Beloit College in the USA publishes a “Mindset List” at the begining of every academic year that claims to look “at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students.” This year’s list may be found here. Even better, take a look at Chris Heard’s commentary on the list here.
The list is (naturally) very American. It would be interesting to compose a list that would fit the Canadian context, eh? Any takers? Suggestions?
I will be teaching Introduction to Classical Hebrew again this year. I have almost ten years experience teaching Hebrew and I can say that I still love teaching it! For my introductory course am going to use Kittel’s text, which is now in its second edition:
Biblical Hebrew: Text and Workbook, Second Edition.
New Haven: Yale, 2005. Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com
While I have a number of issues with this text, including the fact that the second edition is only a negligible improvement over the first (if even that), I still find it the best for introducing undergrads to the language of the Hebrew Bible. I like its inductive approach, though I do augment it with a series of more deductive handouts to give students the “big picture” before the text actually provides it. I have developed a number of resources for teaching introductory Hebrew with Kittel and most of them are available on my “Resources for Kittel” page. I also have a discussion of introductory Hebrew grammars available here.
In regards to Classical Hebrew grammars, Joe Cathay has a good blog post where he surveys some Hebrew grammars. I pretty much agree with Joe, though I have never found LaSor that helpful. I’m also not sure that when it comes to grammars there are only “basic” and “advanced.” While there is some truth to the notion that learning Hebrew is an “either/or” proposition, I see an important role for intermediate grammars.
Intermediate grammars are helpful for students to make the jump from the basic understanding of the language gained in a one-year introductory course to being able to understand the discussions in GKC, Joüon and Muraoka, or Waltke & O’Connor. There are two different types of intermediate grammars: those that focus on developing reading ability with some attention to matters of morphology and syntax (I would put Ben Zvi’s grammar in this category); and those that provide a summary discussion of the advanced grammars (I would put Arnold and Choi, Williams, and van der Merwe in this category). While the taxonomy of “introductory – intermediate – advanced” may not be ideal, I still prefer it to Joe’s (too) two broad categories of “basic – advanced.”
You can see my discussion of intermediate and advanced Hebrew grammars on my “Annotated Bibliography for Mastering Biblical Hebrew” page.
Finally, Michael Bird over at Euangelion posted on teaching resources. In regards to Hebrew one article (among many) that I found quite helpful in my thinking about how to teach Classical Hebrew is an article by David W. Baker called “Studying the Original Texts: Effective Learning and Teaching of Biblical Hebrew” in Make the Old Testament Live: From Curriculum to Classroom, edited by and (Eerdmans, 1998; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com).
All my online Biblical Hebrew resources may be found here.
Well, I just spent the last few days in faculty meetings as we at Taylor get ready for the upcoming academic year (our academic year begins September 6). I don’t mind meetings; it’s just a bit jarring to go from the summer work schedule (which is quite flexible) to sitting in meetings for all day long (and pretend to be alert!).
This fall semester I’m teaching a full load of classes at the University College, including Old Testament Literature (a first year introduction to the Hebrew Bible; see the course web page here), Introduction to Classical Hebrew (a cross-listed university and seminary course), and Psalms (a senior university course). I am also teaching an extra course at Taylor Seminary (their OT professor is on sabbatical) called The Kingdom of Israel (I’m going to take a bit of latitude with this course and focus primarily on the book of Chronicles). I imagine my blog posts will overlap somewhat with the courses I am teaching, so you can look forward to (or dread) some posts on the Psalter, Chronicles, and Hebrew — among other things!
No more meetings for a while… now I just have to get my syllabi ready for the fall!
In this post I will demonstrate the practice of textual criticism with two examples, Joshua 1:1 and Psalm 73:7, which highlight the practice of external and internal textual criticism, respectively.
This is the ninth post in a series on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Other posts include:
- Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible – An Introduction (TCHB 1)
- Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible Resources (TCHB 2)
- Hebrew Witnesses to the Text of the Old Testament (TCHB 3)
- Early Versions of the Hebrew Bible (TCHB 4)
- Codex Sinaiticus: A Profile (TCHB 5)
- The History of the Biblical Text (TCHB 6)
- The Goal(s) of Textual Criticism (TCHB 7)
- The Practice of Textual Criticism (TCHB 8 )
All posts in this series may be viewed here.
External criticism, as noted in a previous post, involves the evaluation of a variant in relation to the “original edition” of the MT. This means that if a variant reflects an earlier stage in the literary development of a book, rather than a corruption during the course of its textual transmission, it should be disregarded by the text critic. Because these variants typically do not come to bear on text critical decisions, they are difficult to spot in English translations. Therefore, for this example we have to proceed directly to the Hebrew text. Compare the following readings of Josh 1:1 in the MT and LXX:
In this example the MT refers to Moses as עבד יהוה (‘bd yhwh), “the servant of Yahweh.” This phrase is missing in the LXX. In fact, the MT of Joshua 1 has more than twelve additional words or phrases that are not found in the LXX. Further, the LXX of the book of Joshua is about 4-5 percent shorter than the MT. This leads one to posit that these differences in the LXX version of Joshua probably represent an earlier edition of that book. Therefore, because this variant in the LXX stands apart from the “original edition” behind the MT, there is no need to evaluate it by internal criticism. It should be ignored.
The first example demonstrated the procedure involved when a variant is the result of a separate literary tradition. Psalm 73:7, in contrast, will provide an example of a variant that arose in the transmission of the “original edition” of the MT
An examination of a few English versions of Ps 73:7a reveals a significant textual problem. Compare the following translations:
In this verse there are two apparent divergences between the English translations, though only one of them reflects a textual difference. The NIV’s reading of “callous hearts” reflects an idiomatic translation of “fat” rather than a variant reading. “Fat,” it is assumed, is a figure for stubbornness and the translators took the liberty of interpreting the figure for the reader so that it makes sense, as modern readers do not think iniquity comes out of “fat” (cf. “crassness” in the NAB).
In this passage the textual variant pertains to “eyes” and “iniquity.” This is indicated by the footnote in the NIV, which indicates that they have followed the Syriac reading of the text rather than the MT, which the NRSV followed.
Now that the textual problem has been discovered, the preliminary step is to collect the variants. While this can be partially done by referring to the notes in the English translations, as noted above, exegetes should look to BHS to discover the exact nature of the textual problem. The verse in BHS reads:
There is a superscript “a” after this line which leads to the second level of apparatus which reads: || 7 a l frt ×¢Ö²×•Ö¹× Ö¸×ž×•Ö¹ cf G S ||. This “translates” as, lege(ndum) “to read” fortasse “perhaps” ×¢Ö²×•Ö¹× Ö¸×ž×•Ö¹ (‘eonamo), “their iniquity” instead of the reading in the MT, and then asks us to compare with the LXX and the Syriac Peshitta. The LXX (= Ps 72:7) reads: ἡ ἀδικία αá½?τῶν, “their injustice,” while the Peshitta reads similarly.
Now the variant can be evaluated on its transcriptional probability. The word in the MT for “eyes” is עין (‘yn), while the variant suggested by BHS, and adopted by the NIV, is based on the LXX ἀδικία, retroverted to עון (‘vn), “iniquity.” The difference between these Hebrew variants is very slight as in the square script ו and ×™ are easily confused, especially in the DSS. Therefore the variant could be a result of the scribe confusing similar consonants. A major problem with this proposal, however, is that the LXX Psalms never translates עון with ἀδικία, “injustice”; either uses á¼?μαÏ?τία “sin” or ἀνομία “lawlessness” (30+ times). Better retrovert it to ×?ון “wickedness” and see an additional confusion between the aleph and ayin.
In relation to intrinsic probability, the MT makes little sense. The truth is that “their eyes come out with fatness” is incoherent. The NRSV’s “swell out” is an unattested extension of the meaning of the verb יצ×? (yts’) — especially with the preposition “from.” In contrast, the idea of iniquity or wickedness coming out of fatness, understood as a figure of speech for stubbornness, makes sense.
Therefore, in light of internal criticism, “their iniquity” — or better “their wickedness” — appears to be the most plausible. First, the error in the MT can be easily explained away by some common scribal confusions. Second, the MT is unintelligible: How do “eyes come out of fat”?, whereas “wickedness coming out of fat” is understandable once the metonymy of “fat” for “crassness” is understood.
This is kind of nifty: over at www.zhubert.com — a web site that allows you to read the Bible in the original languages or translation side by side — you can now pull up the page in Codex Sinaiticus while you are studying the Greek text, and it’ll even do its best to highlight the exact verse you’re reading! Zack himself says: “Whether you are a Textual Criticism scholar or someone that just thinks the early manuscripts look cool, I hope you’ll find this feature valuable in your study of the Bible.” It is pretty cool!
You can read the full announcment here. If you want to check it out, go here which will take you to the reading pane and then select a parallel text by going to the bottom left of the page, clicking the option box and selecting “Codex Sinaiticus”, and then pressing the Add button. This will pull up links to Sinaiticus as a parallel view to your Greek text.
For a short introduction to Codex Sinaiticus, read my profile here, which is part of my series on the Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible.