Urtext and Variance: The Quest for the Texts of the Hebrew Bible

See the new book out with several interesting chapters on text-critical theory and practice.

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Urtext and Variance: The Quest for the Texts of the Hebrew Bible

SERIES:

Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 122

EDITORS:

Rey F.M., Schorch S., Robert-Hayek S.

SUMMARY:

Focusing at “Urtext”, “Variance” and further fundamental concepts of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible, the thirteen chapters collected in this volume provide analyses of their heuristic potential, methodological problems, and implications, proceeding from evidence emerging from a wide range of Biblical texts and textual witnesses.

New Biblia Arabica Project

The Biblia Arabica group report that they have received funding for a large, 21-year project cataloguing, transcribing, studying, and editing the manuscripts and translations of the Bible into Arabic. They want to make around 8,200 manuscripts readily available to users, which will be a great resource for this oft-neglected corpus. Ronny Volandt and Nathan Gibson are to be heartily congratulated on procuring such substantial funding for a critical humanities project.

Scribes and Language Use in the Graeco-Roman World

Michael Freeman presents a helpful review of a recent volume:

Sonja Dahlgren, Martti Leiwo, Marja Vierros, Scribes and language use in the Graeco-Roman world. Commentationes humanarum litterarum, 147. Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 2024. Pp. 285. ISBN 9789516535206.

The book has an interesting assortment of test cases regarding language interference, the relationship between author and scribe, and quantitative approaches to stylistic analysis.

Contents

Introduction (Martti Leiwo)

1. The language use of the Narmouthis scribes: Foreign language perception and native language transfers. A case study (Sonja Dahlgren)
2. Scribal Revision in the Process of Text Production. A Linguistic Typology of Scribal Corrections in Four Genres of Greek Documentary Papyri (Joanne Vera Stolk)
3. Whose words? Identifying authors in Greek papyrus texts using machine learning (Marja Vierros & Erik Henriksson)
4. Infinitives at Work. Competing Patterns in Early Ptolemaic Papyrus Letters (Carla Bruno)
5. A Bilingual Scribe in Early Roman Tax Receipts from Elephantine (Ruth Duttenhöffer)
6. Documentary papyri as ‘multimodal’ texts. Aspects of variation in the Nepheros archive (IV CE) (Klaas Bentein)
7. Spoken Greek and the Work of Notaries in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Tommaso Mari)
8. Bilingual Letter Writers: The Verbs γράφω, οἶδα and θαυμάζω in Formulae, Idioms and Collocations (Victoria Beatrix Fendel)
9. ‘You Know Justice and Law and the Kind of Writing of the Notaries’ (Rhet)or(ic)al skills and scribal act in P.Col. inv. 600 (a.k.a. P.Budge), Coptic transcript of a hearing in front of an arbitration council (Tonio Sebastian Richter)
10. Early Medieval Scribes’ Command of Latin Spelling and Grammar: A Quantitative Approach (Timo Korkiakangas)

Greek Paleography Course

A Greek paleography crash course is being offered this summer in Leiden for interested students that is worth consideration. 

Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Biblical Hebrew

VU Amsterdam has made recordings available of their recent workshop on Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Biblical Hebrew. Papers include:

1. Sutskover, From Parts to Whole

2. Mollo, Language of the Body

3. Atkinson, Adnominal Possessive Constructions

4. Robar, Poetry and Cognition

5. Van Loon, Mataphors We Live By?

6. Van Hecke, Cognitive Lexical Semantics and the Return of Diachrony

7. De Blois, Discovering the Semantic Structure of Biblical Hebrew

8. Locatell, Cognitive Linguistics and Textual Criticism

9. Mushayabasa, Conceptual Blending in Matthew's Fulfillment Quotations

Corpus of Samaritan Coinage from the Persian Period

The Israel Numismatic Society reports a new publication on the corpus of Samaritan coinage from the Persian period. 

Abstract:

This two-volume monograph, A Corpus of Samarian Coinage, is the definitive culmination of a major research program focused on the Samarian minting authority during the Persian period. This coinage represents one of the earliest and most varied official coinages produced in the southern Levant, likely being issued from the late fifth century BCE until after the Greco-Macedonian conquest.

While building on earlier scholarship, this work offers a substantive re-evaluation of the field. It incorporates numerous newly identified coin types and establishes a robust, modern classification system essential for all future study. The data is based on an exhaustive, multi-year study of the entire corpus of known Samarian issues, involving the global examination of specimens in publications and in public and private collections.

Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible

Starting in just a few days, the Museum of the Bible will be hosting an exhibition in Washington, D.C., of the Dead Sea Scrolls in cooperation with the Israel Antiquities Authority. The scrolls will be available in three different rotations:

NOVEMBER 22, 2025–FEBRUARY 2026

First Rotation

• 4Q7 Genesis(g)
• 11Q10 Targum Job
• 4Q83 Psalms(a)
• 4Q210 Astronomical Enoch(c)
• 4Q434 Barkhi Nafshi(a)
• 4Q491 War Scroll(a)
• Eschatological Commentary A
• 11Q20 Temple Scroll(b)

FEBRUARY–MAY 2026

Second Rotation

• 11Q5(a) Psalms (Great Psalms Scroll Fragments)
• 4Q27 Numbers(b)
• 4Q111 Lamentations
• 4Q264 Community Rule(j)
• 4Q448 Apocryphal Psalms and Prayer
• 4Q274 Tohorot A (Purities)
• 4Q400 Non-Canonical Psalms A
• 4Q530 Book of the Giants(b)

MAY–SEPTEMBER 2026

Third Rotation

• 4Q58 Isaiah(d)
• 4Q197 Tobit(b)
• 4Q130 Phylacteries C
• 4Q534 Birth of Noah(a)
• 4Q218 Jubilees(c)
• 4Q275 Communal Ceremony
• 4Q258 Community Rule(d)
• 4Q271 Damascus Document(f)