Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 11/10/2005 15:51, Jon Hjorleifur Stefansson wrote:

> Hello everyone.
> I didn't mean Mikra'ot Gedolot but just the OT text itself - that will be
> good enough to start with. What version/edition would you recommend? I was
> thinking of Meir Leteris (published by the British and Foreign Bible
> Society). I have been told that there are two lines of mss: From Ben Chayyim
> in 1524-25 and then another school based on Aleppo and others. Could
> somebody please explain that to me (is that wrong, right or what?) or refer
> me to some mss "family tree" on the web? I just want to be informed so that
> I can know what there is to choose from. Thank you very much for answering
> these beginner questions, and maybe I'll drop in a question/comment later on
> when I know some Hebrew myself.
>  

I'm surprised to see no reply to this for nearly a week, so I will 
attempt a reply.

From how I understand things, the Ben Asher texts represented by the 
Aleppo and Leningrad codices are the closest to the original Masoretic 
text, with the pointing as originally perfected by the Masoretes. Over 
the following several centuries some small changes were made to this 
pointing, resulting in the printed text of Ben Chayyim etc, from nearly 
600 years later than the Aleppo Codex. For such reasons scholars tend to 
prefer the Ben Asher text. But I think that the differences between the 
two traditions are rather small - much smaller than for example between 
different New Testament text types.

Printed editions based on the Leningrad Codex include BHS (Biblica 
Hebraica Stuttgartensia) published by the Bible Societies, and an 
edition prepared by Dotan in Israel. This text is also used in many 
online editions and Bible study software.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/