Bible Review

Ronald S. Hendel, The Text of Genesis 1–11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998).

The earliest New Testament manuscripts exhibited fluidity of text until after the conquest of Constantine, when accuracy in transmission became an issue; see Sanders, “Text and Canon: Old Testament and New,” in Mélanges Dominique Barthélemy: Etudes bibliques, ed. P. Casetti et al., Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 38 (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1981), pp. 373–394.

Elias Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (Leiden: Brill, 1976), vol. 1, p. 196.

Barthélemy, Les Devanciers d’Aquila, Vetus Testamentum Supplements 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1963); his thesis is affirmed in Tov et al., The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nah.al Hever (8H.ev XIIgr), Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 8 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); see also Sanders, “Stability and Fluidity in Text and Canon,” in Tradition of the Text, ed. G. Norton and S. Pisano (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1991), pp. 203–217.

If objectivity is but subjectivity under constraint, as seems now generally recognized, then the constraint clearly indicated in our field is dialogue between positions having different hermeneutics of the text. See Sanders, “Intertextuality and Dialogue,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 29:1 (1999), pp. 35–44.

The panel of editors preparing the individual biblical books for Biblia Hebraica Quinta includes Christian and Jewish scholars of varying persuasions.

Sanders, “The Task of Text Criticism,” in Problems in Biblical Theology: Essays in Honor of Rolf Knierim, ed. H.T.C. Sun and Keith L. Eades (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 315–327.

For the earlier date, with focus on some form of “original” text, see Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), pp. 313–349; for the later date, with focus on the earliest community-accepted texts, see Talmon, “The Textual Study of the Bible—A New Outlook,” in Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text, ed. Frank Moore Cross and Talmon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1975), p. 325; and see also Sanders, “Hermeneutics of Text Criticism,” pp. 16–20.

See Shemaryahu Talmon, “Aspects of the Textual Transmission of the Bible in the Light of Qumran Manuscripts,” Textus 4 (1964), pp. 95–132; Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, The Book of Isaiah: Sample Edition (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1965), pp. 12–13; Dominique Barthélemy, Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976), pp. 878–884.