Thoughts on Antiquity

I had been unaware of yet another critical edition of the Hebrew Bible (apart from Biblia Hebraica Quinta), so I was particularly excited about seeing the release of the Oxford Hebrew Bible in the latest Vetus Testamentum (58.3, 2008):

R. Hendel, “The Oxford Hebrew Bible: Prologue to a New Critical Edition”

S. White Crawford, J. Joosten, and E. Ulrich, “Sample Editions of the Oxford Hebrew Bible: Deuteronomy 32:1-9, 1 Kings 11:1-8, and Jeremiah 27:1-10 (34 G)

I’m very happy but not surprised to see such an excellent group of text-critics working on this project. I know from Jan Joosten and Eugene Ulrich that the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls (and if Ulrich continues what he has done before, also the Samaritan Pentateuch) will be used (respectively) extensively to revise the Hebrew Text. You can check out the other participants at their website, along with some samples, including the three mentioned in Crawford, Joosten, and Ulrich’s VT article.

Ronald Hendel has this to say about the project:

I believe that is [sic] worth considering the desirability and possibility of another type of critical edition [than the BHQ or HUB]—an eclectic edition, that is, a critical text with an apparatus presenting the evidence and justifying the editorial decisions—as a complement to these diplomatic editions. A comparable situation exists for Septuagint studies, for which there is a one-volume editio critica minor (Rahlf’s eclectic edition), a multi-volume diplomatic editio critica maior (the Cambridge LXX), and a multi-volume eclectic editio critica maior (the Göttingen LXX). It is arguable that an eclectic editio critica maior will be of benefit to scholarship of the Hebrew Bible. Such is the plan for the Oxford Hebrew Bible (OHB).

I’m especially excited about the apparatus, which he says it “aims to provide all the substantive textual evidence”, which will be helpful to those who lack access to the canonical scriptures found in the DSS (for which there is still no edition of those texts comparable to Martínez and Tiglechaar’s DSSSE.

And in his concluding remarks:

 The OHB will consist of one volume for each books of the Hebrew Bible, with the exceptions of one volume each for the Minor Prophets, the Megillot, and Ezra-Nehemiah. Each volume will begin with a chapter of text-critical introduction, which will address the translation technique of the Septuagint and other non-Hebrew versions, the textual affinities of the Qumran manuscripts, questions of multiple editions (where germane), the book’s textual history, and other significant textual phenomena or problems. The introductory matter will be followed by the critical-edition proper—the critical text and apparatus. The third section will be a text-critical commentary, in which significant and representative problems are analyzed and the arguments behind the editorial decisions in the critical text unpacked at greater length than available in the apparatus.

This is one project all scholars of the Bible and related literature should keep an eye out for.