Dead Sea Scrolls Online!

Google and the Israel Museum have finally put the first five Dead Sea Scrolls online here for viewing with very high definition photographs. The Great Isaiah Scroll, the Community Rule Scroll, the Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the War Scroll are the first to be published, and we eagerly look forward to seeing more manuscripts.

New Coptic MS of Jeremiah Identified

Alin Suciu has identified a new Coptic fragment of Jeremiah 21:14-22:20 (LXX) in the British Museum here. He suspects a 7th or 8th century date here. This is a significant new find, as it fills a gap in an ancient version that is only extant for a little over 50% of the book of Jeremiah. The images below are available on the website of the British Museum.

Isaiah 61:1: Captives or blind?

On a Septuagint e-mail distribution list, someone recently argued that the Septuagint plays on the letter ס in Isa 61:1, reading it עו instead, and changing the meaning from לאסורים "to the captives" to לעורים "to the blind". One alternate possibility struck me, however. It appears, at face value, we may have an instance of simple scribal error. עו in the Qumran scrolls is often written together so as to be almost indistinguishable from the letter ש. It is probably not a coincidence then, that the letter ש is a common alternative spelling for אשורים  = אסורים "captives". The extra א is a little more difficult to account for. If the MT is original, perhaps the א was omitted by quiescence לעורים < לאעורים. If the LXX is original, perhaps the MT text added the א as a secondary correction after misreading the עו as ש. Where this variant gets interesting is that the MT פקח-קוח is often understood as meaning "opening of the eyes." If this is the case, then עורים "blind" is clearly more contextually suitable than the vague metaphor of MT. On the other hand, if the meaning is not necessarily this specific but could apply to an opening of prisons, then MT's אסורים is probably original, as it more easily explains the LXX text. So in the end, the conclusion to this text-critical problem probably hangs on the choice of translation for the difficult פקח-קוח.

3rd Edition of Emanuel Tov's "Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible"

Fortress Press announced here that the third revised and expanded edition of Emanuel Tov's classic Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible will be released on November 1, 2011. This work has become the standard reference work in the field, and the new edition apparently will be incorporating some of the developments in Tov's thinking over the last decade, as well as an extensive section on the relationship between textual criticism and exegesis, which promises to be interesting.

Big Valley Christian School

Today I had a great opportunity to discuss textual criticism and the reliability of the text of the Bible with the junior high students at Big Valley Christian School in Modesto, CA for their first chapel service of the year. I explained the basic premises of textual criticism, some of the more significant examples of the manuscript evidence available for the Bible, and also a few examples of text-critical problems. It was a very simple presentation, but I think they enjoyed it and hopefully learned something. The main conclusions to be drawn?

1) The Bibles has been preserved essentially through the ages with a very high degree of accuracy.

2) In some cases, textual criticism can help restore the original text more precisely.

The Hebrew University Bible Project

The Hebrew University Bible Project got a little sensationalistic attention from an AP reporter recently here. In truth the scholars of the Bible project should be commended for their extraordinary efforts in exhaustively collating the textual evidence, but there is nothing revolutionary about it. Ironically, the policy of the HUBP is not even to give evaluation of variants... :) The end result of the project will be the fullest listing of the evidence to date, but most of the significant problems have already been discovered and discussed. Nevertheless, we can look forward to the completion of the project as a great help for OT textual criticism... hopefully sooner than 2211! For anyone who wants more information on the Hebrew University Bible, fuller explanation can be found on pages 19-20 of my master's thesis here.

Papyri, Technology, and Armchair Archaeologists

The University of Oxford recently announced that it is calling on the general public for help with the Oxyrhynchus papyri here. Anyone with internet access can now help in cataloguing the many papyrus manuscripts by transcribing and measuring them with a simple user interface on ancientlives.org. I've been transcribing a few manuscripts myself and have been surprised at just how user-friendly the interface is. This collaborative effort between "Oxford University papyrologists, the Egypt Exploration Society, and a team in Oxford University’s Department of Physics" promises to be a great technological aid in analyzing the mass of manuscripts, and I for one am excited about the possibilities. Though undoubtedly there is no substitute for hands-on interaction with original manuscripts, the internet is opening a window of opportunity with ease of access and technological capabilities. If you haven't worked on any papyrus manuscripts yet, here is your chance!