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.
INDEX
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 Extra-masoretic 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
everincreasing
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 text.
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 text,
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 Antichristian,
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.
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 Talmudically 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 East 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
massorah-collections (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 ha-Levi 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
Münster. 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 Testamentum 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
Massoretico-Critical 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, Beiträge
zur Kritik des überlieferten Textes im Buche Genesis (1870); J.
Wellhausen, Text der
Bücher Samuelis (Göttingen, 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
Bücher
Samuelis und der Könige (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.
