3.2 OT/HB Text Criticism

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3.2 OT/HB Text Criticism

• OT/HB Hermeneutics - 2006

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1. Definition

• "Textual criticism is in essence the act of
  understanding what another person means by the
  words that are laid before me. . . . Whether the
  words are spoken or written is of secondary
  importance. But we speak of the process as
  textual criticism when the words are laid before
  us in written form. . . . Textual criticism is
  not an arcane science. It belongs to all human
  communication." Parker

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1. Definition

• "Textual criticism deals with the origin and
  nature of all forms of a text, in our case the
  biblical text. This involves a discussion of its
  putative original form(s) and an analysis of the
  various representatives of the changing biblical
  text. The analysis includes a discussion of the
  relation between these texts, and attempts are
  made to describe the external conditions of the
  copying and the procedure of textual
  transmission. Scholars involved in textual
  criticism not only collect data on differences
  between the textual witnesses, but they also try
  to evaluate them." Tov

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1. Definition

• "Textual criticism deals only with data deriving
  from the textual transmission-in other words,
  readings included in textual witnesses which have
  been created at an earlier stage, that of the
  literary growth of the biblical books, are not
  subjected to textual evaluation." Tov
• "One of the practical results of textual
  analysis is that it creates tools for exegesis."
  Tov

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2. Why is Text Criticism Necessary?

• 2.1 Differences Between the Many Textual
  Witnesses of the Bible
• 2.1.1 Sequence of Books different in the
  different MT MSS and LXX.
• 2.1.2 Chapter divisions differ
• 2.1.3 The layout of the MSS differ
• 2.1.4 Verse Divisions differ
• 2.1.5 Single Letters and Words differ (spelling
  as in matres lectionis, etc.)
• 2.1.6 The Notes of the Masorah

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2. Why is Text Criticism Necessary?

• 2.2 Mistakes, Corrections, and Changes in the
  Textual Witnesses, Including the MT
• 2.2.1 "Most of the texts ancient and modern
  which have been transmitted from one generation
  to the next have been corrupted in one way or
  another." Tov
• 2.2.2 ". . . corrections and changes . . .
  derives from a conscious effort to change the
  text in minor and major details, including the
  insertion of novel ideas. Such tampering with the
  text is evidenced in all textual witnesses,
  including the MT." Tov

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2. Why is Text Criticism Necessary?

• 2.3 In Many Details MT Does Not Reflect the
  "Original Text" of the Biblical Books
• ". . . one of the postulates of biblical research
  is that the text preserved in the various
  representatives (manuscripts, editions) of what
  is commonly called the Masoretic Text, does not
  reflect the "original text" of the biblical books
  in many details. . . . pertains to elements that
  developed in the course of the textual
  transmission. . . ." Tov

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2. Why is Text Criticism Necessary?

• 2.4 Differences between Inner-Biblical Parallel
  Texts
• Examples Ps 18 // 2 Sam 22 2 Kgs 18.13-20.11
  // Isa 36.1-38.8
• "The differences between these parallel text in
  MT, as well as in the other texts, could reflect
  very ancient differences created in the course of
  the copying of the biblical text, similar to the
  difference known from a comparison of ancient
  scrolls and manuscripts." Tov

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3. Nature Goal

• 1. Older idea ". . . we can restrict the aim of
  OT text criticism to that of recovering the
  original text that lies behind the Proto-MT
  recension." Waltke

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3. Nature Goal

• 2. ". . .the Qumran biblical MSS have taught us
  no longer to posit MT at the centre of our
  textual thinking. If, in spite of this, they are
  still compared with MT, this is due to a
  scholarly convention derived from the central
  status of that text in Judaism and its
  availability in good editions." Tov

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The Effect of Qumran -Textual Pluriformity -
Ulrich

• 1. "Virtually all the biblical books are the
  result of a lengthy compositional process . . .
  which developed over centuries at the hands of
  multiple authors and creative scribes and
  editors."
• 2. "The scrolls of the Scriptures from Qumran
  have shown us many surprising differences from
  the Masoretic textus receptus."

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The Effect of Qumran -Textual Pluriformity -
Ulrich

• 3. "The present situation in scholarship is that
  there is a need for a revised mentality and for a
  paradigmatic revision in our categories and
  criteria. . . . The common default mentality of
  biblical scholars is that the Masoretic Text is
  the standard text and canon of the Hebrew Bible,
  and that texts which are not identical to the
  Masoretic Text are sectarian, or vulgar, or
  nonbiblical. . . ."
• 4. "The scrolls fit neatly and coherently into
  the picture of the scriptural text painted by the
  other ancient sources available prior to their
  discovery the SP, the LXX, the quotations in the
  NT, and Josephus's Jewish Antiquities."

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The Effect of Qumran -Textual Pluriformity -
Ulrich

• 5. "The Qumran scriptural scrolls show no sign of
  alleged "sectarian" influences. They are
  representative of the text of the Scriptures of
  general Palestinian Judaism in the late Second
  Temple period. . . ."
• 6. "There was no standard text of the Bible in
  the late Second Temple period. The Masoretic Text
  is not the central text of the Hebrew Bible . . .
  though it long appeared to be. The Masoretic Text
  is a chance collection from a wide pool of
  circulating texts."

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The Effect of Qumran -Textual Pluriformity -
Ulrich

• 7. "The scrolls of the Scriptures from Qumran
  provide manuscript evidence for the latter stages
  of the lengthy compositional process elaborated
  by critics and commentators for the various books
  since the Enlightenment."
• 8. "There were two main periods of the biblical
  text the first period is that of the composition
  and growth of the biblical text, which continued
  at least up to the destruction of the temple in
  70 C.E. or up to the end of the first century, or
  perhaps up to the Second Revolt in 132-135. The
  second period is that of the uniform text from
  each book that perdured to become the consonantal
  text of the Masoretic collection."

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The Effect of Qumran -Textual Pluriformity -
Ulrich

• 9. "Some manuscripts may be biblical that we were
  told were not biblical."

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3. Nature Goal

• 3. "Any search for textual preformulations or
  reformulations of a literary nature, such as
  prior compositional levels, versions, or
  formulations, or later textual alteration,
  revision, division, combination, rearrangement,
  interpolation, or forming a collection of
  writings, legitimately falls within the sphere of
  text-critical activity if such an exploration is
  initiated on the basis of some appropriate
  textual variation or other manuscript evidence."
  Epp

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3. Nature Goal

• 4. "The old textual criticism was devoted to
  marginalizing and ultimately to ignoring all
  its actual evidence, which is to say, all the
  existing manuscripts, in favour of and in the
  quest for the presumed but never glimpsed
  original. A postmodern textual criticism invites
  us to a new adventure with manuscripts, to
  consider the extant manuscripts and their texts
  in and of themselves for what they witness to,
  whether the conditions of their own production or
  the purposes for which they were produced. In a
  word, an interest in originals is a modern
  interest an interest in copies is a postmodern
  interest. Or rather, it is a postmodern
  perception that the distinction between original
  and copy is problematic and one that needs
  wrestling with and not taking for granted."

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4. Types of Variants

• 4.1 Unintentional Variants
• 4.1.1 Confusion of Consonants
• 4.1.2 Dittography Errors resulting from
  erroneous repetition of letters
• 4.1.3 Haplography Errors resulting from
  skipping of one or two (almost) identical letters
  or words.
• 4.1.4 Homoeoteleuton Errors by omitting a group
  of words with the same ending which caused the
  eye of the copyist to jumped directly from one
  group to the other.

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4. Types of Variants

• 4.1 Unintentional Variants
• 4.1.5 Metathesis Error resulting from the
  transposition of letters.
• 4.1.6 Doublet (conflate reading) Mistaken
  juxtaposition of two or more parallel readings in
  the text itself, with or without grammatical
  connection.
• 4.1.7 Different word division

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4. Types of Variants

• 4.2 Intentional Alterations

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5. Procedure for OT Text Criticism

• ". . . the choice of the contextually most
  appropriate reading is the main task of the
  textual critic. This procedure is as subjective
  as subjective can be. Common sense is his main
  guide, and not abstract rules. This is not to say
  that the rules must be abandoned They will alway
  be used, but one must recognize their
  limitations" Tov

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5. Procedure for OT Text Criticism

• "Textual criticism operates on two levels. The
  first level is that ot the collation or
  examination of the textual readings from both
  Hebrew and non-Hebrew sources (for the ancient
  versions this implies the conjectural
  reconstruction of the Hebrew text used by the
  translators). At a second stage these readings
  are evaluated, that is, their comparative value
  is assessed with the express intention to select
  the "better" or "original" reading from the
  transmitted readings. This is a presumptuous and
  complex procedure, not only with regard to its
  details, but also with regard to the very essence
  of the evaluation."

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5.1 External Criteria

• 5.1.1 Age of Textual Witness "Reliance on age of
  documents is in principle desirable, because the
  closer the document is to the time of the
  autograph, the more likely it is that it has
  preserved the wording of that autograph. However,
  in practice this type of logic does not hold,
  since different types of transmission have
  created too may exceptions to that rule."

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5.1 External Criteria

• 5.1.2 Broad Attestation "Relying on a broad
  attestation of textual evidence is never
  profitable, neither in the case of Hebrew MSS nor
  in that of the ancient versions, for that broad
  attestation could have been created by a
  historical coincidence. Long ago it has been
  recognized that manuscripta ponderantur, non
  numerantur. . . . Hebrew and retroverted variants
  should therefore be judged only on the basis of
  their intrinsic value, and consequently minority
  readings are often preferred to well-attested
  variants."

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5.1 External Criteria

• 5.1.3 Preference for MT ". . . the readings of
  MT deserve, on the whole, more respect than
  readings found in other sources, but this
  statistical information should not influence
  decisions in Individual instances, because the
  exceptions to this situation are not predicable.
  When judgements are involved, statistical
  information becomes less relevant, although it
  certainly influenced scholars unconsciously.
  Furthermore, MT is not more trustworthy than the
  LXX or Qumran scrolls in every book."

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5.1 External Criteria

• 5.1.4 Unequal Status of Textual Sources ". . .
  variants in some Qumran scrolls and in the
  Samaritan Pentateuch are often scorned because
  theses sources contain many secondary readings.
  However, in my view, all arguments based on an
  unequal status of textual sources are
  questionable. Among other things, this criticism
  pertains to all variants retroverted from the
  ancient versions, for these variants are as valid
  as Hebrew variants, if indeed they are
  retroverted reliably. Likewise, no distinction
  should be made between the different ancient
  versions."

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5.2 Internal Criteria

• 5.2.1 Assimilation to Parallel Passages
  (Harmonization) "This criterion can be taken as
  a sub-category of the lectio difficilior, for the
  assimilated reading is the "easier" one, and the
  other reading the more "difficult" one. This
  criterion is basically correct, and its
  application is not too complicated."

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5.2 Internal Criteria

• 5.2.2 Interpretive Modifications "This rule,
  too, can be taken as a sub-category of the lectio
  difficilior. Needless to say, the application of
  this rule is so subjective that it becomes very
  impractical as a generally accepted rule."

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5.2 Internal Criteria

• 5.2.3 Lectio brevior "The logic behind the rule
  is that ancient scribes were more prone to add
  details than to omit them, but this is certainly
  not true in the case of all NT scribes, as has
  been demonstrated by several scholars. Also, in
  the case of the OT, it cannot be decided
  automatically that the shorter reading is
  original. It would be helful to know whether
  certain sources tended to add or omit detials,
  but few such sources ar knwon . . . however,
  even this knowledge would not justify the
  automatic use of this rule. Beyond these
  difficulties, scribal haplography and
  homoioteleuton/homoioarcton (parablepsis) are not
  covered by this rule, and since it is often hard
  to distinguish between a scribal phenomenon and a
  content addition/omission, the suggested rule is
  not practical."

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5.2 Internal Criteria

• 5.2.4 Lectio difficilior ". . . when textual
  variation is encountered, one of the readings is
  sometimes dubbed as the "difficult" reading, and
  the other one(s) as the "easy" ones(s), with the
  implication that the former reflects the original
  text. From a theoretical point of view, this rule
  is logical, as some "difficult" readings were
  indeed replaced by scribes with easier ones.
  However, although the basic validity of this rule
  cannot be denied, it is at the same time
  problematic and impractical."

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5.2.4 Lectio difficilior

• Problematic because
• "First of all, the evidence itself does not
  present enough controllable cases of the
  replacement of "difficult" readings by "easier"
  to warrant a general rule."
• "More importantly, this rule does not take into
  consideration simple scribal errors, as has been
  recognized by many scholars. After all, by
  definition, every scribal error creates a lectio
  difficilior. . . ."
• "Moreover the application of this rule is so
  subjective that it can hardly be called a textual
  rule or canon. For what looks like a
  linguistically or contextually difficult reading
  to one scholar, is not difficult to another one."
• "Furthermore, often two readings are equally
  difficult, or two others equally easy. Do we have
  to locate the more difficult or easier reading in
  such cases as well?"

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6. The Problem of the Urtext

• 6.1 "If one would presuppose that there had in
  fact been an Urtext, it is no longer recognizable
  in any of the existing texts. And even if one,
  like Tov, defines this Urtext as the text current
  precisely at the moment of the transition from
  textual growth to textual transmission, many
  problems still remain unresolved." Lemmelijn

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6. The Problem of the Urtext

• 6.2 "Firstly, one notices that Tov himself states
  that the period in which this text was the
  prevailing one has been very short, or did not
  ever exist, since earlier textual versions
  probably would have still been current
  simultaneously. If this is indeed the case, in my
  view, one cannot simply speak of a single text."
  Lemmelijn

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6. The Problem of the Urtext

• 6.3 "Secondly, in this hypothesis, the strict
  distinction made between the phase of textual
  growth and the one of textual transmission also
  seems problematic. Until recently, and still even
  today, the common view on this matter has held
  that textual criticism as the study of the
  transmission of the fished literary work started
  where literary criticism as the study of the
  literary origin, formation and development ended.
  Linking up with recent research, I think that
  both processes are not so clearly
  distinguishable, for it is very probable that the
  textual transmission of some biblical texts
  already had begun before the composition has been
  finished literally" Lemmelijn

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6. The Problem of the Urtext

• 6.4 "Finally, simply depending upon the so-called
  'logical principle' that is easier to accept that
  'one' develops from 'many' than vice versa does
  not suffice at all."
• 6.5 "If, however, one tends to favour the other
  presupposition stating that, from the beginning,
  several texts and textual forms have been current
  - for example developed within different
  religious communities - one must confront other
  problems. After all, these several texts, which
  nevertheless share many similarities, must have
  some origin somewhere. It is very difficult to
  accept that different texts have simply
  originated out of the blue, without having any
  common point of contact, even if it has been in a
  shared (eventually oral) tradition."

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6.6 Lemmelijn on Urtext Issue

• 1. "I would rather start from the observation
  that at a certain moment in history several texts
  have indeed been current (most of the time, one
  refers in this respect to the fourth and third
  centuries B.C.), without positing anything about
  their origin and the phases in their prior
  textual history." Lemmelijn

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6.6 Lemmelijn on Urtext Issue

• 2. ". . . I do not speak of one or more original
  Urtexts(s). Nevertheless, it seems possible to me
  - e.g. in the establishment of 'preferable'
  readings - to indicated, against the background
  of a thorough text-citical study of the textual
  evidence itself, that one variant is 'more
  original' than the other, without hereby defining
  which text or which phase in the textual growth
  or transmission is exactly reached. Positing that
  this or that variant is the text precisely at the
  moment of the transition from textual growth to
  transmission seems far too hypothetical to me,
  since the development of each biblical book has
  been very different and because of the fact that
  we are not able to offer a secure view of this
  process." Lemmelijn

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6.6 Lemmelijn on Urtext Issue

• 3. ". . . namely within a relative framework, but
  the question of the so-called Urtext and the
  problem of the difficult relation between textual
  criticism and literary criticism against the
  background of the discussed distinction between
  the phase of textual growth and transmission are
  left aside." Lemmelijn