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[German Version] I. Old Testament The aim of text criticism in general is to determine the original wording of a text that no longer survives in its original author copy but only in various late scribal copies. Text criticism compares the copies (called witnesses) to distinguish inaccurately copied passages (called readings) from accurately copied passages. What makes the Old Testament a special case is that most of its writings never had an original; they were never completed and published by a sing…

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Greco-Roman Antiquity – III. Biblical – IV. Law – V. Ethics I. History of Religions It was not until after the Second World War, in the course of which whole peoples had been murdered and critics persecuted, that in 1948 the UN proclaimed asylum to be a human right; not however in terms of the right of every persecuted human being to seek protection from others,…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament I. Old Testament Parallel to the earliest segmentation of the Pentateuch, its division into approx. 154 sedarim (sections) already reflected in the LXX (3rd cent. bce), and the cycle of 53 or 54 parashim (8th cent.), a division into sentences or verses (   pasuq = verse; cf. Meg. IV, 4) emerged. The Masoretes harmonized several earlier systems of verse division. The Masoretic system does not always agree with the division of verses and sentences of earlier textual witnesses (L…

[German Version] are synoptic presentations of multiple Bible texts in at least three languages – in the narrower sense, the original text and the oldest translations: Septuagint (Bible translations: I, 1.a), targums (Bible translations: I, 4), Peshitta, and Vulgate (Bible translations: I, 2.c). I. The first polyglot was the Complutensian Polyglot (Alcalà de Henares, Lat. Complutum, 1514–1517). It was financed and planned by Cardinal F. Jiménes de Cisneros and edited jointly by the Jewish conversos Alfonso de Zamora, Pablo Coronel, and Alfonso de Alcalà, and the Human…

Part of 5 Samuel–Kings - 5.3 Ancient Hebrew TextsThere is no surviving witness of a complete (proto-)Masoretic text of Samuel–Kings earlier than the first vocalized masoretic manuscripts (Codex Cairo, 895 c.e.; Aleppo Codex, ca. 915 c.e.; and Codex Leningradensis or Firkovitch b19a, 1008 c.e.). Only some small fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls are to be assessed as close to mt or as “semi-masoretic” (5.3.1): 1QSam (1Q7)1 and 4QKgs (4Q54).2 The fragments of 5QKgs (5Q2) are too small and too poorly preserved to allow for a characterization with any certainty.3In addition to the …

Part of 5 Samuel–Kings 5.2.1 Witnesses 1) The Hebrew text of the books of Kings is preserved in the medieval Masoretic manuscripts (3–5.3). The most authoritative Masoretic codices containing the books of Kings are mta,1mtc,2 and mtl.3 In Qumran Cave 4, several fragments have been found (5.3.1.8), while smaller fragments were discovered elsewhere (5.3.1.9–12).4 2) The Old Greek or lxx translation (5.5), which is the earliest non-Hebrew witness,5 is attested to in the Codices Vaticanus (= lxxb),6 Sinaiticus (= lxxs),7 Alexandrinus (= lxxa),8 Coislin 1 (= lxxm),9 Venetus (= lxxv),10 i…

Part of 5 Samuel–Kings - 5.3 Ancient Hebrew TextsThe discovery of 4QSama,b,c (4Q51–53) revolutionized the textual history of the Bible and continues to fascinate scholars because many of their features remain enigmatic.1 This is especially the case for 4QSama, which attests to the largest portions of the text.2 On the one hand, the strong similarities of these texts to Old Greek (5.4) prove that the Greek version is a careful translation of its Hebrew Vorlage, which attests a different text type from proto-mt (5.3.2). This fact is borne out by their agreements with the Old Latin (vl; 3–5.2…

Part of 2 Modern Printed Editions of the Jewish Bible and its Christian Versions - 2.1 Printed Editions of the Jewish Bible in Judaism and Christianity - 2.1.2 Standard Editions - 2.1.2.8 Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Critical Editions - 2.1.2.8.5 Other EditionsThe two publications of the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project (HOTTP) present a selection of variant readings compared to Codex Leningradensis (MTL), but without a complete biblical text. As such, they provide a critical apparatus that may be combined with the text of MTL to create a critical edition of the He…

[English Version] sind Synopsen mehrerer Bibeltexte in mindestens drei Sprachen, in engerem Sinn der Urtexte mit ältesten Übers. (Septuaginta, Targume [Bibelübersetzungen: I.,4.], Peshitta, Vulgata [Bibelübersetzungen: I.,2., c]). I. Die erste P. ist die Complutensis (Alcala´ de Henares, lat. Complutum, 1514–1517), ihr Mäzen und Planer Kardinal F. Xime´nez de Cisneros, wiss. Mithg. die jüd. Conversos Alfons von Zamora, Pablo Coronel, Alfons von Alcala´ und die Humanisten Juan de Vergara, Antonio de Nebrija/Lebrija, Herna´n Nu…

[English Version] I. Altes TestamentZiel der T. i. allg. ist die Feststellung des urspr. Wortlautes einer Schrift, die nicht im Original, sondern in unterschiedlichen Kopien vorliegt. Die T. bedient sich des Vergleichs der Kopien (der sog. Textzeugen), um fehlerhaft abgeschriebene von fehlerfrei kopierten Stellen (den sog. Lesarten) zu unterscheiden. Das Besondere am AT ist, daß für seine Schriften fast nie ein Original existiert hat, weil sie lit. gewachsen, nicht von einem einzigen Autor endgülti…