BHS: An MT Tool for OT Ph.D.’s

When Bible scholars want to study the text of the Hebrew Bible, they turn to Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. BHS, as we call it, is the fourth edition of Biblia Hebraica, a scholarly edition of the Hebrew Bible based on the Masoretic Text (MT). The first edition was published in 1902 by Rudolf Kittel, the fourth in 1966/1977 by Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft in Stuttgart (thus the S of BHS). A fifth edition (Biblia Hebraica Quinta), which I have helped prepare with a team of other scholars, is currently in the works and should be completed within the next five years.

Above is page 409 from BHS. Here the reader will find the end of the story of Jael and Sisera, in which Sisera’s mother is waiting impatiently for her son to return (Judges 5:28–31), followed by the calling of Gideon (Judges 6:1–12). (Note the large number 6 in the right margin, which divides these two chapters.) But no matter what biblical passage we may turn to, all 1,574 pages of BHS look very much like this one. Each page has two primary components: first, the biblical text (with notations) as preserved by the ben Asher family of Masoretes in the sixth to tenth centuries C.E.; and second, at the very bottom of the page, the two scholarly apparatuses, or sets of notes, assembled by modern biblical experts.