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  • From: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why would the scribal authorities find thisobjectionable?
  • Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 10:12:59 -0700

On May 1, 2005, at 1:00 AM, Yigal Levin wrote:

Dear Chrises and all,

Why is it so widely assumed that the Masoretic comment on "Tikun Soferim" is
historically correct, or that it even refers to that particular emendation?
Are there any mss. that have Yahweh standing before Abraham? The DDS version
(8QGen) is badly preserved, but seems to have "... lpny y[hwh]".

Yigal,

That's precisely why I referenced E. Tov in my earlier message, with his cautions against assuming that the traditions about the tiqqune soferim are historically accurate.

I promised the complete footnote on this verse from my dissertation, so here goes:

-- quote --
Masoretic tradition marks 18:22 as containing one of the "corrections of the scribes." Ostensibly, the text originally read "Yahweh remained standing before Abraham," but was changed to its present reading out of a sense of piety or decorum. Gunkel (202) and Speiser (132, 134) accept the tradition and provide the putative original in their translations. However, Emmanuel Tov (Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress and Aasen/Maastricht:Van Gorcum, 1992] 66) warns that "even though many scholars accept the traditions about the corrections made by the soferim as basically correct, in all probability these corrections were not carried out in reality." Tov considers 18:22 a case in which "it is improbable that the original text would indeed have read as the Masorah claims," though he does not explain why this is the case. Dillmann (100) adduces two other arguments against accepting the tradition. LXX and SP agree with MT, suggesting that if such a change did occur, it was introduced into the probable common predecessor of the pre-Samaritan and proto-Masoretic texts--but the tradition about the "corrections of the scribes" is unlikely to be that old. More decisively, Genesis 19:27 narrates Abram's [sic] return to the "place where he had stood before Yahweh," echoing the MT of 18:22. Scullion (156) seems to accept the tradition about the correction in 18:22, but may be hinting at non-acceptance when he asks whether the scribes also made the same change in 19:27. Masoretic tradition does not mark the latter verse as containing one of these corrections. Dillmann's judgment is sound: the tradition about the tiqqune soferim is here "not evidence of another reading, but only of the offence which the Rabbinical writers took at the representation of a man detaining God instead of God detaining the man."
-- end quote --

Chris H.

--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info




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