After saving a workspace, you can launch it with just a couple clicks. This is one of my favorite features in Accordance. As I show below, it only takes a minute to set up, and a second or two to launch. I regularly use this feature to quickly see several ancient versions of the Old…
While checking notecards today, I came across a few modern examples of parablepsis and unintentional scribal changes — the kind of stuff normally discussed in introductions to textual criticism.((For example: Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2012), 227ff.; Paul D. Wegner, A Students Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History,…
This post provides some reading notes on chapter 2 of Dominique Barthélemy’s Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, trans. Stephen Pisano et al., Textual Criticism and the Translator 3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012). Earlier posts provide notes on the Introduction and part 1,…
This post provides some reading notes on chapter 1 of on Dominique Barthélemy’s Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, trans. Stephen Pisano et al., Textual Criticism and the Translator 3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012). An earlier post provides notes on the Introduction. Chapter…
This post is some reading notes on the introductory essay in Dominique Barthélemy’s Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, trans. Stephen Pisano et al., Textual Criticism and the Translator 3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012). The volume opens with an essay from James Sanders introducing Dominique…
There is an overwhelming consensus in the most recent scholarship that there was no such thing as “Bible” or “canon” in the Second Temple period, and that is why I find it so entertaining how boldly and shamelessly Vermes says things like this: Some colleagues found the phrase, “Rewritten Bible” anachronistic. It is maintained by…
What did Geza Vermes think about the distinction between “Bible” (i.e. “canon”) and “Scripture”? The Spring 2013 issue of the Journal of Jewish Studies includes his review of Molly Zahn’s Rethinking Rewritten Scripture. At the beginning of this review, Vermes notes that he coined the term “Rewritten Bible” in 1961 in his Scripture and Tradition…
I have not found online a more engaging, informative, well-balanced survey of the Dead Sea Scrolls than the video embedded below. As far as published resources go, you have a few very good options: Timothy Lim’s The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Very Short Introduction, John J. Collins’ The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography, and Craig A.…
This text-critical problem has been my hobby horse for a while now. I’ve posted on the problem before, but since then I have changed my mind and completely reworked my paper as a critique of the solution offered by the Comité pour l’analyse textuelle de l’Ancien Testament hébru. I presented this last semester in the…
In Isaiah 9:6 the apparatus of BHS says that 1QIsa-a reads למ רבה, with a space between the mem and resh. I don’t think there is a space between the two letters. Without the high-resolution images we have access to today, one might not be able to see just how closely the tail of the mem…
