#textualcriticism — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #textualcriticism, aggregated by home.social.
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#Jeremiah 38:6a seems to me ungrammatical in the MT:
וַיִּקְח֣וּ אֶֽת־יִרְמְיָ֗הוּ וַיַּשְׁלִ֨כוּ אֹת֜וֹ אֶל־הַבּ֣וֹר׀ מַלְכִּיָּ֣הוּ בֶן־הַמֶּ֗לֶךְ
"They took Jeremiah and they threw him into the pit - Malkiyahu the king's son."It cannot be "the pit of Malkiyahu" because הבור has a definite article.
Indeed, the Masoretes seemed to want to help readers exclude reading it as "the pit of" by adding a vertical line after "the pit."
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#Jeremiah 38:6a seems to me ungrammatical in the MT:
וַיִּקְח֣וּ אֶֽת־יִרְמְיָ֗הוּ וַיַּשְׁלִ֨כוּ אֹת֜וֹ אֶל־הַבּ֣וֹר׀ מַלְכִּיָּ֣הוּ בֶן־הַמֶּ֗לֶךְ
"They took Jeremiah and they threw him into the pit - Malkiyahu the king's son."It cannot be "the pit of Malkiyahu" because הבור has a definite article.
Indeed, the Masoretes seemed to want to help readers exclude reading it as "the pit of" by adding a vertical line after "the pit."
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#Jeremiah 38:6a seems to me ungrammatical in the MT:
וַיִּקְח֣וּ אֶֽת־יִרְמְיָ֗הוּ וַיַּשְׁלִ֨כוּ אֹת֜וֹ אֶל־הַבּ֣וֹר׀ מַלְכִּיָּ֣הוּ בֶן־הַמֶּ֗לֶךְ
"They took Jeremiah and they threw him into the pit - Malkiyahu the king's son."It cannot be "the pit of Malkiyahu" because הבור has a definite article.
Indeed, the Masoretes seemed to want to help readers exclude reading it as "the pit of" by adding a vertical line after "the pit."
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Actually it turns out that he vs. heth is the most common letter confusion in #Samaritan #Genesis. That surprises me, but I've found twenty such confusions among proper names. I suspect the lack of pronunciation difference helps.
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#HebrewBible #TextualCriticism #SamaritanPentateuch -
Actually it turns out that he vs. heth is the most common letter confusion in #Samaritan #Genesis. That surprises me, but I've found twenty such confusions among proper names. I suspect the lack of pronunciation difference helps.
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#HebrewBible #TextualCriticism #SamaritanPentateuch -
Actually it turns out that he vs. heth is the most common letter confusion in #Samaritan #Genesis. That surprises me, but I've found twenty such confusions among proper names. I suspect the lack of pronunciation difference helps.
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#HebrewBible #TextualCriticism #SamaritanPentateuch -
#Deuteronomy 12 famously refers to a place YHWH will choose for his cult, which scholars often take as referring to Josiah's reforms (2 Kings 23). But in Deuteronomy the verbs are future tense (יבחר).
Or are they? SamP thinks otherwise.
All 21 times where the text refers to the place which God will choose (Deut 12:5, 11, 14, 18, 21, 26; 14:23-25; 15:20; 16:2, 6-7, 11, 15-16; 17:8, 10; 18:6; 26:2; 31:11), MT imperfect יבחר corresponds to SamP perfect בחר.
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In #1Samuel 20:2, there's an interesting ketiv/qere:
K: לו־עשה
Q: לֹֽא־יַעֲשֶׂ֨הHyphens & vowels were added later & word spacing is unreliable in ancient Hebrew manuscripts, so I wonder if there has been a w/y interchange here, and earlier it read ליעשה with negative L-.
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What interests me is the question how, if the DSS/OG reading is original, the shorter MT reading could have appeared. The proposed reconstruction of 4QSam-a's text reads:
והנער
[עמם ויביאוהו לפני יהוה וישחט אביהו את ]הזבח [כ]אשר
[יעשה מימים ימימה ליהוה ............... וי]שחטwith a long gap.
But if that's original, how can one explain the shorter reading?
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Most such explanations can go either way, which is why #TextualCriticism is difficult and often inconclusive.
In this case, one of the #DeadSeaScrolls supports OG over MT (which doesn't solve the issue, since variations occur among DSS).
4QSam-a:
בי]ת יהוה שילה והנער
]הזבח [כ]אשר
וי]שחטSo a full line comes between the second-to-last word of 1 Sam. 1:24 and the start of v.25, w/ two words echoing OG.
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The principles lectio brevior potior and lectio dificilior which tell us to prefer shorter and more difficult readings are not universally valid. Many accidental errors result in short difficult readings, e.g. 1 Samuel 1:24 MT: וְהַנַּ֖עַר נָֽעַר ("and the boy was a boy").
The thing about difficult readings in scripture is that readers try HARD to make sense. Here almost all English versions translate "the child was young."
1/? #TextualCriticism #HebrewBible #1Samuel #translation #Bible