bible text in general the same importance as the Talmudic period had for the law. The efforts of the scholars to fix the reading and understanding of the sacred text were overshadowed somewhat by the study of the Talmud. After the close of the Talmud the work was resumed and cultivated in Babylonia and Palestine (at Tiberias). In both schools the work of former generations was continued; but the Palestinians, who acted more independently than the more Tabmudically inclined Babylonians, finally got the victory over the Babylonian school. In both schools they were no longer satisfied with a mere oral transmission of rules

and regulations, but committed them to writing. There is no continuous history of the men of the Masorah and of the progress of their work preserved; but the marginal notes in ancient Bible manuscripts and the fragments of other works show that the oldest Masoretes can be traced back to the eighth century. The main effort of this period (as the name Masorah, "tradition," indicates; see MASORAH) was to collect and to write down the exegetico-critical material of the former period; and this makes sufficiently clear the one part of their work. But the Masoretes also added some new matter. Anxiously following the footsteps of the older critics in their effort to fix and to guard the traditional text, they laid down more minute rules of a linguistic and grammatical character, and in this respect a great part of the contents of the Masorah is indeed new.

2. Their Work
They took the consonantal textus receptus just as it stood, and finally settled it in the minutest details, as is seen from the variants which became a matter of controversy between the Eat and the West, the Babylonians and the Palestinians, which to the number of 216 Jacob ben Hayyim published for the first time in the second edition of the Bomberg Rabbinic Bible; these have reference mostly to the vowel-points. This list of variants, as is now known, is by no means complete. They also appended critical notes to the text, in part derived from the Talmudic period, in part new (especially the "grammatical conjectures"), showing that where, according to the grammar and the genius of the language, one should expect another reading, nevertheless the text must stand. Finally the great majority of the alternative "readings" date from the Masoretes. The Masoretes fixed the reading of the text by the introduction of the vowel-signs, the accents, and the signs which affect the reading of the consonants (daghesh, mappik, raphe, and the diacritical point to distinguish between the letters "sin" and "shin"). The pronunciation they thus brought about was no invention, but embodied the current tradition. Nevertheless, one can not accept every Masoretic reading as infallible and unchangeable, especially when one considers that the tradition no doubt often fluctuated and that with such fluctuation the less correct reading may often have come into the text. Besides the system found in the majority of manuscripts, there exists another which has only recently become known called the "superlinear" system, because the vowel-signs are placed above the letters; this is found in some Babylonian and South Arabian manuscripts. The same is also the case with the accents. The division of the text into verses, introduced by the Masoretes, was neither Babylonian nor Palestinian, but one which the Masoretes themselves seem to have established. At the beginning of this period the end of the verses was marked by soph pasuk, and, when the accents were introduced, by silluk besides. The old sections were retained, though not recognized as entirely correct, and the old traditional sign for the section, the smaller spacing (the little samek in printed texts), was respected. The closed sections were marked in manuscripts and prints by a samek, the open ones by a pe in the empty space before the initial word. In addition there were introduced the Babylonian division into sections or parashiyoth (in the law) and haphtaroth (in the prophets), for Sabbath public reading. As these sections generally agree with the beginning and the end of an open or closed section, they were marked by a threefold pe or samek in the empty space before the beginning.

3. Codices
But even these efforts could not entirely remove variations. Hence, before the end of this period, the learned either attempted to find out by an elaborate comparison the correct punctuation and to fix it, or marked the important variations in the punctuation, or added a caution to each apparently strange and yet correct punctuation. The greater mass of notes which the Masoretes added to the text relate to these matters. Besides some other Masoretic manuscripts of the Bible which are quoted in the Masoretic notes of the codices or in the writings of the rabbis as authoritative, such as the codex Hilleli, the

Jericho-Pentateuch, and others, two codices were especially famous as model codices of the Old Testament, the codex of Naphtali (Moses ben David ben Naphtali) and the codex of Asher (Aaron ben Moses ben Asher), both from the first half of the tenth century. (Aaron lived at Tiberias, Moses in Babylon; but the latter can not be regarded as a representative of the "Babylonian" text-tradition.) They were once much examined by scholars; many of their variants are noted in the Masoretic Bible manuscripts; a list of 864 (better 867) variants, which refer almost exclusively to vowels and accents, has been published after Jacob ben Hayyim in Bomberg's and the other Rabbinic Bibles, as well as in the sixth volume of the London Polyglot; but these variants are neither correct nor complete. On the codex of Asher finally rests the whole Masoretic text of the Occidentals; of the variant readings comparatively few were received into it. As the older scribes had already shown extraordinary solicitude for the preservation of the text and its correct reading by counting its sections, verses, words, letters, and by noting where and how often and when certain words, letters, or anomalies occur in the Bible, which verse is the longest and which the shortest, and like minutiae, the Masoretes of course continued this work, wrote it down, and preserved it in manuscripts. The punctuation of the text as developed by the Masoretes proved itself so useful and met so well an essential need of those later times that it soon went over into manuscripts and, with the exception of synagogue-manuscripts, almost none were written which did not contain either the pointed text alone or the pointed beside the unpointed. The other Masoretic material was written either beside and below the text of the Biblical books on the margins and at the close of the same, or in separate massorahcollections (see MASORAH).

3. The Post-masoretic Period

1. The Chapter Division

After the completion of the Masoretic textual work and the collection of the notes having reference to it, no essential change was made in the text; consequently this period is the time of the faithful preservation, multiplication, and circulation of the Masoretic text. An essential innovation was the introduction of the now customary division into chapters, which was invented by Stephen Langton at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and applied to the Vulgate. Isaac ben Nathan adopted it for his Hebrew concordance (1437-38, published 1523), on which occasion the verses of the chapters were also numbered. The chapter division was first applied to the Hebrew in the second edition of Bomberg's Bible, 1521; the numbering of verses was first adopted for the Sabionetta Pentateuch, 1557, and that of the whole Bible in Athias's edition of 1661 (see below, III, 1-2).

2. Old Testament Manuscripts

Another feature of this period is that a sufficient number of manuscripts is preserved to give an immediate knowledge of the text. The Hebrew Bible manuscripts may be divided into two classes, the public or sacred and the private or common. The first were synagogue-rolls, and have been prepared so carefully and watched so closely that the intrusion of variants and mistakes was hardly possible. But they contain only the Pentateuch or the Pentateuch with the five Megilloth or "Rolls" (i.e., Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther), and the haphtaroth (see above, 2, 1) in the text of the Masoretes without their additions. These manuscripts are, for the most part, of recent origin, although antique in form, being written on leather or parchment. The private manuscripts are written on the same material, and also upon paper in book form, with the Masoretic additions more or less complete. It is often difficult, indeed impossible, to determine the date and country of these manuscripts. But none of those now known are really very old. The oldest authentic date is 916 A.D. for the codex containing the prophets with Babylonian punctuation, and 1009 A.D. for an entire

Hebrew Bible, both of which belong to the Firkowitsch collection in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg. According to the most recent investigation the MS. orient. 4445 in the British Museum (containing Gen. xxv, 20-Deut. i, 33) may be a little older. As a rule the oldest manuscripts are the more accurate. The number of errors that crept in, especially in private manuscripts, which were prepared without any official oversight, awakened solicitude and led to well-directed efforts to get a pure text by means of collating good Masorah-manuscripts (cf. B. Kennicott, Dissertatio generalis, Oxford, 1780, l-lvi; J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung, Leipsic, 1803, 136b). In this line the labors of Meir haLevi of Toledo (d. 1244) in his work on the Pentateuch called "The Masorah, the Hedge of the Law" (Florence, 1750; Berlin, 1761) are celebrated.

3. The Printed Text

The art of printing opened a way of escape from copyists' errors, and it was taken very early. The Psalter was printed first, at Bologna in 1477 [on the earlier prints, cf. B. Pick, History of the Printed Editions of the Old Testament, in Hebraica, ix (1892-1893), 47-116], the first complete Bible at Soncino in 1488; Gerson's edition (the edition which Luther used for his translation) followed (Brescia, 1494). Substantially the same text is contained in the first edition of Bomberg's Rabbinic Bible (1517; see BIBLES, RABBINIC), also in the editions of Robert Stephens (1539 sqq.) and of Sebastian Mnster. The second independent edition derived from manuscripts is that in the Complutenaian Polyglot (1514-17; see BIBLES, POLYGLOT, I). The text has vowels but no accents. The third important recension is contained in the Biblia Rabbinica Bombergiana, ed. II., cura R. Jacob ben Chajim (Venice, 1525-26); it is edited according to the Masorah, which the editor first revised, and contains the entire Masoretic and Rabbinic apparatus. It is more or less reproduced in prints published during the sixteenth and in the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Besides these original recensions, editions were published having a mixed text; the Hebrew text of the Antwerp Polyglot (1569-72), which is followed by the small editions of Plantin, the Paris and London Polyglots, and the editions of Reineccius, is based upon that of the Complutensian and Bomberg. Another recension is represented in the editions of Elias Hutter (1587), Buxtorf, and Joseph Athias with preface by J. Leusden (1661 sqq.), for which some very ancient manuscripts were collated. Athias's edition became also the basis of later editions like that of Jablonski (1699), Van der Hooght (1705), Opita (1709), J. H. Michaelis (1720), Hahn (1832), and Theile (1849).

4. Critical Works and Commentaries

None of these editions presents the Masoretic text in its original form. The large collections of variants by B. Kennicott, Vetus Teatamentum Hebraicum cum variis lectionibus (2 vols., Oxford, 1776-80), more especially by De Rossi, Variae lectiones Veteris Testamenti (4 vols., Parma, 1784-88) and Supplementa ad varias sacri textus lectiones (1798), are valuable for some extra-masoretic readings which they offer, but they are less valuable for critical purposes. More important for text-critical purposes are (besides the work of Meir ha-Levi, ut sup.) the "Light of the Law" of Menahem de Lonzano (Venice, 1618) and particularly the critical commentary on the Old Testament by Solomon Minorxi (Mantua, 1742-44; Vienna, 1813), the works of Wolf ben Samson Heidenheim, and especially the thorough work on the Masorah by S. Frensdorff (Massora magna, part I, Hanover, 1876, and Oklah we-0klah, 1864). Of great service were the publication of the works of the oldest Jewish grammarians and lexicographers and the discovery of fragments and publication of codices like that on the prophets of the year 916 (published by Strack, Prophetarum posteriorum codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus, St. Petersburg, 1876). The fruits of these preliminary works are contained in the correct editions of the Masoretic text by Baer and Ginsburg. Baer, who was assisted by Delitzsch, published the Old Testament with the exception of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy [both editors died without completing their work]. Ginsburg's edition is entitled The New MassoreticoCritical Text of the Hebrew Bible [2 vols., London, 1894. It should be studied with the same author's indispensable Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (London, 1897)].

Valuable as such correct editions of the Masoretic text are, they represent only a single recension, whose source is the textus receptus mentioned above, which was fixed in the first Christian centuries. With this recension the text-critical and exegetical treatment of the Old Testament can not be satisfied. Before the received text was made canonical there existed different forms of the text, which in many stood nearer to the original than that sanctioned by the Jews. The main witness here is the Septuagint, a correct edition of which is an absolutely necessary though extremely difficult task. But Old Testament textual criticism can not be satisfied with a comparison even with this older form of the text. In many cases the corruption of the text is so old that only a criticism both cautious and bold can approximate to the genuine text. In modern times some very important contributions have been made, such as J. Olshausen, Emendationen zum Alten Testament (Kiel, 1826); idem, Beitrge zur Kritik des berlieferten Textes im Buche Genesis (1870); J. Wellhausen, Text der Bcher Samuelis (Gttingen, 1871); F. Baethgen, Zu den Psalmen, in JPT (1882); C. H. Cornill, Das Buch des Propheten Ezechiel (Leipsic, 1886); S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel (London, 1890); A. Klostermann, Die Bcher Samuelis und der Knige (Munich, 1887), idem, Deutero-Jesaia (Munich, 1893); G. Beer, Der Text des Buches Hiob (part i, Marburg, 1895); the Sacred Books of the Old Testament (the so-called Polychrome or Rainbow Bible), ed. P. Haupt (Baltimore, London, and Leipsic, 1894 sqq.); and Kettel's edition, Leipsic, 1905-06. F. BUHL.

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Poetry

Hebrew Poetry
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)
I. II. III. Is there poetry in the Old Testament? 1. Poetry Defined: In matter concrete and and Imaginative 2. In form emotional and rhythmical Neglect of Hebrew Poetry: Causes Characteristics of Hebrew Poetry, External and Internal 1. External or formal characteristics 1. Vocabulary 2. Grammar 3. Rhythm 4. Parallelism 5. Other literary devices 6. Units of Hebrew Poetry 7. Classification of Stichs or Verses 2. Internal or Material characteristics 1. Themes of Hebrew Poetry 2. Species of Hebrew Poetry Poetical writings of the Old Testament 1. The Poetical books in the narrow sense 2. Customary division of the poetical books 3. Poetry in non-poetical books

IV.

By Hebrew poetry in the present article is meant that of the Old Testament. There is practically no poetry in the New Testament, but, in the Old Testament Apocrypha, Sirach is largely poetical and Wisdom only less so. Post-Biblical Hebrew poetry could not be discussed here.

I. Is There Poetry in the Old Testament?

It is impossible to answer this question without first of all stating what poetry really is. The present writer submits the following as a correct definition: "Poetry is verbal composition, imaginative and concrete in matter, and emotional and rhythmic in form." This definition recognizes two aspects of poetry, the formal and the material. The substance of poetry must be concrete--it is philosophy that deals with the abstract; and it has to be the product more or less of the creative imagination. It is of the essence of poetry that, like music, it should be expressed in rhythmical but not necessarily in metrical form. Moreover, the language has to be such as will stir up the aesthetic emotions. Adopting this account of poetry as criticism, it may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the Hebrew Scriptures contain a goodly amount of genuine poetry; see the Psalms, Job, Canticles, etc. It is strange but true that poetical is older than prose written composition. An examination of the literature of the ancient Indians, Babylonians, Hebrews, Greeks and Arabs makes this quite certain.

II. The Neglect of Hebrew Poetry: Causes

Notwithstanding the undoubted fact that poetry is largely represented in the Bible, it is noteworthy that this species of Bible literature was almost wholly ignored until the 18th century. We may perhaps ascribe this fact mainly to two causes: (1) Since the Bible was regarded as preeminently, if not exclusively, a revelation of the divine mind, attention was fixed upon what it contained, to the neglect of the literary form in which it was expressed. Indeed it was regarded as inconsistent with its lofty, divine function to look upon it as literature at all, since in this last the appeal is made, at least to a large extent, to the aesthetic and therefore carnal man. The aim contemplated by Bible writers was practical--the communication of religious knowledge--not literary, and still less artistic. It was therefore regarded as inconsistent with such a high purpose that these writers should trouble themselves about literary embellishment or beautiful language, so long as the sense was clear and unambiguous. It was in this spirit and animated by this conception that toward the middle of the 19th century Isaac Taylor of Ongar (The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, 1861, p.56 and following) and Keil of Dorpat (Introduction to the Old Testament, 1881, I, p. 437) denied on a priori grounds the presence of epic and dramatic poetry in the Bible. How, they exclaimed, could God countenance the writing of fiction which is untruth--and the epic and the drama have both? Matthew Arnold rendered invaluable service to the cause of Biblical science when he fulminated against theologians, Jewish and Christian, for making the Bible a mere collection of proof texts, an arsenal whence religious warriors might get weapons with which to belabor their opponents. "The language of the Bible is fluid .... and literary, not rigid, fixed, scientific" (Preface to the first edition of Literature and Dogma). The Bible contains literature, poetical and prose, equal as literature to the best, as Matthew Arnold, Carlyle, and Froude (on Job) held. The neglect of this aspect of the Scriptures made theologians blind to the presence and therefore ignorant of the character of Bible poetry. (2) Another factor which led to the neglect of the poetical element in the Old Testament is the undoubted fact that Biblical Hebrew poets were less conscious as poets than western poets, and thought much less of the external form in which they expressed themselves. Biblical poetry lacks therefore such close adherence to formal rules as that which characterizes Greek, Arabic or English poetry. The authors wrote as they felt and because they felt, and their strong emotions dictated the forms their words took, and not any objective standards set up by the schools. Hebrew poetry is destitute of meter in the strict sense, and also of rhyme, though this last occurs in some isolated cases (see below, III, 1, [4], c and e). No wonder then that western scholars, missing these marks of the poetry which they knew best, failed for so long to note the poetry which the Old Testament contains.

III. Characteristics of Hebrew Poetry: External and Internal.

The definition of poetry accepted in I, above, implies that there are marks by which poetry can be distinguished from prose. This is equally true of Hebrew poetry, though this last lacks some of the features of the poetry of western nations. 1. External or Formal Characteristics (1) Vocabulary. There are several Hebrew words which occur most frequently and in some cases exclusively in poetry. In the following list the corresponding prose word is put in parenthesis: millah, "word" (= dabhar); enosh, "man" (= 'ish); orach, "way" (= derekh); chazah, "to see" (= ra'ah); the prepositions ele, "to," adhe, "unto," ale, "upon," and minni, "from," instead of the shorter forms el, adh, al, and min. The pronoun zu, rare in prose, has in poetry the double function of a demonstrative and a relative pronoun in both genders. The negative bal, is used for lo'. For the inseparable prepositions b, k, l ("in," "as," "to") the separate forms bemo, kemo and lemo are employed. (2) Grammar. (a) Accidence: The pronominal suffixes have peculiar forms in poetry. For -m, -am, -em ("their," "them") we find the longer forms -mo, -amo, -emo. For the plural ending of nouns -n (-in)

takes the place of -m (-im), as in Aramaic (see Job 4:2; 12:11), and frequently obsolete case endings are preserved, but their functions are wholly lost. Thus, we have the old nominative ending -o in Psalms 50:10, etc., the old genitive ending -i in Isaiah 1:21, and the accusative -ah in Psalms 3:3. (b) Syntax: The article, relative pronoun, accusative singular 'eth and also the "waw-consecutive" are frequently omitted for the sake of the rhythm. There are several examples of the last in Psalms 112:10. The construct state which by rule immediately precedes nouns has often a preposition after it. The jussive sometimes takes the place of the indicative, and the plural of nouns occurs for the singular. (3) Rhythm. Rhythm (from Greek rhuthmos) in literary composition denotes that recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables in a regular order which we have in poetry and rhetorical prose. Man is a rhythmic animal; he breathes rhythmically, and his blood circulates--outward and inward-rhythmically. It may be due to these reflex rhythms that the more men are swayed by feeling and the less by reflection and reasoning, the greater is the tendency to do things rhythmically. Man walks and dances and sings and poetizes by the repetition of what corresponds to metrical feet: action is followed by reaction. We meet with a kind of rhythm in elevated and passionate prose, like that of John Ruskin and other writers. Preachers when mastered by their theme unconsciously express themselves in what may be called rhythmic sentences. Though, however, rhythm may be present in prose, it is only in poetry as in music that it recurs at intervals more or less the same. In iambic poetry we get a repetition of a short and long syllable, as in the following lines: "With ravished ears The monarch hears, Assumes the gods, Affects the nods." --Dryden. (4) Parallelism. What is so called is a case of logical rhythm as distinguished from rhythm that is merely verbal. But as this forms so important a feature of Bible poetry, it must be somewhat fully discussed. What since Bishop Lowth's day has been called parallelism may be described as the recurring of symetrically constructed sentences, the several members of which usually correspond to one another. Lowth (died 1787), in his epochmaking work on Hebrew poetry (De Sacra poesi Hebraeorum prelectiones, English translation by G. Gregory), deals with what he (following Jebb) calls Parallelismus membrorum (chapter X). And this was the first serious attempt to expound the subject, though Rabbi Asariah (Middle Ages), Ibn Ezra (died 1167 AD), D. Kimchi (died 1232) and A. de Rossi (1514-1578) called attention to it. Christian Schoettgen (died 1751) (see Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae) anticipated much of what Lowth has written as to the nature, function and value of parallelism. The first to use the word itself in the technical sense was Jebb (Sacred Lit., 1820). For the same thing Ewald used the expression Sinnrhythmus, i.e. sense rhythm, a not unsuitable designation. (a) Kinds of Parallelism: Lowth distinguished three principal species of parallelism, which he called synonymous, antithetic and synthetic. (i) The Synonymous: In this the same thing is repeated in different words, e.g. Psalms 36:5: "Yahweh, (i.) Thy lovingkindness (reaches) to the heavens, (ii.) Thy faithfulness (reaches) to the clouds.' Omitting "Yahweh," which belongs alike to both members, it will be seen that the rest of the two halflines corresponds word for word: "thy lovingkindness" corresponding to "thy faithfulness," and "to the heavens" answering to "to the clouds" (compare Psalms 15:1; 24:1-3; 25:5; 1 Samuel 18:7; Isaiah 6:4; 13:7).

(ii) Antithetic Parallelism: In which the second member of a line (or verse) gives the obverse side of the same thought, e.g. Proverbs 10:1: "A wise son gladdens his father, But a foolish son grieves his mother" Compare Proverbs 11:3; Psalms 37:9; compare Proverbs 10:1; Psalms 20:8; 30:6; Isaiah 54:7). Sometimes there are more than two corresponding elements in the two members of the verse, as in Proverbs 29:27; compare 10:5; 16:9; 27:2. (iii) Synthetic Parallelism: Called also constructive and epithetic. In this the second member adds something fresh to the first, or else explains it, e.g. Psalms 19:8 f: "The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart: The commandments of Yahweh are pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever: The judgments of Yahweh are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb" (See Proverbs 1:7; compare 3:5,7; Psalms 1:3; 15:4). In addition to the three principal species of parallelism noticed above, other forms have been traced and described. (iv) Introverted Parallelism (Jebb, Sacred Lit., 53): in which the hemistichs of the parallel members are chiastically arranged, as in the scheme ab ba. Thus, Proverbs 23:15 f: (a) "My son, if thy heart be wise (b) My heart shall be glad, even mine: (b) Yea, my reins shall rejoice (a) When thy lips speak right things" (Compare Proverbs 10:4,12; 13:24; 21:17; Psalms 51:3). (v) Palilogical Parallelism: In which one or more words of the first member are repeated as an echo, or as the canon in music, in the second. Thus, Nahum 1:2: "Yahweh is a jealous God and avenges: Yahweh avenges and is full of wrath; Yahweh takes vengeance upon His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for his enemies" (Compare Judges 5:3,6,11,15,23,27; Psalms 72:2,12,17; 121; 124; 126; Isa 2:7; 24:5; Hos 6:4). (vi) Climactic or comprehensive parallelism: In this the second line completes the first. Thus Psalm 29:1: "Give unto Yahwe, O ye mighty ones, Give unto Yahwe glory and strength" (See Exodus 15:6, Psalm 29:8). (vii) Rhythmical parallelism (De Wette, Franz Delitzsch): Thus Psalm 138:4:

"All the kings of the earth shall give thee thanks ... For they have heard the words of thy mouth." (See Proverbs 15:3; 16:7,10; 17:13,15; 19:20; 21:23,25) Perfect parallelism is that in which the number of words in each line is equal. When unequal, the parallelism is called imperfect. Ewald (see Die poetischen Bcher des alten Bundes, I, 91ff, 2d ed of the former) aimed at giving a complete list of the relations which can be expressed by parallelism, and he thought he had succeeded. But in fact every kind of relation which can be indicated in words may be expressed in two or more lines more or less parallel. On the alleged parallelism of strophes see below. (b) Parallelism as an aid to exegesis and textual criticism. If in Lowth's words parallelism implies that "in two lines or members of the same period things for the most part shall answer to things, and words to words," we should expect obscure or unknown words to derive some light from words corresponding to them in parallel members or clauses. In not a few cases we are enabled by comparison of words to restore with considerable confidence an original reading now lost. The formula is in a general way as follows: ab: cx. We know what a, b and c mean, but are wholly in the dark as to the sense of x. The problem is to find out what x means. We have an illustration in Judges 5:28, which may be thus literally translated: "Through the window she looked, And Sisera's mother x through the x." Here we have two unknown, each, however, corresponding to known terms. The Hebrew verb accompanying "Sisera's mother" is watteyabbebh, English "and .... cried." But no such verb (yabhabh) is known, for the Talmud, as usually, follows the traditional interpretation. We want a verb with a meaning similar to "looked." If we read wattabbet, we have a form which could easily be corrupted into the word in the Massoretic Text, which gives a suitable sense and moreover has the support of the Targums of Onqelos and Jonathan, and even of the Septuagint (Codex Alexandrinus and Lucian). What about the other Hebrew word untranslated above ('eshnabh)? This occurs in but one other passage (Proverbs 7:6), where it stands as in the present passage in parallelism with challon, "window" (probably Proverbs 7:6 is dependent). We get no help from etymology or in this case from the ancient versions, but parallelism had suggested to our translators the meaning "lattice," a kind of Eastern window, and something of the kind must be meant. The verb shanabh, "to be cool," may possibly suggest the rendering "window," i.e. a hole in the wall to secure coolness in the house. Glass windows did not exist in Palestine, and are rare even now. There are innumerable other examples in the Old Testament of the use of parallelism in elucidating words which occur but once, or which are otherwise difficult to understand, and frequently a textual emendation is suggested which is otherwise supported. (c) Prevalence and Value of Parallelism: Two statements anent parallelism in the Old Testament may be safely made: (i) That it is not a characteristic of all Old Testament poetry. Lowth who had so much to do with its discovery gave it naturally an exaggerated place in his scheme of Hebrew poetry, but it is lacking in the largest part of the poetry of the Old Testament, and it is frequently met with in elevated and rhetorical prose. (ii) That it pervades other poetry than that of the Old Testament. It occurs in Assyria (see A. Jeremias, Die bab-assyr. Vorstellung vom Leben nach dem Tode), in Egypt (Georg Ebers, Nord u. Sd, I), in Finnish, German and English. Indeed, A. Wuttke (Der deutsche VolksAberglaube der Gegenwart, 1869, 157) and Eduard Norden (Die antike Kunstprosa, 1898, II, 813) maintain that parallelism is the most primitive form of the poetry of all nations. It must nevertheless be admitted that in the Old Testament parallelism has in proportion a larger place than in any other literature and that the correspondence of the parts of the stichs or verses is closer.

(5) Other Literary Devices. Old Testament poetry has additional features which it shares with other oriental and with western poetry. Owing to a lack of space these can be hardly more than enumerated. (a) Alliteration: e.g. "Round and round the rugged rocks." We have good examples in the Hebrew of Psalms 6:8 and 27:17. (b) Assonance: e.g. "dreamy seamy" (see for Bible examples the Hebrew of Genesis 49:17; Exodus 14:14; Deuteronomy 3:2). (c) Rhyme: There are so few examples of this in the Hebrew Scriptures that no one can regard it as a feature in Hebrew poetry, though in Arabic and even in post-Biblical Hebrew poetry it plays a great part. We have Biblical instances in the Hebrew text of Genesis 4:23; Job 10:8-11; 16:12. (d) Acrostics: In some poems of the Old Testament half-verses, verses, or groups of verses begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. We have such alphabetical acrostics in Psalms 9; 34; 37; Proverbs 31:10; Lamentations 1-4; compare Lamentations 5, where the number of verses agrees with that of the Hebrew alphabet, though the letters of that alphabet do not introduce the verses. (e) Meter: The view of the present writer may be stated as follows: That the poetry of the Hebrew is not in the strict sense metrical, though the writers under the influence of strong emotion express themselves rhythmically, producing often the phenomena which came later to be codified under metrical rules. Thinking and reasoning and speaking preceded psychology, logic, and grammar, and similarly poetry preceded prosody. In the Old Testament we are in the region of the fact, not of the law. Poets wrote under strong impulse, usually religious, and without recognizing any objective standard, though all the time they were supplying data for the rules of prosody. Those who think that Old Testament poets had in their minds objective rules of meter have to make innumerable changes in the text. Instead of basing their theory on the original material, they bring their a priori theory and alter the text to suit it. It can be fearlessly said that there is not a single poem in the Old Testament with the same number of syllables, or feet, or accents in the several stichs or hemistichs, unless we introduce violent changes into the Massoretic Text, such as would be resented in classical and other ancient literature. It is important, before coming to any definite conclusion, to take into consideration the fact that the poetry of the Old Testament belongs to periods separated by many centuries, from the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), the earliest Hebrew poem, down to the last hymns in the Psalter. In the oldest specimens of Hebrew poetry there is a naive simplicity which excludes the idea of conscious art. In the latest the poet is much more conscious, and his poetry more artistic. It would be manifestly unfair to propound a theory of poetry based on the poetry of Keats and Tennyson and to apply it to the productions of Anglo-Saxon and Old English poetry. Bound up in the one volume called the Bible there is a literature differing widely in age, aim and authorship, and it needs care in educing a conception of Heb poetry that will apply to all the examples in the Old Testament. The later psalmacrostic, etc., many of them made up of bits of other psalms, seem to have sprung from a more conscious effort at imitation. If, however, there were among the ancient Hebrews, as there was among the ancient Greeks, a code of prosody, it is strange that the Mishna and Gemara should be wholly silent about it. And if some one system underlies our Hebrew Bible, it is strange that so many systems have been proposed. It should be remembered too that the oldest poetry of every people is nonmetrical. The following is a brief statement of the views advocated: (i) Philo and Josephus, under the influence of Greek models and desiring to show that Hebrew was not inferior to pagan literature, taught that Hebrew poetry had meter, but they make no attempt to show what kind of meter this poetry possesses. (ii) Calmet, Lowth, and Carpzov held that though in the poetry of the Hebrew Bible as originally written and read there must have been metrical rules which the authors were conscious of following, yet, through the corruption of the text and our ignorance of the sounds and accentuation of primitive Hebrew, it is now impossible to ascertain what these metrical rules were. (iii) In their scheme of Hebrew meter Bickell and Merx reckon syllables as is done in classical poetry, and they adopt the Syriac law of accentuation, placing the tone on the penultimate. These writers make drastic changes in the text in order to bolster up their theories. (iv) The dominant and by far the least objectionable theory is that advocated by Ley, Briggs, Duhm, Buhl, Grimme, Sievers, Rothstein and most modern scholars,

that in Hebrew prosody the accented syllables were alone counted. If this principle is applied to Job, it will be found that most of the Biblical verses are distichs having two stichs, each with three main accents. See, for an illustration, Job 12:16: immo `oz wethushiyah : lo shoghegh umashgeh: "Strength and effectual working belong to (literally, 'are with') him, he that errs and he that causes to err". Man's rhythmical instincts are quite sufficient to account for this phenomenon without assuming that the poet had in mind an objective standard. Those who adopt this last view and apply it rigidly make numerous textual changes. For an examination of the metrical systems of Hubert Grimme, who takes account of quantity as well as accent, and of Eduard Sievers who, though no Hebrew scholar, came to the conclusion after examining small parts of the Hebrew Bible that Hebrew poetry is normally anapaestic, see W.H. Cobb, Criticism of Systems of Hebrew Metre, 152ff, 169ff. Herder, De Wette, Hupfeld, Keil, Nowack, Budde, Doller, and Toy reject all the systems of Hebrew meter hitherto proposed, though Budde has a leaning toward Ley's system. (f) Budde's Qinah Measure: Though Budde takes up in general a negative position in regard to Hebrew meter, he pleads strenuously for the existence of one specific meter with which his name is associated. This is what he calls the qinah measure (from qinah, "a lamentation"). In this each stich is said to consist of one hemistich with three beats or stress syllables and another having two such syllables, this being held to be the specific meter of the dirge (see Lamentations 1:1, etc.). Ley and Briggs call it "pentameter" because it is made up of five (3 plus 2) feet (a foot in Hebrew prosody being equal to an accented syllable and the unaccented syllables combined with it). See Budde's full treatment of the subject in ZATW, 60, 152, "Das heb. Klagelied." It must, however, be borne in mind that even Herder (died 1803) describes the use in elegies of what he calls, anticipating Ley and Briggs, the "pentameter" (see Geist der ebrischen Poesie, 1782, I, 32f, English translation, The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, 1833, I, 40). But the present writer submits the following criticisms: (i) Budde is inconsistent in rejecting all existing theories of meter and yet in retaining one of his own, which is really but part of the system advocated by Bellermann, Ley and Briggs. (ii) He says, following Herder, that it is the measure adopted by mourning women (Jeremiah 9:16), but we have extremely few examples of the latter, and his statement lacks proof. (iii) There are dirges in the Old Testament not expressed in the qinah measure. David's lament over Saul and Jonathan is more hexametric and tetrametric than pentametric, unless we proceed to make a new text (2 Samuel 1:19ff). (iv) The qinah measure is employed by Hebrew poets where theme is joyous or indifferent; see Psalms 119, which is a didactic poem. (6) Units of Hebrew Poetry. In western poetry the ultimate unit is usually the syllable, the foot (consisting of at least two syllables) coming next. Then we have the verse-line crowned by the stanza, and finally the poem. According to theory of Hebrew poetry adopted by the present writer, the following are the units, beginning with the simplest: (a) The Meter: This embraces the accented (tone) syllable together with the unaccented syllable preceding or succeeding it. This may be called a "rhythmic foot." (b) The Stich or Verse: In Job and less regularly in Psalms and Canticles and in other parts of the Old Testament (Numbers 23:19-24) the stich or verse consists commonly of three toned syllables and therefore three meters (see above for sense of "meter"). It is important to distinguish between this poetical sense of "verse" and the ordinary meaning--the subdivision of a Bible chapter. The stich in this sense appears in a separate line in some old manuscripts. (c) Combinations of Stichs (Verses): In Hebrew poetry a stich hardly ever stands alone. We have practically always a distich (couplet, Job 18:5), a tristich (triplet, Numbers 6:24-26), a tetrastich (Genesis 24:23), or the pentastich. (d) Strophe: Kosters (Stud. Krit., 1831, 40-114, "Die Strophen," etc.) maintained that all poems in the Hebrew Scriptures are naturally divisible into strophes (stanzas) of similar, if not equal, length. Thus

Psalms 119 is arranged in strophes named after the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each one containing eight Scripture verses, or sixteen metrical verses or stichs, most of the stichs having three meters or rhythmical feet. But though several Biblical poems are composed in strophes, many are not. (e) Song: This (shirah) is made up of a series of verses and in some cases of strophes. (f) Poem: We have examples of this (shir) in the books of Job and Canticles which consist of a combination of the song. (7) Classification of Stichs or Verses. Stichs may be arranged as follows, according to the number of meters (or feet) which they contain: (a) the trimeter or tripod with three meters or feet; Bickell holds that in Job this measure is alone used; (b) the tetrameter or tetrapod, a stich with four meters or feet; (c) the pentameter or pentapod, which has five meters or feet: this is Budde's qinah measure (see III, 1, (4)); (d) the hexameter or hexapod: this consists of six meters or feet, and is often hard to distinguish from two separate trimeters (or tripods). 2. Internal or Material Characteristics Our first and most original authority on the internal characteristics of Hebrew poetry is that great German theologian and man of letters, J.G. Herder, the pastor and friend of Goethe and Schiller at Weimar. In his Vom Geist der ebrischen Poesie, 1782 (The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, translated by James Marsh, U.S.A., 1833), he discusses at length and with great freshness those internal aspects of the poetry of the Old Testament (love of Nature, folklore, etc.) which impressed him as a literary man. Reference may be made also to George Gilfillian's Bards of the Bible, 1851 (popular), and Isaac Taylor's Spirit of Hebrew Poetry. It is a strange but striking and significant coincidence that not one of these writers professed much if any knowledge of the Hebrew language. They studied the poetry of the Old Testament mainly at least in translations, and were not therefore diverted from the literary and logical aspects of what is written by the minutiae of Hebrew grammar and textual criticism, though only a Hebrew scholar is able to enter into full possession of the rich treasures of Hebrew poetry. (1) Themes of Hebrew Poetry. It is commonly said that the poetry of the ancient Hebrews is wholly religious. But this statement is not strictly correct. (a) The Old Testament does not contain all the poetry composed or even written by the Hebrews in Bible times, but only such as the priests at the various sanctuaries preserved. We do not know of a literary caste among the Hebrews who concerned themselves with the preservation of the literature as such. (b) Within the Bible Canon itself there are numerous poems or snatches of poems reflecting the everyday life of the people. We have love songs (Canticles), a wedding song (Psalms 45), a harvest song (Psalms 65), parts of ditties sung upon discovering a new well (Numbers 21:17), upon drinking wine, and there are references to war songs (Numbers 21:14; Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18). (2) Species of Hebrew Poetry. Biblical poetry may be subsumed under the following heads: (a) folklore, (b) prophetical, (c) speculative, (d) lyrical. (a) Folklore: "Poetry," said J. G. Hamann (died 1788), "is the mother tongue of the human race." In both folk-music and folk-poetry, each the oldest of its class, the inspiration is immediate and spontaneous. We have examples of folk-songs in Genesis 11:1-9; 19:24 f. (b) Prophetic Poetry: This poetry is the expression of the inspiration under which the seer wrote. One may compare the oracular utterances of diviners which are invariably poetical in form as well as in matter. But one has to bear in mind that the heathen diviner claimed to have his messages from jinns or other spirits, and the means he employed were as a rule omens of various kinds. The Old Testament prophet professed to speak as he was immediately inspired by God (see DIVINATION, VIII). Duhm

thinks that the genuine prophecies of Jeremiah are wholly poetical, the prose parts being interpolations. But the prophet is not merely or primarily a poet, though it cannot be doubted that a very large proportion of the prophecies of the Old Testament are poetical in form and substance. (c) Philosophical Poetry: This expression is intended to include such poetry as is found in the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha (see WISDOM LITERATURE). The so-called didactic poetry, that of the proverbs or parables (mashal), also comes in here. (d) Lyrical Poetry: This includes the hymns of the Psalter, the love songs of Canticles and the many other lyrics found in the historical and prophetical writings. In these lyrics all the emotions of the human soul are expressed. Does the Old Testament contain specimens of epic and dramatic poetry? The answer must depend on which definition of both is adopted. (a) Epic Poetry: The present writer would define an epic poem as a novel with its plot and development charged, however, with the passion and set out in the rhythmic form of poetry. There is no part of the Old Testament which meets the requirements of this definition, certainly not the Creation, Fall and Deluge stories, which De Wette (Beitrge, 228, Einleitung, 147) and R.G. Moulton (Literary Study of the Bible, chapter ix) point to as true epics, and which Ewald (Dichter des alten Bundes, I, 87) held rightly to have in them the stuff of epics, though not the form. (b) Dramatic Poetry: Defining dramatic poetry as that which can be acted on a stage, one may with confidence say that there is no example of this in the Old Testament. Even the literary drama must have the general characteristics of that which is actable. Franz Delitzsch and other writers have pointed to Job and Canticles as dramatic poems, but the definition adopted above excludes both.

IV. Poetical Writings of the Old Testament

1. The Poetical Books in the Narrow Sense. According to the Massoretes or editors of our present Hebrew Bible, there are but three poetical books in the Old Testament, Job, Proverbs, and Psalms, known in Jewish circles by the mnemonic abbreviation 'emeth, the three consonants forming the initial letters of the Hebrew names of the above books. These three books have been supplied by the Massoretes with a special system of accents known as the poetical accents, and involving a method of intoning in the synagogue different from that followed when the prose books are read. But these accentual marks cannot be traced farther back than the 7th or 8th century of our era. 2. Customary Division of the Poetical Books: It is customary to divide the poetical books of the Old Testament into two classes, each containing three books: (1) those containing lyrical poetry (shir , or shirah), i.e. Psalms, Canticles, Lamentations; (2) those containing for the most part didactic poetry (mashal), i.e. Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. 3. Poetry in Non-poetical Books: There is a large amount of poetry in the Old Testament outside the books usually classed as poetical: (a) poetry in the prophetical books (see above, III, 2); (b) poetry in the historical books including the Pentateuch (see Michael Heilprin, The Historical Poetry of the Hebrews, 2 volumes, 1879-80). We have examples in Genesis 4:23f; 49; Exodus 15; Numbers 21:14,27-30 (JE); Numbers 23 f (Balaam's songs); Deuteronomy 32 f (song and blessing of Moses); Joshua 10:12-14 (JE); Judges 5 (Deborah's Song); 9:8-15; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; 2 Samuel 1; 3:33f; 2 Samuel 23 (= Psalm 18), etc.

LITERATURE. The most important books and articles on the subject have been mentioned during the course of the foregoing article. There is a full list of works dealing with Hebrew meter in W.H. Cobb, Criticism of Systems of Hebrew Metre, 19 ff. The first edition of Ewald's still valuable "Essay on Hebrew Poetry" prefixed to his commentary on the Psalms was published in English in the Journal of Sacred Literature (1848), 74 ff, 295 ff. In 1909 J.W. Rothstein issued a suggestive treatise on Hebrew rhythm (Grundzge des heb. Rhythmus ... nebst lyrischen Texten mit kritischem Kommentar), reviewed by the present writer in Review of Theology and Philosophy (Edinburgh), October, 1911. Early Religious Poetry of the Hebrews by E.G. King (Cambridge University Press) contains a good, brief, popular statement of the subject, though it makes no pretense to originality. In The Poets of the Old Testament, 1912, Professor A.R. Gordon gives an excellent popular account of the poetry and poetical literature of the Old Testament.

T. Witton Davies

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Acrostics

Acrostics in the Hebrew Bible

One of the many interesting rhetorical features of the Hebrew Bible is its use of alphabetical acrostics. These acrostics are not "hidden codes" -- they are literary compositions in which the writer has used the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as the initial letters for a sequence of verses. J.A. Motyer describes this feature as "a poetic way of saying that a total coverage of the subject was being offered." In the common form of acrostic found in Old Testament Poetry, each line or stanza begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order. This literary form may have been intended as an aid to memory, but more likely it was a poetic way of saying that a total coverage of the subject was being offered -- as we would say, 'from A to Z.' Acrostics occur in Psalms 111 and 112, where each letter begins a line; in Psalms 25, 34, and 145, where each letter begins a half-verse; in Psalm 37, Proverbs 31:10-31, and Lamentations 1, 2, and 4, where each letter begins a whole verse; and in Lamentations 3, where each letter begins three verses. Psalm 119 is the most elaborate demonstration of the acrostic method where, in each section of eight verses, the same opening letter is used, and the twenty-two sections of the psalm move through the Hebrew alphabet, letter after letter. --J.A. Motyer, "Acrostic," in The New International Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), p. 12. We give below one example. In Proverbs 31:10-31 the initial letters of each verse go through the Hebrew alphabet in order. Hebrew is written from right to left, so the first letter on the right is the intial letter in each verse. (For correct display of the Hebrew text on this page you may need to download and install the SBL Hebrew font). In the English translation, we put in red the English word that represents the initial Hebrew word in each verse. Sometimes it is very helpful for the student to know that a certain word is used in the Hebrew text mainly for poetic reasons.

The Excellent Wife

01 A worthy woman who can find? For her price is far above rubies. 11 The heart of her husband trusteth in her, And he shall have no lack of gain. 21 She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life. 31 She seeketh wool and flax, And worketh willingly with her hands. 41 She is like the merchant-ships; she bringeth her bread from afar. 5 1 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth food to her household, and their task to her maidens. 61 She considereth a field, and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. 71 She girdeth her loins with strength, and maketh strong her arms. 81 She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable: her lamp goeth not out by night.

9 1 She layeth her hands to the distaff, and her palms hold the spindle. 02 She stretcheth out her palms to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. 12 She is not afraid of the snow for her household; for all her household are clothed with scarlet. 22 She maketh for herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is fine linen and purple. 32 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. 42 She maketh linen garments and selleth them, and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. 52 Strength and dignity are her clothing; and she laugheth at the time to come. 62 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and the law of kindness is on her tongue. 72 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. 82 Her children rise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying: 92 Many daughters have done worthily, but thou excellest them all. 03 Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth Jehovah, she shall be praised. 13 Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her works praise her in the gates.

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Driver's Introduction

Introduction to the Old Testament of the New English Bible

by Sir Godfrey Driver
The Old Testament consists of a collection of works composed at various times from the twelfth to the second century B.C.; and much of it, e.g. genealogies, poems and stories, must have been handed down by word of mouth for many generations. It contains, however, scattered references to written texts; but how extensive or widely current these may have been cannot be said, as no manuscripts have survived from the period before the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the Jews into exile in 587/6 B.C. The text therefore is not infrequently uncertain and its meaning obscure. The whole Old Testament is written in classical Hebrew, except some brief portions which are in the Aramaic language (Ezra 4.86.18 and 7.1226, Jeremiah 10.11, Daniel 2.47.28), a sister language which became the lingua franca of the Semitic world. The earliest surviving form of the Hebrew text is perhaps that found in the Samaritan Pentateuch (GenesisDeuteronomy). This text must date from a period before the secession of the Samaritans from Judaism, but it is preserved only in manuscripts the earliest of which is tentatively assigned to the eleventh century A.D. It differs from the orthodox Jewish text in some six thousand places, in about one third of which it agrees with the Greek translation, the Septuagint; a few of these differences are doctrinal or political in origin (e.g. Deuteronomy 27.4), a small number are helpful in difficult passages of the traditional Hebrew text, but the majority have little if any importance. The next witness to the Hebrew text is provided by the Scrolls from Qumran, commonly called the Dead Sea Scrolls, dated c. 150 B.C. to A.D. 75 or thereabouts. These include fragments, often minute, of every book in the Old Testament except Esther, one complete scroll of Isaiah and another of which approximately half has been lost, and a commentary on the first two chapters of Habakkuk containing most of their text. All these agree essentially with the 'received text' of the Old Testament except for orthographic variations or occasional variant readings hardly affecting the sense, and so suggest that stabilization of text is already beginning. Fragments, however, of Samuel and one of Jeremiah have a shortened form of the text like that of the Septuagint in these books. The only other fragment of this period is that known as the Nash Papyrus, which cannot be exactly dated, containing two excerpts from the Law (Exodus 20.217 and Deuteronomy 6.45); its chief interest is that the words are more or less clearly spaced. Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Soon after that disaster, therefore, the Jewish religious leaders set about defining the canon and finally standardizing the text. This last process went on for many centuries and resulted in the production of an eclectic text based on arbitrary rather than scientific principles. This was the Massoretic (so called from the Hebrew massorah, 'tradition') or traditional text found in all Hebrew Bibles. This text was written in a purely consonantal alphabet, although the scribes at Qumran had already attempted to indicate the vowels by using certain letters for them (for example w for o and u, and y for e and i). This system, however, was soon found inadequate when, except in very restricted circles, the use of the old Hebrew language was dying out. Accordingly, in order to preserve the correct pronunciation in school and synagogue, the Massoretes inserted signs above or below or within the

consonantal symbols to indicate this. Several systems are known, but that devised by the Rabbis of Tiberias (hence known as 'Tiberian') in the fifth to sixth centuries A.D. eventually prevailed. What they preserved, however, was not so much the original pronunciation as that current amongst themselves; further, however helpful these vowel-signs may have been, they are demonstrably not always correct. The present translators have therefore held themselves free to disregard the vowels and to re-vocalize the consonantal text wherever that seems desirable. This text perpetuated not only genuine divergent readings but also numerous slips of the early copyists, made at a time when it was not copied with such meticulous care as in subsequent ages when it had come to be regarded as canonical and sacred; even then, however, many fresh errors found their way into it. The Rabbis soon felt the need to take account of and preserve any divergences that seemed to them important. They therefore listed a number of variant readings, omissions from and additions to the text as known to them, as well as possible corrections, which perhaps were often nothing but the conjectures of individual scribes. The consonants, however, were generally regarded as unalterable, and the usual method of indicating corrections adopted by the Massoretes was to attach the vowels of the word which they wished to be read to the consonants of that written in the text, although it might be an entirely different word. One such substitution calls for special notice as affecting the divine name. This, written YHWH, was normally replaced by 'God' or 'Lord' as too sacred for common use (Exodus 20.7 and Leviticus 24.16), being uttered only by the priest in the temple giving the priestly benediction (Numbers 6.2427). The true pronunciation was already passing into oblivion before A.D. 70; but Christian writers between A.D. 150 and A.D. 450 have Yaouai and Yabe (Yave) in Greek characters, and early magical texts have Yhbyh (Yahveh) in Aramaic characters, all pointing to Yahweh as the original pronunciation. The Massoretes, however, never vocalized the divine name as Yahweh; instead, to the consonants YHWH they added the vowels of adonay, 'my Lord' (replacing a by e as required by Hebrew phonetic laws), or of elohim, 'God', thus warning the reader to use one or other of these words in place of the divine name; and the early translators generally substituted 'Lord' for it. The Massoretes, however, did not intend the vowels of either of these words to be attached to the consonants of the divine name as though it was Yehowah or Yehowih, both grammatically impossible and meaningless forms; this uncouth combination, written Ieoa in Greek letters in Hellenistic magical texts, did not become effective until Yehova or Jehova or Johova appeared in two Latin works dated in A.D. 1278 and A.D. 1303; the shortened Jova (declined like a Latin noun) came into use in the sixteenth century. The Reformers preferred Jehovah, which first appeared as Iehouah in A.D. 1530 in Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch (Exodus 6.3), from which it passed into other Protestant Bibles. The present translators have retained the incorrect but now customary 'JEHOVAH' in the text of passages where it is explained in a note (Exodus 3.15 and 6.3; cp. Genesis 4.26) and in four place-names (Genesis 22.14, Exodus 17.15, Judges 6.24, Ezekiel 48.35); elsewhere they have put 'LORD' or 'GOD' in capital letters. The Hebrew text as thus edited by the Massoretes became virtually a single recension probably remaining substantially unaltered from the second century A.D., but this text has not survived in any manuscripts dated before the ninth to eleventh centuries A.D. Unsatisfactory as it may be, however, it is perforce reproduced in all printed Hebrew Bibles. These began to appear late in the fifteenth century, when printed copies of single books or groups of books came from various presses, followed by the first complete Bibles in 1488 and 1491; but the text of Jacob ben Chayyim's Rabbinic Bible (Venice, 15245) is that found in most modern Bibles. Collections of various readings were published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, unfortunately taken from late manuscripts and therefore of relatively little value. The most-used modern edition, with selected variations from Hebrew manuscripts and the principal divergences in the ancient versions implying a different Hebrew text, together with emendations proposed by modern scholars, is the third edition of R. Kittel's Biblia Hebraica (Stuttgart, 1937). It is the basis of the present translation.

The Hebrew text as thus handed down is full of errors of every kind due to defective archetypes and successive copyists' errors, confusion of letters (of which several in the Hebrew alphabet are singularly alike), omissions and insertions, displacements of words and even of whole sentences or paragraphs; and copyists' unhappy attempts to rectify mistakes have often only increased the confusion. The order of the books of the Old Testament followed in the present translation, though not entirely the same as that found in Hebrew manuscripts and in the ancient versions, is that of the Authorized and Revised Versions. In early inscriptions the writing commonly runs on continuously with no division between the words; but already c. 1000700 B.C. some have points or vertical strokes to divide them. By the sixth century B.C. this use of points was becoming rare and words were being separated by spaces; and the reader was further assisted, when the Aramaic script replaced the old Phoenician script, by the peculiar forms of several letters used at the end of a word. The Greek translators of the Hebrew text, however, still divide words wrongly, and errors caused by such false divisions can be traced occasionally in Jerome's Latin translations and linger even in the Massoretic text, although words are properly divided in the Scrolls. The main Scroll of Isaiah, like the Nash Papyrus, occasionally separates verses by a space; but this process was not completed until the Massoretes introduced a vertical stroke, afterwards replaced by two points resembling a colon, to divide the verses. They also devised various systems of breaking up the text into paragraphs. Finally, the present division of the text into chapters, ascribed to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, was adopted into Latin Bibles in the thirteenth century A.D.; their numbering is found in Hebrew manuscripts c. A.D. 1330 and in Hebrew Bibles first in the Complutensian Polyglot Bible (A.D. 151417). The present translators have inserted their own headings, which are not found in the Hebrew text, to define longer sections; otherwise they have more or less accepted the paragraphing of the Authorized and Revised Versions without much regard to the Massoretic system; they have often, however, broken up the text into shorter sections than those of these two versions. They have adopted the Massoretic system of verses but have occasionally run two or three verses together in order to bring out the sense or to avoid a cumbrous or awkward sentence. In the Hebrew text, headings are prefixed to many of the Psalms. Some are historical notices, obviously deduced from the text and often unsuitable; all are of doubtful value. Others are musical directions, which are found also in one other poem (Habakkuk 3.1,9,13,19); they are now for the most part unintelligible, and even the ancient translators seem to have been ignorant of their meaning. Further, the Syriac version has totally different headings throughout the Psalter. As such headings are almost certainly not original, they have been omitted from the present translation. The treatment of verse raises special problems. Only three books were regarded by the Massoretes as poetry (Job, Psalms, Proverbs), and they have their own accentuation in the Hebrew text; this however does not always coincide with the obvious metre or rather rhythm of the poem, which is based on parallelism of thought between the two halves of the line and on the number of units of sense, not of metrical feet of so many syllables, in each half. When these clash, the present translators have disregarded the Massoretic system and adapted the English text to rhythmical necessity. Further, the Massoretes have treated all the prophetic books as prose; but since the middle of the eighteenth century much in them has been recognized as verse, or prose mixed with verse, and the editors of these books in Kittel's Biblia Hebraica have printed whatever can be regarded as poetry in verse-form. The translators, therefore, have followed this system while using their own judgement in accepting or rejecting it in any given passage. The verses in a few Psalms and in one or two poems outside the Psalter begin each with a successive letter of the alphabet; but no attempt has been made to reproduce such acrostic arrangements in this

translation. They occasionally help to restore the order of the lines (Nahum 1.214) and once to join two Psalms which have been wrongly separated (Psalms 910). In Psalm 119, each group of eight verses begins with the same letter, following the order of the alphabet, and Jerome has added the Hebrew names of the letters in Latin characters at the head of each group; but, as they are not in the Hebrew text, though preserved in the Authorized and Revised Versions, they have been here omitted. Occasionally groups of verses are marked off by a common refrain; and this once or twice enables a displaced fragment of a poem to be restored to its proper position with the others sharing this refrain (Psalms 4243 and Isaiah 5.2425 and 9.810.4). Lastly, the Hebrew text of the Song of Songs does not differentiate between the speakers. They are distinguished, however, in two manuscripts of the Septuagint, though perhaps not always correctly, and can often be inferred from the gender and number of the persons addressed; they have therefore been added, according as they seem appropriate, in italic type in the present translation. Elsewhere the translators have here and there inserted the speaker's name when it has not been given for some time and have also occasionally added 'he says' or the like when the sense seems to be obscured by the absence of such indications. Where the problem before the translators was that of correcting errors in the Hebrew text in order to make sense, they had recourse, first of all, to the ancient versions, of which a considerable number has survived. The earliest version is the Greek translation made in Egypt in the third and second centuries B.C. It was designed to meet the needs of Greek-speaking Jews after the dispersion of the Jews following on the conquests of Alexander the Great (who died in 323 B.C.). According to tradition the Pentateuch was translated by seventy-two elders, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, and so the Greek version of the Old Testament came to be called the Septuagint, from the Latin septuaginta, 'seventy'. Written in the 'common dialect' of the Greek language current in the Mediterranean world, it is clearly the work of different translators of varying skill; for example, the Pentateuch is reasonably well translated, but the rest of the books, especially the poetical books, are often very poorly done and even contain sheer absurdities. Errors apart, this translation is now literal, now paraphrastic and now interpretative. Further, the underlying Hebrew text differed in many places from the Massoretic text; so, for example, the Septuagint represents a shortened form of the text of 1 and 2 Samuel and has the chapters of Jeremiah in an entirely different order. Yet, even though the Greek text itself is frequently corrupt, it is very often useful for recovering the original Hebrew text, if used with caution and skill. Early in the Christian era, when its defects were becoming increasingly apparent, several scholars attempted to revise it or make new recensions or translations based on it. Such were Aquila, whose renderings were often ludicrously literal, Symmachus, who replaced Hebraisms by idiomatic Greek expressions, and Theodotion, who made a free revision which was thought so good that his rendering of Daniel actually displaced that of the Septuagint. Some considerable time afterwards other scholars produced fresh recensions of the Greek text, amongst which that commonly associated with the name of Lucian may be included. Only fragments of the first three, apart from Theodotion's Daniel, have survived from the Hexaplar (i.e. six-columned) Bible made by Origen (c. A.D. 185254), and Lucian's work is thought to lie behind certain Greek manuscripts. The history of these recensions is buried in obscurity; but most of them have something, however small, to contribute to the translation of the Hebrew Bible. As Christianity spread westwards, the need of a Latin translation began to make itself felt, and the Old Latin Version, or perhaps rather Versions, came into existence, made from the Septuagint, about the end of the second century A.D. It is known partly from manuscripts, none complete, but mostly from quotations in the Fathers. The defects of this version, however, were so patent that Pope Damasus towards the end of the fourth century A.D. instructed Jerome to revise it. He began with two revisions

of the Psalter, the 'Roman Psalter' based on the Old Latin Version, and the Gallican Psalter (so called as finding ready acceptance in Gaul) made from the Septuagint; he then produced Latin revisions of five other books (of which Job alone survives) based on the Septuagint, and finally new translations of the canonical books made from the Hebrew text, including one of the Psalms known as the 'Psalter according to the Hebrews', which failed to displace the Gallican Psalter in the Latin Bible. This version, made with the help of Jewish scholars and commonly called the Vulgate, by its idiomatic and forceful renderings was the best of the ancient translations; but, being based on the Massoretic 'received text', it is not so useful as the Septuagint for the recovery of the original Hebrew. As the classical language of the Old Testament ceased to be understood by the common people in Palestine, an interpreter followed up every verse of the Law and every three verses of the Prophets when read in the synagogue by an Aramaic translation which was often spun out into a long but edifying paraphrase. Such interpretations, known as Targums (so called from the Aramaic targum, 'translation'), tended to become traditional and had already begun to be written down before the Christian era; for Gamaliel, St Paul's teacher, ordered one of the Book of Job to be buried and his grandson declared such a work heretical. There are Targums to all the Old Testament books except Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah; and fourteen or fifteen such Targums are extant. Of these the most important are the so-called Targum of Onkelos on the Pentateuch and that of Jonathan on the Former and Latter Prophets, which are reasonably literal and therefore helpful in recovering the Hebrew text where it is corrupt. The first Syriac version, called the Peshitta (meaning the 'simple', i.e. literal, version), was made for the Eastern Church between the first and third centuries A.D. Though affected by the Septuagint, it is basically a rendering of the Massoretic text and so occasionally elucidates difficult passages. The Syrohexaplar Version is a Syriac translation, made in the seventh century A.D., of Origen's text of the Septuagint as found in the fifth column of his Hexaplar Bible; its language so slavishly imitates the Greek of the parent text that it is invaluable, where it has been preserved, for restoring that text. Fragments of yet another Syriac version have been preserved, and the names of three others are known. A number of other versions made between the third and ninth centuries A.D. in different languages are extant but, being made from or influenced by the Greek and Syriac versions, rarely help with problems of the Hebrew text. Several Arabic versions of diverse date, not all complete, exist, notably those of the Pentateuch, of which one lies behind the Samaritan Targum, and of a few books by Sa'adyah (tenth century A.D.) and another of the Pentateuch by 'Abu Sa'id (thirteenth century A.D.), which is the textus receptus of the Arabic Pentateuch now used by the Samaritans; the work of these two translators is from time to time helpful as embodying Jewish traditions. These ancient versions, especially when they agree, contribute in varying degrees to the restoration of the Hebrew text when incapable of translation as it stands; and they also contribute much to the understanding of the Hebrew language. No Hebrew literature contemporary with the Old Testament is available to the Hebraist; only a few inscriptions carved in rock or stone or daubed on potsherds have been preserved, and these throw but little light on the Hebrew language. Further, the range of subjects with which the Old Testament deals is limited, although it is spread over a period of some thousand years. Consequently its surviving vocabulary is small, numbering only about 7,500 different words, of which nearly a quarter occur only once each; and the meaning of many of these is quite unknown or can perhaps only be guessed from the context or learnt from the ancient translators if they have preserved it. The meaning, however, of not a few words is clearly unknown even to them. Some of these rare words were explained, not always rightly, by medieval Jewish scholars from surviving traditions or by comparing them with cognate Arabic words. This last method was revived by Christian scholars in the seventeenth century and was greatly advanced during the following two

centuries, when the Syriac and Ethiopic languages were also used; but the Babylonian and Assyrian languages did not become available till the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions in the middle of the nineteenth century. The authors of the Revised Version were able to make some use of these languages; but the huge accumulation of texts, including native glossaries, in them now provides a source on which the present translators have been able to draw for the explanation of many unknown or misunderstood Hebrew words and phrases. The general understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures has also been greatly helped by archaeological discoveries made during the past century. These serve mostly to illustrate the setting of a particular passage or custom, but they occasionally throw light on a word of unknown meaning. In the last resort the scholar may be driven to conjectural emendation of the Hebrew text. This is practised as sparingly as possible in the present translation, and attention is always (except where changes only in vocalization are involved) drawn to it in the notes. Another difficulty in translating the Old Testament is one inherent in the circumstances of time and place. Long ago Erasmus remarked that the student of Scripture ought to be 'tolerably versed in other branches of learning ... and especially in knowledge of the natural objects animals, trees, precious stones of the countries mentioned in the Scriptures; for, if we are familiar with the country, we can in thought follow the history and picture it in our own minds, so that we seem not only to read it but to see it'. This goal indeed is not always easy to reach. Palestine differs greatly from the western world in its physical features and natural history, and the English language has no words for much that is characteristic of the country. The same problem arises with the arts and crafts, articles of clothing and vessels in daily use, the institutions of the family, administration and army, religion and cult. The translators, in seeking a way round many such problems, have made every effort to avoid the introduction of anachronisms and words reflecting an entirely different social background. They have transliterated technical terms where strict accuracy seemed to be required, but rendered them by some word or phrase approaching or suggesting the original sense where this was not so. Notably the rendering of the terms for each kind of offering or sacrifice has been standardized in the laws, whereas they have been translated more freely, without much regard to consistency, in the Psalms and other poetical passages where no technical problems are involved. The translators have resorted to a paraphrase when the original Hebrew word or phrase does not lend itself to literal reproduction; but they have generally given that in a note. They have also, on the one hand, here and there expanded a Hebrew idiom to avoid a Hebraism likely to be unintelligible to English readers, especially as Hebrew is able to express in three or four words what may require a dozen or so to make it intelligible in the English language; on the other hand, they have sometimes abbreviated the text when the original Hebrew has seemed by English standards unduly repetitive. Hebrew writers are fond of playing on words, both common nouns and proper names; but no attempt has been made to reproduce such puns, if only because the result is generally something unnatural and bizarre. This problem is especially tantalizing in regard to proper names such as those of the patriarchs and the family of Naomi, all of whose characters are reflected in their names; such points can rarely be brought out in a foreign language, and the explanation of the names has been relegated to the notes. Previous official translations of the Bible have been for the most part revisions of those that have preceded them. So the Authorized Version was practically a revision of Coverdale's work, and its language was largely that of the sixteenth rather than of the seventeenth century. The Revisers of the nineteenth century were instructed 'to introduce as few alterations as possible into the Text of the Authorised Version' and 'to limit, as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language of the Authorised and earlier English Versions'. The obvious consequence of such instructions was that the language of the Revised Version tended to be several centuries out of date when it appeared; it

even contained Latinisms which had come down from the Vulgate through a succession of English translations and which had long gone out of use. The present translators, therefore, were instructed to keep their language as close to current usage as they could, while avoiding expressions likely to be proved ephemeral. This task they have tried to perform to the best of their ability. They are well aware that a precise equivalent for a Hebrew word can only rarely be found in another language, and that complete success in such an undertaking is unattainable; but they have had in mind not only the importance of making sense, which is not always apparent in previous translations, but also the needs of ordinary readers with no special knowledge of the ancient East; and they trust that such readers may find illumination in the present version.

G.R.D.

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Early Printed Editions The following history of early printed editions of the Hebrew Old Testament is excerpted from the article by A. J. Maas, "Editions of the Bible," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909).

EDITIONS OF THE HEBREW TEXT OF THE BIBLE

Roughly speaking, there are three classes of editions of the Hebrew text:

1. The so-called Incunabula (Lat. cunabula, pl., "cradle") 2. The common editions 3. The critical editions.

The reader will see that this division has an historical as well as a logical basis.

1. THE INCUNABULA
Technically speaking, the Incunabula are the editions issued before the year 1500. From our present critical standpoint, they are very defective; but since they represent manuscripts now lost, they are important even for critical purposes. The following publications constitute the main body of the Incunabula:

1. The quarto edition of the Hebrew Psalter with the commentary of Rabbi David Kimchi, printed in 1477, probably at Bologna. Vowels and accents are wanting, except in the first four psalms. The volume is noted for its omissions, abbreviations, and general lack of accuracy. 2. The folio edition of the Pentateuch, with vowels and accents, containing the Targum of Onkelos and the commentary of Rabbi Samuel Jarchi, printed at Bologna, 1482. This publication is much more perfect and correct than the foregoing. 3. The so-called Earlier Prophets, i. e. the Books of Josue, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, printed in 1488 at Soncino, near Cremona, in Italy. 4. The folio edition of the Later Prophets, i. e. Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets, printed soon after the preceding publication, without accents and vowels, but interlined with the text of Kimchi's commentary. 5. The Psalter and the Megilloth, or "Rolls", i. e. the Canticle of Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, printed in the same year as the preceding publication, at Soncino and Casale, in Italy, in a quarto volume. 6. Three folio volumes containing the Hagiographa with several rabbinic commentaries, printed at Naples in 1487; the text is accompanied by the vowels, but not by the accents. 7. A complete Hebrew Bible, in folio, printed in 1488 at Soncino, without any commentary. Its text, accompanied by both vowels and accents, is based partly on the previously printed portions of the Hebrew Bible, partly on Hebrew manuscripts, but it lacks accuracy. 8. A folio containing the Hebrew and Chaldee Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary, printed in 1490 in Isola del Liri.

9. A most accurate and highly esteemed quarto edition of the Pentateuch, printed at Lisbon in 1491. 10. A second complete edition of the Hebrew text, in quarto, printed in 1494 at Brescia. The editor calls himself Gerson ben Mose of Soncino. The text, which is accompanied by its vowels and accents, exhibits many peculiar readings not found in any other edition. The type is small and indistinct, the proofreading most slovenly; in a word, the edition is utterly defective. Luther based his translation on it. 11. The foregoing text is repeated in an octave edition printed at Pisa in 1494. 12. A folio edition of the Hebrew Bible, printed on parchment, bears no indication of its date or place of printing; it probably appeared in Constantinople about 1500. 13. To these may be added Seb. Mnster's Hebrew-Latin Bible, printed in folio at Basle, 1534 and 1546, since its text is based on that of the 1488 and 1494 editions. Here also belong, for the same reason, the "Biblia Rabbinica Bombergiana", first edition (see below), the editions of R. Stephanus (1539-44, 1546), and the manual editions of Bomberg.

2. COMMON EDITIONS
By these we understand editions of the Bible reproduced either from manuscripts or previous printed editions without the aid of critical apparatus and the application of critical principles. While the editions of the Hebrew text thus far enumerated owed their publication to Jewish enterprise, those that follow were, at least in part, due to Christian scholarship. For practical purposes we may divide the common editions into two classes: (1) those not depending on other printed editions (independent editions); (2) those depending, at least partly, on a previously printed text (dependent, or mixed, editions).

(1) Independent editions

This class of editions comprises two principal ones: (a) the "Biblia Polyglotta Complutensia"; (b) the "Biblia Rabbinica Bombergiana", second edition. Here we can give only a summary of their principal features. (a) "Biblia Polyglotta Complutensia" In the year 1502, Cardinal Ximenes engaged several learned scholars to prepare the edition of a polyglot Bible called variously after the name of its ecclesiastical patron and the place of its publication (Alcal, in Lat. Complutum). The editors of the Hebrew text were Jewish converts. Ancient manuscripts, estimated at the value of 4000 florins, and probably also the best extant printed copies of the Hebrew text, were placed at their disposal. Thus the cardinal's scholars produced a text quite different from the other printed texts of his time. They marked the vowels, but not the accents. The Polyglot was finished in 1517, but was published only in 1520 or 1522, according to Gregory (Canon and Text of the New Testament, New York, 1907). The pure form of its text was only once reprinted in the so-called "Biblia Polyglotta Vatabli", or "Polyglotta Sanctandreana'', or again, "Bertram's Polyglot" (Heidelberg, 1586, 1599, 1616). (b) "Biblia Rabbinica Bombergiana," second edition Daniel Bomberg, of Antwerp, who had established a printing-office for Hebrew and rabbinic literature in Venice, published, in 1518, two important editions of the Hebrew text: (a) an edition for Christian readers, in quarto, which was reprinted in 1521, 1525-28, 1533, 1544; (b) an edition for Jewish readers, edited by the Jewish convert Felix Pratensis. It contained the Targumim, the Massorah, and many Jewish commentaries, but did not satisfy the Jews. Hence Bomberg found it advisable to publish another edition under the editorship of R. Jacob ben Chayim, the most celebrated Jewish scholar of his

time. He brought the text into closer agreement with the Massorah, and added several more Jewish commentaries. The work appeared in Venice, in four folio volumes, 1525-26, and was justly regarded as the first Massoretic Bible. It won the approbation of both Jewish and Christian scholars, so that it had to be republished in 1547-49, and 1568; the- last edition was brought out under the direction of John de Gara. In spite of the great merits of the work, it is not wholly free from defects; Ben Chayim paid too much attention to the Massorah and too little to reliable old manuscripts. The principal codex he followed fell afterwards into the hands of de Rossi, who testifies that it is quite defective and has not been carefully edited. Chayim printed it without correcting its most glaring mistakes. The subsequent editions were influenced principally by Ben Chayim's text, and only secondarily by the Complutensian Polyglot. Thus the former text was repeated by Bragadin (Venice, 1617), and, in a slightly modified form, by Justiniani (Venice, 1551, 1552, 1563, 1573), the editors of Geneva (1618), John de Gara (Venice, 1566, 1568, 1582), Plantin (Antwerp, 1566), Hartmann (Frankfort, 1595, 1598), the editors of Wittenberg (1586, 1587), and Tores (Amsterdam, 1705). Long before the last publication appeared, John Buxtorf edited first the Hebrew text in manual form (Basle, 1611), then Chayim's rabbinic Bible in four folio volumes (Basle, 1618, 1619). Though he corrected some of Ben Chayim's mistakes, he allowed others to remain and even introduced some new ones. He ought not to have regulated the vocalization of the Targumim according to the vowels in the Chaldee fragments of the Bible, and it was at least inconsistent to change the Massorah according to the Hebrew text, seeing that Ben Chayim, whose text he professed to follow, had modified the Hebrew text according to the Massorah.

(2) Dependent, or mixed, editions

In the editions thus far mentioned the text of one or the other of the two principal forms of the Hebrew Bible was reproduced without any notable change. We have now to consider the attempts made to correct the text either according to the reading of other editions or according to that of ancient manuscripts. (a) Texts Corrected according to Printed Texts The first mixed text of the Hebrew Bible appeared in the Antwerp Polyglot (1569-72); the same text was repeated in the Paris Polyglot (1629-45), in the London Polyglot (1657), in that of Reineccius (Leipzig, 1750-51), the smaller Plantin editions (Antwerp, 1580, 1582; Burgos, 1581; Leyden, 1613), the manual edition of Reineccius (Leipzig, 1725, 1739, 1756), and in the Vienna Bible (1743). The beautifully printed Bible of Hutter (Hamburg, 1588) presents a peculiarly mixed text. Here may be added the names of a few editors who published a Hebrew text without vowels and without pretence to critical accuracy: Plantin (Antwerp, 1573, 8vo and 12mo; Leyden, 1595, 16mo; 1610, 12mo; Hanau, 1610, 24mo); Menasse ben Israel (Amsterdam, 1630, 1639, 8vo); Leusden (1694, 8vo); Maresius (1701, 8vo); Jablonsky (Berlin, 1711, 24mo); Forster (Oxford, 1750, 4to). (b) Texts Corrected according to Codices and Printed Texts The mixture of Chayim's text with the Complutensian could not give permanent satisfaction. Every comparison of the mixed text with that of any good manuscript brought to light many discrepancies and suggested the idea that a better Hebrew text might be obtained by the help of good codices. The first attempt to publish a Hebrew text thus corrected was made by John Leusden with the cooperation of the printer Jos. Athias (Amsterdam, 1661, 1667). The editor revised Chayim's text according to the readings of two codices, one of which was said to be about 900 years old. This edition, printed by Athias, was revised by George Nissel according to the readings of Hutter's Bible (Leyden, 1662). Nissel makes no pretence of having collated any codices, so that his work is noted for its scarcity rather than its critical value. Clodius, too, endeavoured to correct Athias's text according to earlier

editions, but was not always successful (Frankfort, 1677, 1692, 1716). Jablonsky corrected the second edition of Athias according to the readings of several codices and of the better previous editions, paying special attention to the vowels and accents (Berlin, 1699, 1712); his first edition is commonly regarded as being one of the best. Van der Hooght corrected the second edition of Athias according to the Massorah and the previously printed editions (Amsterdam and Utrecht, 1705); his attention to the smallest details and the printer's care account for the general favour with which the edition was received. A still more perfect reprint of the edition was published by Props (Amsterdam, 1724). Simonis, too, published correct and cheap reprints of Van der Hooght's Bible. Opitz corrected the edition of Athias according to the readings of seventeen of the best previous editions and of several manuscripts (Kiel, 1709; Zllichau, 1741). He supervised the proof in person, and even the type was remarkable for its size and clearness, so that the edition was considered the most accurate extant. J. H. Michaelis edited the first Hebrew text with variants (Halle, 1720). He based it on the text of Jablonsky which he compared with twenty-four earlier editions and with five manuscripts preserved in Erfurt. The more important variants he added at the bottom of the page. It has been found that the comparison was made rather superficially as far as the printed editions were concerned, and there is no good reason for supposing that more care was taken in the comparison of the manuscript text. Still, the edition remains valuable, because it is the first of its kind, and some of its variants deserve attention even today. The Oratorian Father Houbigant tried to produce a text far superior to the commonly received one. Taking Van der Hooght's text for his basis, he added his own corrections and conjectures in critical notes. His apparatus consisted of a number of manuscripts, the ancient versions, and the Hebrew context. The precipitancy of his inferences and the rashness of his conjectures did much to create a prejudice against his method, though the merit of his work has been duly appreciated by scholars. His "Not Critic" were printed in separate form in Frankfort (1777), after the full edition had appeared in Paris (1753). Here may be mentioned the work of the Italian Jew, Salomo Norzi. He began in the early years of the seventeenth century to compare Bomberg's text with the best of the printed editions, with a number of good manuscripts of both Bible and Massorah, with the Biblical citations found in the Talmud, the Midrashim, and in other rabbinic writings, and with the critical annotations of the more notable Jewish commentators; the results of his long study he summarized in a Massoretico-critical commentary intended to accompany the text of the Hebrew Bible, which had been rather scantily corrected. The title of the work was to be "Repairer of the Breach" (Is., lviii, 12), but the author died before he could publish his book. Nearly a century later, a Jewish physician named Raphael Chayim Italia had Norzi's work printed at his own expense under the title "Offering of the Gift" (Mantua, 1742-44). Among Christian scholars it appears to have remained unnoticed until Bruns and Dresde drew attention to it. In spite of his best intentions, Norzi at times rather corrupts than corrects the Hebrew text, because he prefers the readings of the Massorah to those of the manuscripts.

3. CRITICAL EDITIONS
The editions thus far enumerated can hardly be called critical, since their editors either lacked the necessary apparatus or did not consider it prudent to correct the received Hebrew text according to the full light of their textual information. Later on, two classes of scholars published really critical editions of the Hebrew text; some endeavoured to restore critically the most correct Massoretic text obtainable; others tried to find the most accurate pre-Massoretic text.

(1) Critical Editions of the Massoretic Text

In order to restore the correct Massoretic text it was necessary first to collect the apparatus. About the middle of the eighteenth century this need was felt very keenly by Benjamin Kennicott, a canon of Christ Church, Oxford, who determined to remedy the evil. Beginning in 1759, he collated either in person or through others as many as 615 Hebrew manuscripts, 52 printed editions, and the Talmud,

continuing this preparation until the year 1773. Then he began the printing of the work (Vetus Testam. Hebr. cum var. lectionibus, 2 volumes, Oxford, 1776-80) based on Van der Hooght's Hebrew text as edited by Simonis. The variants, with their respective sources, were indicated below the text. In the introductory dissertation of the second volume the author gives the history of his enterprise and justifies its methods. He found this necessary because, after the appearance of the first volume, his critics had charged him with lack of care and discernment in the choice of the manuscripts used, of the variants noticed, and in the treatment of the Massorah. Bernardo de Rossi, professor at Parma, tried to construct an apparatus that should not be open to the exceptions taken against Kennicott's work. The material on which de Rossi worked exceeded that of Kennicott by 731 manuscripts, 300 printed editions, and several ancient versions. In his work (Vari lectiones Vet. Testam., 4 volumes, Parma, 1784-88) and its subsequent supplement (Supplementa ad varias s. text. lectiones, 1798) he noted the more important variants, gave a brief appreciation of their respective sources and their values, and paid due attention to the Massorah. He follows Van der Hooght's text as his basis, but considers it known, and so does not print it. All of de Rossi's critics are at one in admiring the laboriousness of his work, but they deny that its importance bears any proportion to the labour it implies. Perhaps the author himself, in his "Dissertatio prliminaris" to vol. IV, gives a fairer opinion of his work than his critics do. It can hardly be denied that de Rossi at least showed what can be done by a study of the manuscripts and of the old editions for the correction of the received Hebrew text. The apparatus of the textual, or lower, criticism of the Old Testament text is not limited to the works of Kennicott and de Rossi; it comprises also the above-mentioned work of Salomo Norzi, re-edited in Vienna, 1813; the writings of Wolf ben Simson Heidenhaim; Frensdorff's "Ochla W' Ochlah" (1864), and "Massora Magna" (Hanover, 1876); the prophetic "Codex of St. Petersburg", dating back to 916, phototyped by Strack in 1876; all the recently discovered or recently studied codices and fragments, together with the works of the ancient Jewish grammarians and lexicographers. But even with these means at their command, the editors of the Hebrew text did not at once produce an edition that could be called satisfactory from a critical point of view. The editions of DderleinMeisner (Leipzig, 1793) and Jahn (Vienna, 1807) only popularized the variants of Kennicott and de Rossi without utilizing them properly. The edition published under the name of Hahn and prefaced by Rosenmller (Leipzig, 1834) is anything but critical. The stereotype editions of Hahn (Leipzig, 1839) and Theile (Leipzig, 1849) remained for many years the best manual texts extant. More recently the apparatus has been used to better advantage in the edition of Ginsburg (The New Massoretico-Critical Text of the Hebrew Bible, 1894) and in that of Baer and Delitzsch. The last-named appeared in single books, beginning with the year 1861. The Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are still wanting; both editors are dead, so that their work will have to be completed by other hands.

(2) Critical Editions of the Pre-Massoretic Text

The editors whose work we have thus far noticed endeavoured to restore as far as possible the text of the Massorah. However valuable such an edition may be in itself, it cannot pretend to be the last word which textual criticism has to say concerning the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. After all, the Massoretic text attained to its fixed form in the early centuries of the Christian Era; before that period there were found many text-forms which differed considerably from the Massoretic, and which nevertheless may represent the original text with fair accuracy. The most ancient and reliable witness for the pre-Massoretic text-form of the Hebrew Bible is found in the Septuagint. But it is practically certain that, even at the time of the Septuagint, the original text had suffered considerable corruptions; these can be corrected only by comparing parallel passages of the context, or again by conjectural criticism; a critical edition of this kind presupposes, therefore, a critical edition of the Septuagint text.

Various attempts have been made to restore the pre-Massoretic text of single books of the Old Testament: thus Olshausen worked at the reconstruction of the Book of Genesis (Beitrge zur Kritik des berlieferten Textes im Buche Genesis, 1870); Wellhausen (Text der Bcher Samuelis, 1871), Driver (Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel, 1890), and Klostermann (Die Bcher Samuelis und der Knige, 1887) at the correction of the Books of Samuel; Cornill at the correction of the Book of Ezechiel (Das Buch des Propheten Ezechiel, 1886). To these might be added various other publications; e. g., several recent commentaries, some of the works published by Bickell, etc. But all these works concern only part of the Old Testament text. "The Sacred Books of the Old Testament", edited by Paul Haupt, is a series intended to embrace the whole Hebrew text, though the value of its criticism is in many instances questionable; Kittel's "Biblia Hebraica" (Leipzig, 1905), too, deserves a mention among the critical editions which attempt to restore the pre-Massoretic Hebrew text.

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Bibliography

Old Testament Bibliography

Introductions
Bill T. Arnold and Bryan E. Beyer, Encountering the Old Testament: A Christian Survey. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1999. 512 pages. A survey designed for use in undergraduate Bible courses in conservative schools. Written on a popular level. Includes many color graphics, side bars, charts, and also discusses modern applications. Interacts irenically with liberal views. Gleason L. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction. Chicago: Moody Press, 1964. 2nd ed. 1974. 3rd ed. 1994. 608 pages. ISBN: 0802482007. A standard conservative survey, often polemical. Raymond B. Dillard and Tremper Longman III, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994. A moderately conservative introduction that embraces higher-critical methods. The authors tend to be noncommittal on important questions of authorship that have divided liberals from conservatives. Regarding the book of Isaiah, they maintain that the belief that Isaiah wrote it "should not be made a theological shibboleth (Judges 12:6) or test for orthodoxy" (p. 275). Regarding Daniel, they leave open "the possibility that some later unnamed disciples framed his speeches or even added some or all of the third-person stories" (p. 332). Otto Eissfeldt, The Old Testament, An Introduction. New York: Harper and Row, 1965. Translated from the third German edition by Peter R. Ackroyd. The standard scholarly introduction from a secular/liberal perspective. Largely ignores conservative views. Roland K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969. 1,325 pages. The most satisfactory scholarly introduction written from a conservative perspective in recent years. Includes extensive, technical critique of liberal views. Karl Friedrich Keil, Manual of Historico-Critical Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament. 2 vols. Translated from the second German edition by George C. M. Douglas. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870. Reprinted ca. 1990. Out-of-date in several ways, but still valuable. Much more technical than introductions published in the 20th century. Edward J. Young, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949. 2nd edition 1964. A brief conservative survey.

Hebrew Language
William Chomsky, Hebrew: The Eternal Language. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1957. Edward Y. Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew language, edited by Raphael Kutscher. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1982. 306 pages. ISBN: 9652233978. Henry Craik, The Hebrew Language: Its History and Characteristics, Including Improved Renderings of Select Passages in our Authorized Translation of the Old Testament. London: Bagster, 1860. 187 pages.

James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. 354 pages. ISBN: 0198266189. Nahum M. Waldman, The Recent Study of Hebrew: A Survey of the Literature with Selected Bibliography. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1989. 464 pages. ISBN: 0878209085. A good survey of literature on Hebrew. Includes a bibliography of almost 200 pages.

Texts
Jacob ben Hayyin, ed., Biblia Rabbinica: A Reprint of the 1525 Venice Edition. 4 volumes. Jerusalem: Makor Publishing, 1972. A reprint of the Rabbinic Bible originally published by Daniel Bomberg in Venice. Aharon Dotan, ed. Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia, Prepared according to the Vocalization, Accents, and Masora of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher in the Leningrad Codex. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2001. Usually referred to as BHL. An inexpensive edition designed for Jewish liturgical use, with careful attention to accents. Does not include a critical apparatus. Norman H. Snaith, Sefer Torah, Nevi'im u-Khetuvim [title transliterated from Hebrew script]. London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1958. Reprinted under the title The Hebrew Scriptures. ISBN: 0564000299. An inexpensive edition intended for translators, based on Sephardic manuscripts of the ben Asher family, especially British Library Manuscript Or.2626-8. Does not include a text-critical apparatus. Mer Letteris, ed., The Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, Hebrew and English. London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1866. Often reprinted. The Hebrew text here is that edited by Mer Letteris (Sefer Torah, Nevi'im u-Khetuvim, Berlin, 1866), who with very few changes followed the earlier edition of Van der Hooght. The King James Version is printed in a parallel column. The edition was designed for use by missionary translators, and continues to be sold by the American Bible Society (ISBN: 0564000396). The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999. ISBN: 0827606567. The Hebrew text from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the English text from the New JPS Tanakh (1985) arranged in parallel columns. A very convenient volume for students. Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph, eds., Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia / quae antea cooperantibus A. Alt, O. Eissfeldt, P. Kahle ediderat R. Kittel; editio funditus renovata, adjuvantibus H. Bardtke ... [et al.] cooperantibus H.P. Rger et J. Ziegler ediderunt K. Elliger et W. Rudolph; textum Masoreticum curavit H.P. Rger, Masoram elaboravit G.E. Weil; editio tertia emendata opera W. Rudolph et H.P Rger. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1987. 1574 pages. ISBN: 3438052199. The standard text for academic purposes, commonly referred to as BHS. Based on the Leningrad Codex. The emendations recommended in the apparatus are often arbitrary and should be treated with some caution. An explanation of the symbols and Latin abbreviations may be found in the works of Scott and Wonneberger listed immediately below.

Guides to Using the BHS

William R. Scott, A Simplified Guide to BHS: Critical Apparatus, Masora, Accents, Unusual Letters and Other Markings. Berkeley, California: Bibal Press, 1987. ISBN: 0941037045. 2nd ed., 1990. ISBN: 0941037142. A handy guide to using the apparatus of BHS. Includes H. P. Rger's An English Key to the Latin Words and Symbols of BHS (American Bible Society, 1990).

Reinhard Wonneberger, Understanding BHS: A Manual for the Users of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Subsidia Biblica. Vol. 8. Translated from the German by Dwight R. Daniels. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1984. ISBN: 8876535594. 2nd ed. 1990. ISBN: 8876535780. 104 pages. More detailed than Scott. Wonneberger focuses on explaining and evaluating the apparatus in BHS and the theory that underlies it. Page H. Kelley, Daniel S. Mynatt, and Timothy G. Crawford, The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Introduction and Annotated Glossary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. A guide to the Masoretic scribal notes printed in the margins of BHS.

Hebrew-English Interlinear editions

Jay P. Green, ed., The Interlinear Hebrew-Greek-English Bible. 4 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware: Associated Publishers and Authors, 1976. Reprinted in one volume, 1979. 2nd edition 1986 (with Strong's Concordance numbers above each word) published in 4 volumes by Hendrickson Publishers in Peabody, Massachusetts (ISBN: 0913573302), reprinted 2002 by Sovereign Grace Publishers in Lafayette, Indiana. This is the most accurate and useful interlinear edition available. John R. Kohlenberger III, ed., The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament. 4 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979-85. Published in a single volume and with a new introduction in 1987. The Hebrew text is reproduced from the BHS. Kohlenberger's interlinear translation is, as he puts it, "based on the vocabulary of the NIV" (introduction, xix), and so in many places it mimics the "dynamic equivalence" of the NIV rather than giving a literal translation. Thus the ordinary character and purpose of an interlinear is defeated at many points. For example, in Exodus 29:12 the NIV follows the Septuagint interpretation "the rest of the blood you shall pour out," instead of giving a literal translation of the Hebrew, "all of the blood you shall pour out." The divergence from the Hebrew is not noted in the NIV margin, and so Kohlenberger puts the English gloss "rest of" under the Hebrew word that means "all" in his interlinear translation, as if the word literally meant "rest of." The reasons for this inaccuracy of the interlinear translation are unclear, but a possible reason is indicated in the introduction, where Kohlenberger nervously advises readers that nothing in the interlinear translation should be construed in such a way as to call into question the accuracy of the NIV. Another problem in this interlinear is the editor's occasional failure to recognize where the NIV translators have followed a critically emended text which does not correspond to the Hebrew text printed in the volume. For example, at Genesis 49:10 the Hebrew text has the very obscure words "until Shiloh comes," but the NIV has "until he comes to whom it belongs," an interpretation which is based upon an emendation of the Hebrew text. The NIV fails to mention in its margin that a textual emendation has been made here, and sobetrayed by the NIV, it seemsKohlenberger puts the English gloss "he whose" under the Hebrew word "Shiloh" in his interlinear translation, as if that were a possible meaning of the word as it stands in the unemended text. These are serious faults in an interlinear translation, and they bring into question the scholarly competence of the editor. He seems to have relied upon the NIV in making the interlinear translation, without enough independent knowledge of Hebrew to see where the NIV departs from the BHS text.

Textual Criticism
Ellis R. Brotzman, Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994. 208 pages. ISBN: 0801010659. Brief and conservative. Peter Kyle McCarter, Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible. Guides to Biblical Scholarship. Old Testament Guides. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986. 94 pages. ISBN: 0800604717. Brief. Includes helpful glossary. Tends to emphasize the importance of the LXX.

Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. ISBN: 0800626877. 2nd ed., 2001. ISBN: 0800634292. 456 pages. The most important comprehensive treatment in English. Emphasizes contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research. Jerusalem: Simor Ltd, 1981. Jacob Weingreen, Introduction to the Critical Study of the Text of the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. 103 pages. ISBN: 0198154534. Ernst Wrthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979. Translated from the fourth edition of Wrthwein's Der Text des Alten Testaments (Stuttgart, 1973).

Concordances
George V. Wigram, ed., The Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament: Being an Attempt at a Verbal Connection between the Original and the English Translation; with Indexes, a List of the Proper Names, and their Occurrences, etc. London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1843. With many subsequent editions and reprints, most recently by Hendrickson: The New Englishman's Hebrew-Aramaic Concordance. Coded to the Strong's Concordance Numbering System (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1984). Very useful to students with little Hebrew, this work might also serve as a lexicon. Organized by alphabetical order of the Hebrew words, but the context lines are from the King James Version. The Hendrickson reprint reduces the type size and omits Wigram's valuable introduction, appendixes and indexes. John R. Kohlenberger III and James A. Swanson, The Hebrew English Concordance to the Old Testament with the New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998. 2192 pages. This volume represents Zondervan's attempt to provide for the NIV a resource similar to Bagster's Englishman's Hebrew Concordance, which uses the KJV. It aims to be useful to those who are attempting to do word studies on the basis of the NIV translation by giving the context lines from the NIV instead of from the KJV. The problem here is the same that vitiates Kohlenberger's NIV-based Interlinear: the NIV is not sufficiently literal for this kind of study. Gerhard Lisowski, Konkordanz zum hebraischen Alten Testament, nach dem von Paul Kahle in der Biblia Hebraica edidit Rudolf Kittel besorgten Masorertischen Text. Stuttgart: Wurttembergische Bibelanstalt, 1958. 1672 pages. ISBN: 343805230X. Photographic reproduction of a manuscript concordance based on Kittel, Biblia Hebraica, 3rd edition. The entire vocabulary of the Old Testament is included, and German, English, and Latin (not Vulgate) meanings are provided. Introduction in German, Latin, and English. The 3rd edition (corrected), published by H P Rger, is smaller than the previous editions and has an appendix of about 300 additions and corrections. Solomon Mandelkern, Veteris Testamenti concordantiae hebraicae atque chaldaicae : quibus continentur cuncta quae in prioribus concordantiis reperiuntur vocabula, lacunis omnibus expletis, emendatis cuiusquemodi vitiis, locis ubique denuo excerptis atque in meliorem formam redactis, vocalibus interdum adscriptis, particulae omnes adhuc nondum collatae, pronomina omnia hic primum congesta atque enarrata, nomina propria omnia separatim commemorata / Servato textu masoretico librorumque sacrorum ordine tradito summa cura collegit et concinnavit Solomon Mandelkern. Lipsiae: Veit et comp., 1896. 1532 pages. Several editions followed. Reprinted many times, most recently the 6th edition in Jerusalem by Schocken Press, 1967. The words are organized by root, with "sin" and "shin" treated separately. There are separate sections for pronouns, proper nouns,

and Aramaic roots. Brief definitions are given in Latin. Although more than a century old, this concordance can scarcely be improved upon. Abraham Even-Shoshan, A New Concordance of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989. This is an improved edition of Even-Shoshan's A New Concordance of the Bible: thesaurus of the language of the Bible, Hebrew and Aramaic, roots, words, proper names, phrases and synonyms, first published in Jerusalem by Kiryat Sepher Publishing House in 1977. Unlike Mandelkern, Even-Shoshan lists words alphabetically rather than organizing them under roots. The "sin" and "shin" are treated together. Proper nouns, pronouns, and Aramaic are not put in separate sections. It also attempts to provide a concordance of phrases. The editions of this concordance published in Jerusalem were difficult to use because the introduction and verse references were in modern Hebrew. The Baker edition gives biblical references in arabic numerals, and it includes John H. Sailhamer's helpful Introduction to a New Concordance of the Old Testament.

Lexicons
Francis Brown, Samuel R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, eds., A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament : with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic / based on the lexicon of William Gesenius as translated by Edward Robinson : edited with constant reference to the Thesaurus of Gesenius as compiled by E. Rdiger, and with authorized use of the latest German editions of Gesenius's Handwrterbuch ber das Alte Testament / by Francis Brown ; with the co-operation of S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Corrected edition, 1952. Known by the abbreviation BDB. Still the standard lexicon in English. The title is somewhat misleading, because this work bears little resemblance to 'Robinson's Gesenius' (1854), and it should really be considered a new work. Arranged according to root. Includes etymological information from Arabic, Syraic, Aramaic, etc. Published before the Ugaritic material became available. In 1996 Hendrickson Publishers in Peabody Mass. published an inexpensive reprint with Strong's Concordance numbers in the margins (ISBN: 1565632060). Benjamin Davidson, The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon: Consisting of an Alphabetical Arrangement of Every Word and Inflection Contained in the Old Testament Scriptures, Precisely as They Occur in the Sacred Text, with a Grammatical Analysis of Each Word, and Lexicographical Illustrations of the Meanings, etc. London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1848. Many reprints followed. Lists in alphabetical order, parses, and briefly defines every word of the Old Testament. William L. Holladay, ed., A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, based on the Lexical Work of Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971. 425 pages. An easy-to-use lexicon designed for beginning students. Ludwig Khler, Walter Baumgartner and J.J. Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Revised edition, translated and edited by M.E.J. Richardson. 5 volumes. Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000. This is the most recent complete Hebrew lexicon in English, and it is regarded by many as the best one available, though the five-volume edition at $1,000 is much too expensive for most students. In 2001 it was made available for less than $200 on CD-ROM, and in 2002 it became available for about $100 in a reduced-print unabridged 2-Volume Study Edition. Wilhelm Gesenius, Gesenius' Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures. Translated with additions from the author's Thesaurus and works, by S. P. Tregelles. London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1846. Reprinted many times, most recently in Grand Rapids by Baker Book House (1979) as Gesenius' Hebrew and Chaldee lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, Translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Numerically Coded to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, with an English

Index of More Than 12,000 Entries. ISBN: 0801038014. Based on the fourth edition of Gesenius' Hebrisches und Chaldisches Handwrterbuch ber das Alte Testament (Leipzig, 1834). Wilhelm Gesenius, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, including the Biblical Chaldee, from the Latin of William Gesenius, late Professor of Theology in the University of HalleWittemberg, by Edward Robinson, Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, New York, with corrections and large additions, partly furnished by the author in manuscript, and partly condensed from his larger Thesaurus, as completed by Roediger. Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1854. Ernest D. Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English. New York: Macmillan, 1987. Supplies word histories, etymological clues and conjectures missing from the major lexicons listed above. 32,000 entries. David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. 8 vols. scheduled (Sheffield Academic Press, 1993-present). The first volume appeared in 1993, vol.2 in 1995, vol. 3 in 1996, vol. 4 in 1998, vol. 5 in 2001, vol. 6 in 2003. The remaining two volumes of the lexicon are planned to be completed by 2006. In several ways this lexicon represents a new approach to Hebrew lexicography. Information on semitic-language cognates is entirely omitted. The idea here is that the meaning of the words can be determined only by contextual usage, so the lexicon aims to display these contextual meanings in a sort of sematically organized concordance. Unlike previous lexicons of Classical Hebrew it includes seperate entries for non-biblical Hebrew words (from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other sources). Vern Poythress has criticized this work for its treatment of the Hebrew words ab "father" and ben "son." We reproduce his comments here.

Theological Dictionaries
G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, eds., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974-2001. This is an English translation of the Theologisches Wrterbuch zum alten Testament. To date 11 volumes (up to panim) have appeared in English. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, and Bruce K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. 2 vols. Chicago: Moody Press, 1980. Similar in format to Botterweck, but much shorter, simpler, and more conservative. Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament. Translated by Mark E. Biddle. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1997. 3 vols. 1638 pages. ISBN: 1565631331. Includes a handy index to additional forms used within individual entries. Willem A. VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. 5 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997. Volumes 1-3 contain lexical articles, volume 4 has topical articles, and volume 5 provides indexes.

Lexical Aids, Reading Helps, etc.

Terry A. Armstrong, Douglas L. Busby, and Cyril F. Carr, A Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament. 4 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980. Reprinted in a single volume by Regency Reference Library in 1989 (ISBN: 0310369800) All Hebrew words used 50 times or less arranged by chapter and verse. Bruce Einspahr, Index to the Brown, Driver, Briggs Lexicon. Chicago: Moody Press, 1976. Lists vocabulary by chapter and verse with page numbers to the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon.

Larry A. Mitchel, A Student's Vocabulary for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984. Provides lists of words appearing ten times or more in the OT (arranged by frequency) with an English gloss. George M. Landes, A Student's Vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961. Lists verbal roots in seven sections according to frequency. Todd S. Beall, William A. Banks, and Colin Smith, Old Testament Parsing Guide. 2 volumes. Chicago: Moody Press, 1990. Gives verse-by-verse parsing for every verb in the Old Testament. John Joseph Owens, Analytical Key to the Old Testament. 4 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989-92. Parses, translates, and provides a cross-reference to the BDB lexicon for all forms (verbs, nouns, particles, etc.) as they occur in the biblical text.

Grammars
Jacob Weingreen, A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939. 316 pages. 2nd edition 1959. Wilhelm Gesenius, E. Kautzsch, and A. E. Cowley, Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, as Edited by the Late E. Kautzsch, Professor of Theology in the University of Halle. Second English Edition, Revised in Accordance with the Twenty-Eighth German Edition (1909) by A.E. Cowley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910. Reprinted many times. ISBN: 0198154062. For many years this reference grammar was the most detailed one available in English. Thomas O. Lambdin, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. New York: Scribners, 1971. Long a standard introductory grammar. Bruce Waltke and Michael O'Connor. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990. An intermediate level treatment of Hebrew grammar. Attempts to balance modern and traditional treatments while also interacting with modern linguistics. Ronald J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax: An Outline. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967. 2nd edition 1976. 122 pages. A very brief treatment with examples.

Dead Sea Scrolls

James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. 210 pages. VanderKam, professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Notre Dame University, reviews the history of the Scrolls and their use in scholarship of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The treatment takes for granted an acceptance of the historical-critical method. Martin G. Abegg, Peter W. Flint, and Eugene Charles Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English. San Francisco: Harper, 1999. ISBN: 0060600632. This book is useful for looking up translatable variants in the scrolls, but unfortunately the translation in it leaves much to be desired. The presentation of the variants requires a highly literal translation. "Inclusive language" in a work of this kind is really rather foolish. Harold Scanlin, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Modern Translations of the Old Testament. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1993. An evaluation of the effects the Qumran manuscripts have had on a number of English translations. Among the translations evaluated were the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the New English Bible (NEB), the Revised

English Bible (REB), the New American Bible (NAB), the Jerusalem Bible (JB), the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), the New Jewish Version (NJV), the New International Version (NIV), the Good News Bible (GNB), and the New King James Bible (NKJV). Florentino Garcia Martinez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition. 2 vols. Brill Academic Publishers, 1999. ISBN: 9004115471. Two volumes that give the Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the non-biblical scrolls with English translations on facing pages, with information on the text and selected bibliographic references. Aims to be complete for the non-biblical scrolls.

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Hebrew Alphabet

The Hebrew Alphabet

CHARACTER NAME hard final Aleph Beth Gimel Daleth Hey Waw Zayin Heth Teth Yod Kaph Lamed Mem Nun Samek Ayin Pey Tsade Koph Resh PRONUNCIATION A cutting off of the breath, like the 'h' in 'honest' The dotted Beth is pronounced 'b,' the undotted 'v' The dotted Gimel is a hard 'g,' and the undotted is a soft gutteral 'gh' The dotted Daleth is pronounced 'd,' and the undotted is a voiced 'th' as in 'the' Pronounced 'h' Pronounced 'w' Pronounced 'z' A gutteral 'h' as in the Scottish 'loch' A dull 't' Pronounced 'y' The dotted Kaph is 'k,' undotted 'ch' Pronounced 'l' Pronounced 'm' Pronounced 'n' A dull 's' Hard to pronounce. Like a gulping sound. The dotted Pey is 'p,' undotted is 'f' A harsh dental 's' A 'k' at the back of the throat Pronounced 'r'

Sin, Shin Sin (with a dot over the left) pronounced 's,' Shin (dot over the right) is 'sh' Taw The dotted Taw is a 't,' undotted 'th' as in 'think'

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Aleppo Codex

The Aleppo Codex

The Aleppo Codex is an especially valuable witness to the early Masoretic textual tradition associated with Rabbi Aaron Ben Asher, a famous grammarian and scribe of the tenth century. It was written around A.D. 920 in Palestine, probably in the vicinity of Tiberias, where Jewish scholars developed the system of vowel pointing which was to become the standard Masoretic system of vocalization. It is believed that Aaron Ben Asher himself penned the vowel points and the marginal Masorah (a system of comments cross-referencing the spelling and the occurrence of particular words) in this manuscript. It received the name of "Aleppo Codex" because for about five centuries it was kept in the synagogue in Aleppo, northern Syria. Prior to this it had been in Cairo (Egypt) for a time, where it was apparently used as a model by the famous medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides. The codex was used as a model for the correct pointing, paragraphing and formatting of the text, as Maimonides states: "In these matters we relied upon the codex, now in Egypt, which contains the twenty-four books of Scripture and which had been in Jerusalem for several years. It was used as the standard text in the correction of books. Everyone relied on it, because it had been corrected by Ben Asher himself who worked on its details closely for many years and corrected it many times whenever it was being copied." (Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001], p. 46). Up until the middle of the twentieth century the codex remained in good condition. It was the oldest known copy of the complete Hebrew Bible, and was generally acknowledged to be the most important Hebrew manuscript in existence. But at that time the manuscript was not in a safe place. The rise of modern Arab nationalism in the early part of the century led to civil unrest, and the Jewish synagogues of Syria were in some danger of violence. Unfortunately the Rabbis of Aleppo ignored pleas from scholars to move the manuscript to a place more secure than their synagogue. Worse yet, they refused to allow anyone to photograph the codex, and they became uncooperative with biblical scholars who wished to examine it. It appears that their motives in this were superstitious: they had come to believe that their exclusive possession of the manuscript would cause God to protect the Jewish community in Aleppo from all harm. In 1948 the synagogue in which the Aleppo Codex was kept was attacked and set on fire by rioters. The codex disappeared, and the Rabbis allowed the world to think that it had been destroyed in the fire. For ten years they tried to conceal the fact that the manuscript had been rescued from the fire, and that it remained in their possession. Their secret was made known to the Israeli government by informants who had witnessed the rescue of the manuscript, and a concerted campaign of pressure and persuasion was directed at them by the Israeli government, scholarly institutions, and Jewish organizations. An official letter issued in 1953 by the Sepharadic Chief Rabbi Ouziel admonished them to deliver the manuscript into the hands of Israeli officials. Finally they did give up the manuscript, or rather two-thirds of it. There has been no satisfactory account of what happened to the missing third, which includes most of the Pentateuch and some other portions. It has been reported that the missing sections were burnt, but this is doubtful, because none of the surviving sections show signs

of fire damage. One missing leaf was turned over to the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem in December 1982 by a family of Jews who had moved from Aleppo to Brooklyn in the U.S.A.

Samples of the text of the Aleppo codex are given at the top of this page (Jeremiah 10:23-25) and on another page of this site which gives an entire column from Isaiah chapter 9.

Bibliography

1. Popular articles

Harvey Minkoff, "The Aleppo Codex: Ancient Bible from the Ashes." Bible Review 7 (August 1991), pp. 22-27, 38-40. Eliezer Segal, "The Crown of Aleppo." Jewish Free Press (Calgary) February 3 2000, pp. 8-9

2. Scholarly works

Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, "The Aleppo Codex and the Rise of the Massoretic Bible Text." Biblical Archeologist 42 (1979) 145-161. Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, "The Authority of the Aleppo Codex." Textus: Annual of the Hebrew University Bible Project 1 (1960), pp. 17-58. Israel Yeivin, Keter Aram Tsovah. The Aleppo codex of the Bible: a study of its vocalization and accentuation. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1968. Malachi Beit-Arie, "A Lost Leaf from the Aleppo Codex Recovered." Tarbiz 51, no. 2 (1982), pp. 171-4. I. Ben-Zvi, "The Codex of Ben Asher." Textus: Annual of the Hebrew University Bible Project 1 (1960), pp. 1-16. Amnon Shamosh, Ha-Keter: The Story of the Aleppo Codex. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1987. J. L. Teicher, "The Ben Asher Bible Manuscripts." Journal of Jewish Studies 2 (1950/51), pp. 17-25. J. S. Penkower, "Maimonides and the Aleppo Codex." Textus 9 (1981), pp. 39-128.

3. Editions of the text

Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, ed., The Aleppo Codex. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Bible Project, 1976. Photographic facsimile edited by Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, Introduction in Hebrew and English. Mordechai Breuer et al., Jerusalem Crown. The Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Pentateuch, Prophets and Writings, According to the Text and Masorah of the Aleppo Codex

and Related Manuscripts, Following the Methods of Rabbi Mordechai Breuer. Basel, Switzerland: Karger, 2000. With Companion Volume edited by Mordechai Glatzer. In a short appendix Mordechai Breuer explains the principles of the text reproduction and lists the deviations from the Lenigrad Codex. The companion volume contains articles on various aspects of the manuscript's significance and in-depth descriptions of its history. Notably Dr. Yosef Ofer's introduction to the Masorah clarifies where the codex's authority stems from and why its text can be regarded as the best available.

Bible Research > Hebrew Text > Aleppo Codex > Isaiah 9

The Aleppo Codex

Isaiah 9:1b-8a
Below is one column of the Aleppo codex in Isaiah 9, beginning in the middle of the first verse (numbered 8:23 in printed Hebrew texts), "He brought into contempt the land of Zebulun..." and ending in the middle of verse 8, "...the Lord has sent a word against Jacob." In the middle is the notable prophesy concerning Christ: "For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

Image source: Thomas F. McDaniel, Resources for Philological and Textual Studies of the Hebrew Bible, accessed 14 Sep 2003.

Bible Research > Web Directory > Hebrew Text

Hebrew Old Testament

Links updated December 2005

Texts Online

Mechon Mamre. A Jewish site that has the full text of the Hebrew Bible online in four editions in Hebrew (including one with cantillation marks), one in Aramaic (Targum Onqelos), one in English (the Jewish Publication Society translation of 1917), and one in parallel Hebrew and English (voweled Hebrew and JPS English). Also provides several ancient compilations of the Oral Law (Mishneh Torah, Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi and Bavli), and an encyclopedia of Torah basics (in English). Sifrut HaKodesh, an online Hebrew Bible with links to relevant references in Rabbinical literature, provided by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem through the Snunit program, Israel's main learning and teaching resource for children, parents, and educators. Also on the Snunit site are the Hebrew texts of the Targum Onkelos, Mishnah, Tosefta, Talmud Yerushalmi, and Mishneh Torah. (NOTE: There is no English here, only Hebrew.) The TanakhML Project. By Alain Verboomen in Brussels, Belgium. The complete Hebrew Bible online (including vowel points and cantillation marks), with a sophisticated concordance feature and a "verse structure analyser" (based on massoretic verse cantillation). Requires the SBL Hebrew font. Electronic Text of the Leningrad Codex. By Christopher V. Kimball in West Redding, CT. An elegantly formatted Hebrew Bible, displaying vowels and accents, based upon the Michigan-Claremont electronic text. Requires the SBL Hebrew font. Users can download the whole site in a zipped archive. Tigran Aivazian in England has put online a number of texts, including the old Ginsberg edition of the Hebrew Old Testament (the ben-Chayyim 'Received' text). Unicode Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), from the Internet Sacred Text Archive by J.B. Hare. The Book of Genesis, in accented and pointed Hebrew characters, from the Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia. The Aleppo Codex website. Pages of the Aleppo Codex online in digital photographs. Sponsored by the George S. Blumenthal Foundation.

Audio recordings of the Hebrew text

Selected chapters of the Hebrew Bible. About a hundred chapters of the Hebrew Old Testament in mp3 audio files. Complete Hebrew Bible in mp3 files, hosted by Audio Scriptures International. These files are extremely large, one for each book. From their index page you can right-click and save the files to disk, but you will need patience: with a dail-up connection it will take you 2.5 hours to download Genesis alone! Complete Hebrew Bible in mp3 files, divided into chapters and hosted by Gary Martin at the University of Washington in Seattle. This is the same recording available at the Audio Scriptures International site, but divided up into chapters for quicker downloading. Complete Hebrew Bible in mp3 files, divided into chapters, hosted by the Israeli Snunit Kodesh site. This also is the same recording available at the Audio Scriptures International site. The larger book files are also available here.

Audio Hebrew Bible on CD. The Hebrew text narrated and recorded on four CD's by "Israel's premier Bible reader," Shlomo Bertonov. Produced by The Central Library for the Blind in Israel. This is a professional-quality narration. Also available for purchase here

Textual Criticism

LOCAL The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament. Several introductory articles on the Hebrew text and the Hebrew language in general, with a biblography. The Old Testament Text and the New Testament Text. By Philip Comfort. A very good introduction to text-critical materials and methods. This is the first two chapters of Comfort's book, Essential Guide to Bible Versions. The Study of Textual Criticism. By Dr. Allen P. Ross at Beeson Divinity School. A good brief introduction to textual criticism of the Old Testament. See also the samples of textual criticism in his Samples of the Exegetical Procedures. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Biblical Integrity. by Garry K. Brantley, M.A., in the Reason & Revelation online Journal of Apologetics Press. A good article explaining the practical importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have provided proof of the general reliability of the traditional text of the Old Testament. Scrolls From the Dead Sea: The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Scholarship. From the Library of Congress. Also here. The Great Isaiah Scroll. Images of all parts of the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran with translation and commentary. Variants of the Isaiah Scroll Adopted by the Revised Standard Version and the Jerusalem Bible. By Dr. Paul W. Peters of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. West Semitic Research Project Educational Site. From the University of Southern California. A brief introduction to biblical manuscripts and ancient texts relating to the Old Testament. A Brief History of the Hebrew Bible. by Debra E. Anderson, at the Trinitarian Bible Society. Old and New in Textual Criticism: Similarities, Differences, and Prospects for Cooperation. By James R. Adair, Jr. A long article that compares and contrasts the methods usually employed by scholars in New Testament and Old Testament textual criticism. The Kimhi Family: The Emergence of Their Writings in the Reformation. By Gordon Laird (1999). Describes early editions of the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic commentaries used by Protestants in the Reformation era. Introduction to the Mikra'ot Gedolot (Rabbinic Bible). By Dr. Eliezer Segal at Calgary University in Canada. The Idea of the Sanctity of the Biblical Text and the Science of Textual Criticism. By Menachem Cohen, Professor of Bible, Bar-Ilan University. Oxford Hebrew Bible Project. Introduction and samples of a forthcoming Oxford edition of the Hebrew Bible, with extensive text-critical notes, under the general editorship of Ronald Hendel. The sample pages online provide some good examples of how textual criticism of the Old Testament is done.

Hebrew Language

The Study of Words and The Study of Syntax. By Dr. Allen P. Ross at Beeson Divinity School. A very helpful guide to Hebrew language resources and research methods, and a quick overview of Hebrew grammar. The Importance of Studying Hebrew. By Dr. Daniel Botkin. An article from Messianic Home magazine (Spring 1999) that discusses some untranslatable features of the Hebrew text. Also here.

Ancient Hebrew Research Center. "Dedicated to teaching and promoting the study of the ancient Hebrew language, alphabet and culture in a manner that is both enjoyable and educational." Biblia Hebraica. Thirty-one interactive lessons containing notes and quizzes; Most lessons include a Hebrew to English/English to Hebrew vocabulary quiz. The quizzes are multiple choice and advance by themselves when the correct answer is selected. Hebrew for Christians. By John Parsons in Minneapolis, Minnesota. An attractive site that gives a brief introduction to the Hebrew language, with vocabulary, basic grammar, exercises, and other helps. Also presents some interesting "Messianic Jewish" material which illustrates traditional Jewish methods of handling Scripture. Learn Hebrew Verbs. By Jacob Richman. Three hundred Hebrew verbs fully conjugated. Consonants and Vowels In the Hebrew Script. By Helmut Richter. Hebrew script. By Simon Ager. A good presentation on the Hebrew alphabet, points, and styles of script on Ager's Omniglot site. Publications of David J.A. Clines, at the University of Sheffield. Many articles on Hebrew philology.

Introductions and Surveys

Old Testament Exegesis. By Dr. Allen P. Ross at Beeson Divinity School. A series of long and interesting lectures at the seminary level. Includes lessons on the study of words, poetics, textual criticism, syntax, biblical theology, and practical exegetical exposition in the different genres of the Hebrew Bible. Some knowledge of Hebrew is required to fully understand the lessons, but students without Hebrew can follow most of it. The Bible History, Old Testament. By Alfred Edersheim. This older work (published 1890) is essentially a detailed survey of the Old Testament. Edersheim's treatment is conservative and devotional. Also here. Concise Old Testament Survey. By J. Hampton Keathley III. A good series of up-to-date notes and outlines (1998) from the Biblical Studies Foundation. Old Testament Book Studies. From the Biblical Studies Foundation. Large and detailed introductions, with outlines and bibliographies. See also the index page of studies by book. Old Testament Teacher's Guide. A series of outlines and other classroom handouts, provided by the Division of Student Ministry of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Exploring the Hebrew Bible. By Robert C. Dunston, at Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Kentucky. Provides a series of notes and a bibliography on the Hebrew Bible. Also features outlines of biblical books, maps and images of Palestine in biblical times, and a glossary of terms. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. By Prof. Barry L. Bandstra at Hope College, Holland, Michigan. A good introduction to the historical-critical approach, as practiced in liberal seminaries. Prolegomena to the History of Israel. By Julius Wellhausen (1878). An important work of higher criticism. Argues that the Pentateuch is a composite of source material written long after the days of Moses. The Origin and Permanent Value of the Old Testament. By Charles Foster Kent (1906). A higher critical approach. Introduction to the Old Testament. By John Edgar McFadyen (1905). A higher critical approach.

Miscellaneous

Hebrew Cantillation Marks And Their Encoding. By Helmut Richter.

Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Library Exhibits, from the University of Pennsylvania Library. Some very interesting and informative exhibits here. Rare books from the University of Pennsylvania Library are used as a springboard for discussions of the history of the Hebrew text and its interpetation. I note especially Jewish Biblical Interpretation in a Comparative Context by Seth Jerchower, Hebraica Veritas? (Christian Hebraism between 1450 and 1750) by Stephen Burnett and Seth Jerchower, and From Written to Printed Text: The Transmission of Jewish Tradition by Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Shear. Scientific Refutation of the Bible Codes. By Brendan McKay, Professor of Computer Science at the Australian National University. See his index page In Search of Mathematical Miracles for more information on the subject. Sermon Notes on the Old Testament. By Douglas McC. L. Judisch. (Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne). Conservative scholarly exegesis and exposition of 25 OT passages from the Lutheran Lectionary. What Does Almah Mean? By William F. Beck. A detailed scholarly article on Isaiah 7:14. The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures. An online scholarly journal, with full text articles and book reviews. All of the material seems to be based on an historical-critical point of view. Rhetorical Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. By Michael Morrison. Early Hebrew Printing Homepage. By Michael Davidson, rare book collector in Ontario. "A Virtual Guide to the Great Jewish Libraries and Rare Book Collections On-line." Poetic Discourse. By Dr. Allen P. Ross at Beeson Divinity School. Describes the various literary features and forms of the Old Testament. Hebrew Poetry - What's it all about? By Dennis Hinks. A good concise introduction to Hebrew poetry. Ancient Hebrew Poetry weblog. A blog on the subject of Biblical Hebrew poetry by John F Hobbins. Near Eastern Acrostics and Biblical Acrostics. By John F. Brug. An introduction to acrostics in the Hebrew Bible and their relationship to other ancient Near Eastern acrostics. Introduction to the Psalms. By Henry Wansbrough at Oxford University. This is an excellent book-length introduction to form criticism of the Psalms (and Hebrew poetry in general), by a notable Roman Catholic scholar. Wansbrough is a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and was the chief editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. See his site's index page for links to many other interesting essays and introductions. Some of these require a network password, but most are public. Unfortunately the approach is somewhat 'liberal' in places, but those who read with discretion will learn much.

Bibliographies

LOCAL Old Testament Bibliography. Compiled by Michael Marlowe. An annotated bibliography that focuses on textual and lexical resources. Annotated Old Testament Bibliography. By M. Daniel Carroll R. and Richard S. Hess, in the Denver Seminary Journal. Bibliographic Tools for the Study of Hebrew Bible Texts. By Marc Brettler at Brandeis University. Discusses the characteristics of the most often used critical editions, lexica, grammars, and concordances; and provides some excercises for the student. Very helpful.

Discussion

Biblical Hebrew Mailing List (B-Hebrew). An ecumenical academic discussion list for the Hebrew Bible. Students and interested non-academics are welcome, but the list assumes a working knowledge of Hebrew.

TC List. An academic discussion list for textual criticism of the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament. The TC-List archives at Yahoo Groups may also be searched for messages on many subjects related to textual criticism.

Web Directories

Old Testament Gateway. By Roy Nicholson. iTanakh. By Christopher Heard. Annotated directory of scholarly resources relating to the Old Testament. Okeanos: Ancient Near Easter Studies. A good web directory by Scott B. Noegel at the University of Washington.

Books
"The Hebrew language is the best language of all ... If I were younger I would want to learn this language, because no one can really understand the Scriptures without it. For although the New Testament is written in Greek, it is full of Hebraisms and Hebrew expressions. It has therefore been aptly said that the Hebrews drink from the spring, the Greeks from the stream that flows from it, and the Latins from a downstream pool." --Martin Luther, Table Talk, quoted in Pinchas E. Lapide, Hebrew in the Church, trans. Erroll F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1984), p. x.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English. By Martin G. Abegg, Peter W. Flint, and Eugene Charles Ulrich. (Harper San Francisco, 1999). This book is useful for looking up translatable variants in the scrolls, but unfortunately the translation in it leaves much to be desired. The presentation of the variants requires a highly literal translation. "Inclusive language" in a work of this kind is really rather foolish. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, by Emanuel Tov. A standard introduction. The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999). ISBN 08276-0656-7. The Hebrew text from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the English text from the New JPS Tanakh (1985) arranged in parallel columns. A very convenient volume for students. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament by Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner. The most up-to-date and detailed lexicon, now in an affordable unabridged 2Volume Study Edition.

Listen to Genesis 1:1-5 in Hebrew (Windows Media Player required)

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