Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction.

AuthorDi Lella, Alexander A.

This volume is intended as a textbook of Old Testament (OT) textual criticism. In the foreword, Bruce K. Waltke states that Brotzman when preparing his manuscript did not have available Emanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). Waltke then adds: "I had prepublication access to Tov's work and some of its material was mediated to Brotzman through my essay 'Old Testament Textual Criticism' in the forthcoming Holman Introduction to the Bible. . . . "Waltke concludes that "Tov's and Brotzman's books complement each other" (p. 9). Actually, Tov's work, far more extensive (pp. xl + 456) than Brotzman's, can be read with profit by scholars as well as beginning students of textual criticism. However, Brotzman's relatively brief work is "an introduction for the intermediate Hebrew student" (p. 168) who wants to make "use of the information included in BHS [Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia]" (p. 22). Brotzman urges advanced students to examine the critical editions of the various ancient versions because, as he correctly notes (pp. 21, 169), the critical apparatus of BHS provides incomplete and occasionally inaccurate information regarding variant readings. Sound advice indeed.

Brotzman devotes a chapter to each of the following seven topics: writing in the ancient Near East; transmission of the OT in Hebrew; ancient versions of the OT; the Dead Sea Scrolls; introduction to BHS; scribal errors; principles and practice of textual criticism. His discussions, judicious and competent, also contain eight figures (e.g., figure 1: Theory of Local Texts, reproduced from The New International Version Triglot Old Testament [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1981]) and nine tables (e.g., table 6: Hebrew Transmission of the OT) - all of which are helpful to the neophyte in OT textual criticism. Throughout these chapters Brotzman acknowledges his debt to the various works that deal with the same or related issues: e.g., Ernst...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT