Mark McEntire Belmont University Nashville, Tennessee

Transcription

1 RBL 04/2009 McCarthy, Carmel, ed. Biblia Hebraica Quinta: Deuteronomy Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Pp. xxxii *. Paper ISBN Mark McEntire Belmont University Nashville, Tennessee These are fascinating times for those interested in the production of critical editions of the Tanak. Three projects are currently underway, each going about the task in a unique way. The present fascicle is the third issued by the team preparing Biblia Hebraica Quinta. The first, containing the Megilloth, was released in 2004 and was reviewed for Review of Biblical Literature by James A. Sanders in 2005 ( pdf/4725_4867.pdf). Sanders provided a very helpful summation of the history and character of the Biblia Hebraica series, so I will refer the reader to that review and not attempt to reproduce that material here. It may be helpful to provide a reminder of the most distinctive features and current status of these three projects, however. The Oxford Hebrew Bible Project aims to produce a multivolume critical edition with an eclectic text, intended primarily for specialized scholars of the Hebrew Bible. At the time of this writing, several sample pages have been made available online at The Hebrew University Bible project is a multivolume critical edition using a diplomatic presentation of the Aleppo Codex. This codex is not complete, of course, lacking almost all of the Torah and a good portion of the Ketubim, and it is not clear at this time how this project will fill in the missing parts. To date, fascicles of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel have been published, and rumor has it that the Book of the Twelve will be available soon. The BHQ project has published the Megilloth, Ezra-Nehemiah, Deuteronomy, and, just

2 recently, Proverbs. The goal of BHQ is to produce a single volume that contains the full diplomatic presentation of the Leningrad Codex, along with its Masorot (ketonah and gedolah), and the full critical apparatus. A second volume will contain commentaries on the Masorah ketonah, Masorah gedolah, and critical apparatus. The traditional use of the term diplomatic in this matter is somewhat unfortunate. First, the meaning in this context seems to have little to do with the more common use of that term. Second, the precise meaning in this context, which is exact copy, is an impossible standard, as will be demonstrated below. Still, the effort to achieve this standard is significant, particularly with regard to the Masorah ketonah, which was so heavily edited in BHS. This editing most often involved additions to the notes in the margins that were not indicated in any way. The reader of BHS had no idea what was actually in the margins of L, so BHQ provides an important correction at this point. In addition, of course, the Masorah gedolah did not appear at all on the pages of BHS, so the reader of BHQ will now have full access to the Masorah as it appears in L. The intention of BHQ produces two challenges of utmost importance: size and cost. In the present fascicle of Deuteronomy, the text, with Masorot and critical apparatus, is 102 pages, compared to the 71 pages of BHS. In the first fascicle of BHQ (Megilloth), the text pages total 94, compared to 61 in BHS. These two sets of page numbers produce ratios of 1.44 and 1.54 respectively. The full length of the text pages in BHS was 1,574. Using an average from the two fascicles described yields an estimated number for the text pages in the first volume of BHQ of about 2,350. With the required additional pages containing the introductions, tables of abbreviations, lists of sigla, and so forth, the total is likely to approach 2,500 pages. This is undoubtedly going to be a very large volume, and keeping the cost under $100 will be a significant challenge. The combined cost of the fascicles themselves are not a reliable indicator of the cost of the finished volume. It appears that the full set at retail price will cost around $2,000, but these purchases will be primarily made by libraries and faculty members with ample book allowances. In line with its long tradition, BHQ is intended to be a portable, affordable, manual edition that is accessible to students, among others, and one hopes the committee can achieve this ideal. One further note of pessimism is that the completion date keeps moving back, with the latest estimate appearing to be 2015, a far cry from the initial estimates of around In general terms, BHQ Deuteronomy is an attractive and very useful volume, like the previous two fascicles. It presents the introduction, tables, and text with Masorot and apparatus, everything that will appear in volume 1 of BHQ, from right to left in the book. The commentaries on the Masorot and apparatus, the material that will appear in volume 2, is presented starting at the left front cover, moving left to right, as in an English book. The base language is now fully English. Gone are the Latin apparatus abbreviations and

3 the multilingual introductions of BHS. It is impossible to provide a thorough analysis of every aspect of this volume in a review of this size. So, I have chosen representative issues and locations in the text for evaluation. The precision with which the Hebrew text of L is presented will be an issue of utmost importance to all users. The work on BHQ was done, as Sanders explained, using the excellent new photographs of L produced and made widely available in the 1990s. Still, there are points at which the text of L is difficult. At 2:36, for example, there is an apparent dittography that produces an extra line plus one word of text. The attempted erasure in L left the top half of all of these letters visible. This fascicle chooses not to present the doubled text of L and, perhaps surprisingly, makes no mention of it in the apparatus or commentary. A very different hand appears in L in the middle of 11:27 and continues into the first part of 11:29. The very small size of the handwriting here likely indicates that material was omitted, and the bottom five lines in the column were erased and replaced with six lines of smaller writing. The two appearances of Mkyhl) hwhy in 11:27 28 create a likely incidence of haplography. BHQ provides the reader with no indication of the odd appearance of L here, which probably is not necessary, however. Within this section of small writing, however, there is no soph passuq at the close of 11:28, and BHQ adds it with no notation that it is missing in L. BHS left the soph passuq out, with no explanation in the apparatus. L does contain a gap here, indicating the end of a paragraph, and both BHS and BHQ produce the gap with a s. These are just two instances where BHQ produces something different than what is actually in L with no explanation to the reader. One example of where extreme care is required in order to produce consistency is the difference between wo and wo, a notorious problem in Hebrew grammars and concordances. The latter, of course, is much more common than the former. The difference between wo and wo is not as easy to distinguish in BHQ. Of course, experienced Hebrew readers will know which is necessary, but it would be nice if they were all correct. One place to check for wo is in the plural form twoc;mi, which occurs twenty-seven times in Deuteronomy. Of those twenty-seven plural forms, BHQ Deuteronomy produces three with wo rather than wo. All three of these occurrences, 5:10, 7:9, and 8:2, clearly appear as wo in L and are reproduced as such in BHS. It is interesting that all three of these occurrences involve a qere notation in the Masorah, yet they still produce the plural form, but it is uncertain whether this is the cause of the confusion. One place of intense interest in Deuteronomy is the so-called Song of Moses in chapter 32. The presentation of any poem is a difficult matter, but this poem carries a heavy load of tradition. L presents Deut 32:1 43 on two facing pages, on thirty-seven lines, each divided in two by a space in the middle of the page. Twenty of these lines are on the first page, from 32:1 through part of 32:23. Moreover, the end of the previous chapter is

4 presented in peculiar fashion such that 31:28b 30 takes up six lines at the top of this page. The words of these verses are written in a single column and are spread apart, often with dots or characters that look like stunted letters filling in the gaps between words and at the ends of the lines. The remaining seventeen lines of the poem are on the next page, followed by ten lines of single-column text, comprising 32:44 52a. The next page returns to the standard three-column format, beginning with 32:52b. The presentation of the Song of Moses is similar in Aleppo, especially in terms of the text immediately before and after the poem. The lines of the poem are much shorter, however, producing a total of sixty-eight lines. The line divisions in L do not typically correspond to the punctuation of the text or the verse divisions. BHQ presents the Song of Moses on seventy lines, each with a gap in the center and with the soph passuq marks falling either at the end of a line (vv. 1 13, 39 43) or just before the gap in the middle of the line (vv ). Because of this manner of presentation, and the extensive text-critical apparatus in this passage, often filling half of the page, the Song of Moses is printed on all or parts of seven pages in this edition. Thus, the visual presentation of the Song of Moses is very different in BHQ. A second point of great interest in the text of Deuteronomy is the presentation of the Decalogue in 5:6 21. BHQ Deuteronomy does not attempt to follow the layout in L, which would have been nearly impossible, but some question about the presentation of this passage may be in order. Because of the extensive notes in the critical apparatus at this point, the text of the Decalogue is spread over parts of three pages, making it impossible to look at all of it at the same time. One reason for the extent of the apparatus is that there are at least twenty-one references to the Nash Papyrus. This document is a curiosity, to be sure, but does it really have enough text-critical value to warrant this kind of attention in an already bloated apparatus? BHS, which makes only three references to the Nash Papyrus, manages to present the Decalogue and plenty of its surrounding text on two facing pages, where it can be viewed in full. Along the same line, a note appears in the critical apparatus at 5:7 merely because a single Qumran phylactery produces yk at the beginning of the verse. The level to which textual variations are presented in a critical apparatus is obviously a judgment call, and the editors will not please everyone. This is one case where it seems to me that the thorough presentation of variants has gone quite far and has exacted some expense from the helpful presentation of the text. One good test of any reference book that readers will almost always use in some way other than reading it straight through from beginning to end is how it deals with recurring issues. A good test of this in Deuteronomy is the repeated phrase My+p#mw Myqx ( statutes and ordinances ), not only because it is spread throughout the book, but because there is some textual conflict regarding this phrase. The first occurrence of this phrase that is textually problematic is in Deut 4:45. In this case, the word pair is preceded by twd( ( decrees ) and is joined to it by a conjunction. The apparatus at this point notes

5 that most of the versions (G, V, S, and T) have the conjunction, like L, but that the Samaritan Pentateuch lacks it. A lengthy note in the Commentary on the Critical Apparatus attempts to explain this varying use of conjunctions in this word pair and its combination with other words, an explanation that is too extensive to delve into here. It is significant to note, however, that some of the subsequent occurrences of the phrase generate references in the commentary that point back to this discussion at 4:45, such as at 6:1, while others, such as 5:31 and 6:20, do not. This presentation of the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy, along with all of the resources both ancient and modern that accompany it, is a monumental achievement. Because it is one of the earliest installments of BHQ, it raises and answers many questions about how this task should be conducted, and some minor refinements may still be possible before it is in final form. One hopes that the day is not far off when these pages find themselves in the completed volume of Biblia Hebraica Quinta. In the meantime, our debt to Carmel McCarthy and all of the members of the editorial team is beyond measure.