Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

Shai wrote:
>
> I have the feeling that you decide whether a text is corrupt
> based on your u
> nderstanding of it. If so, this is methodologically wrong.

On whose understanding should I decide? :-)

> A text can be
> corrupt but perfectly understandable, and a text can be totally
> ununderstandable, but genuine.

True. I hope I haven't given the indication that I disagree with this idea.

> You must rely firstly on *evidence* (just like in court), otherwise - your
> opinion (or mine) isn't worth more than my 5-years-old brother's guesses.

I suppose the effect of that remark depends on how well your 5-year-old 
brother knows BH. But I'm not disagreeing with the need for evidence. 
Perhaps, 
however, we're not following the same rules for admitting evidence.
>
> For example:
> The idea that the text in Dt. 32:5 is corrupt is based on the *facts* that
> many good and old witnesses display different versions: the
> samaritan hebrew
> version, some  aramaic translations and the LXX (See BHS). But when there
> are less witnesses for another version, the case for corruption weakens (I
> remind you our little discussion about Hosea 13:14).

But just having other readings doesn't necessarily show a text to be corrupt. 
Those other versions may be struggling to explain what is a naturally awkward 
passage. I haven't been trying to give a full explanation of how I think 
textual criticism ought to work. I was simply trying to make a very specific 
methodological point, that there's no use trying to show how a passage makes 
sense as it stands, when you've already judged it to be corrupt. Of course, 
variant readings need to be examined. But their mere existence doesn't prove 
that a text is corrupt any more than their absence proves that the text is 
intact. In addition to variants, especially with something like the Hebrew 
Bible, where none of our witnesses are as early or as useful (i.e., in 
Hebrew, 
rather than some other language that introduces a new set of problems) as we 
might like, we have to work with critical models. Variant readings do nothing 
for me, if I don't have a definable method of evaluating them. But why admit 
only one type of evidence? By this standard, I should go back and re-read 
Davies's book by trying to make sense of everything it says exactly as it 
says 
it. I don't have a variant copy to compare, and I don't know how willingly he 
would give me a copy of the original manuscript (which probably had all the 
same mistakes anyway). But somehow I don't think that ever stops any of us 
from doing our own textual criticism on everything we read (or hear).
>
> Understanding relies on grammar and lexicon; but both grammar and lexicon
> were made based on understanding! It's a vecious circle. You must have an
> "archimedian point", an outside testimony, to decide whether a text is
> corrupt, you cannot use intterpretation - at least not if you want your
> articles published in good periodicles :)

Which periodicals do you read? And who are the second-rate scholars that edit 
BHS? This is not a new or unusual method by any means, but for all that, I 
would hope that by now we've grown in our realization that evidence is always 
filtered through a model. I hope we're not too far off-topic for B-Hebrew, 
BTW. I really think these issues are particularly relevant for TC in the 
Hebrew Bible especially, but I don't know that we should go on discussing 
them 
at length. This started with a response to a rather specific textual issue 
that we seem to have finished discussing.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics