Isaiah 39:1 || 2 Kings 20:12

Reading the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa(a)) along with the MT of Isaiah 39:1 and the parallel passage in 2 Kings 20:12, I came across a particularly interesting variant.

MT(Isa) and 1QIsa(b)
וישמע כי חלה ויחזק
"And he (Merodach-Baladan) had heard that he (Hezekiah) had been sick and regained his strenght."

MT and LXX (Kgs)
כי שמע כי חלה חזקיהו
"Because he (Merodach-Baladan) had heard that Hezekiah had been sick."

1QIsa(a)
וישמע כיא חלה ויחיה
"And he (Merodach-Baladan) had heard that he (Hezekiah) had been sick and lived."

One medieval manuscript, one tradition of the Greek, and the Syriac (Kgs)
כי שמע כי חלה חזקיהו ויחי
"Because he (Merodach-Baladan) had heard that Hezekiah had been sick and lived."

First we notice the difference between וישמע "and he heard" and כי שמע "because he heard." Interestingly enough, 4QIsa(b) has כי שמע, as with the Kings witnesses. Either one of these texts has been corrupted by scribal errors, or else כי שמע could be a clarification of what was meant by וישמע. But the most interesting point is the complicated variant that comes next.

1QIsa(a)'s ויחיה "and lived" seems to be clarifying the somewhat more difficult ויחזק "and regained his strength" with the more usual expression. Since the first three letters of these words are identical and the former reading is more natural, it is not impossible that the scribe made this change unintentinoally, but it may also be an intentional change.

The next thing we note is that the verb ויחזק "and regained his strength" and the name חזקיהו "Hezekiah" (often spelled with a י at the beginning, such as יחזקיה) are very similar, so we clearly have an instance of simple scribal error. Which came first? I'm betting the somewhat awkward ויחזק was first, and that a scribe misread it as חזקיהו or יחזקיה. The opposite is less likely, since the scribe would have had to have created two new letters at the beginning to form a verb וי and the verb would have been much more difficult than the noun.

The additions to Kings took this corrupted text and conflated it with a text very similar to 1QIsa(a), giving a double reading.

Thus, I would construct the following localized stemma of variants:

       ויחזק
       /    \
חזקיהו      ויחיה          
      \     /
   חזקיהו ויחי

So we have here a clear example of corruption in parallel texts in the MT (viz. Kgs), a synonymous substitution, and a conflation of variants. Quite the interesting combination!

Did Rehoboam Marry David's Grandson?

2 Chronicles 11:18, according to the Masoretic Text, says that Rehoboam took as wife Mahalath, the son of Jerimoth, the son of David. What we have here is an obvious textual error, where the original בת "daughter" was accidentally changed to בן "son" by a thoughtless scribe under the influence of the far more numerous genealogical statements regarding men in the OT. The Masoretes recognized this error in the written text of their manuscripts and corrected it with the proper "daughter" in the margins as a Qere reading. There are only a few medieval MT manuscripts which have "daughter" in the text itself. This gives me the opportunity to make a few points:

1) Sometimes common sense is the biggest help in evaluating the textual tradition. Here it is clear that Rehoboam's wife was not David's grandson. There is no need to defend the factually incorrect consonantal text of MT with some sort of awkward gender-neutral use of "son" contrary to convention (see even the end of the same verse which uses "daughter"). Textual corruption is far more likely.

2) The more difficult reading is not always to be preferred. If it is corrupt, it should be rejected.

3) The Qere (marginal notes to be read) often provides textual variants superior to the Kethib (the consonantal text written by the scribes).

4) The fact that the medieval manuscripts so strongly support the obviously corrupt reading may indicate that they all stem from a very restricted pool of parent manuscripts. This error is unlikely to have be made so broadly across the manuscript tradition unless it traced back to a very small pool of erroneous texts.

On the Feasiblity of Eclectic Editions of the Hebrew Old Testament

As a first OTTC post, I thought it would be appropriate to raise the age-old question of whether or not to publish eclectic critical editions of the Hebrew Bible. This issue is one about which I am very passionate, as I wrote my Master's thesis arguing for them and still feel very strongly about the need for a critically established text of the Hebrew Old Testament. The field of OT studies is severely impoverished by the lack of even a single critical edition of the OT featuring a text base that adequately reflects the results modern text-critical analysis based on all the evidence now available. It is the textual critic's job to provide general readers and students of the literature with the most reliable text possible, and we have utterly failed to do so to date. All this to say, there is a lot of work to be done in OTTC, but it promises to be an exhilerating ride!

I have attached a link to my Master's thesis for those who might be interested in further investigating the issue of eclectic critical editions of the Hebrew Old Testament, followed by the abstract of the thesis:

http://masters.academia.edu/DrewLongacre/Papers/415954/On_the_Feasibility_of_Eclectic_Editions_of_the_Hebrew_Old_Testament

Title: ON THE FEASIBILITY OF ECLECTIC EDITIONS OF THE HEBREW OLD TESTAMENT

Author: Drew G. Longacre

Degree: Master of Divinity

Date: April 2010

Adviser: William D. Barrick

The exegesis of a text can of necessity only be as good as the text that underlies it. This thesis seeks to evaluate the feasibility of the application of an eclectic text-critical methodology to create eclectic critical editions of the Hebrew Old Testament with a view to reconstructing a more pristine text.

It begins by surveying the various publishing methodologies that have been proposed in the history of OT critical editions and the critical editions which implement them. Possible methodologies examined and critiqued are the publication of diplomatic editions, purely eclectic editions, copy-text eclectic editions, multicolumn editions, and textual commentaries.

The survey of the history of critical editions includes extensive critique of the three main critical editions of the Hebrew Bible currently in process: Biblia Hebraica Quinta, the Hebrew University Bible, and the Oxford Hebrew Bible.

A critique of the method of publishing a diplomatic text then shows both the theoretical weaknesses and the practical inadequacies of the potential manuscripts for a diplomatic text. After detailed analysis of the Leningrad and Aleppo Codices, a listing of other significant manuscripts, illustrations of corruption in the Masoretic tradition, and discussing the danger of imposing doubtful vocalizations upon the text, it becomes clear that no existing manuscript or tradition can adequately serve as the base text for a reliable edition of the text of the OT.

A substantial chapter is then devoted to listing and explaining all of the special problems of implementing an eclectic methodology in OT textual criticism, such as the problems of the nature of the evidence, conjectural emendation, comparative philology, publication of accidentals, the nature of the original text, dogmatic considerations, divided evidence, and the scope of the edition.

And finally, it is argued that, despite the difficulties inherent in the endeavor, it is preferable and feasible to publish eclectic critical editions of the Hebrew OT in both multi-volume major editions and in single-volume manual editions. Given the increased maturity of the discipline of textual criticism of the OT, the time has come for a new era where the results of decades of text-critical studies are incorporated into eclectic critical editions of the Hebrew Bible to present for general usage. A perfect text is forever an unattainable ideal, but a text which reflects the best possible understanding of the vidence available presents an important step in the right direction. Current efforts to produce eclectic critical editions of the text of the Hebrew OT should be embraced and further studies encouraged for the furtherance of the discipline and purity of the text.