Twenty-eight revised and updated essays on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, the (proto-)Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Dead Sea Scrolls are presented in this fourth volume of the author’s collected essays. All the chapters save one were published previously between 2010 and 2018, while chapter 17 is new (a Hebrew version is forthcoming). These areas have all developed much in modern research, and the author has been actively involved in them all. The topics presented in this volume display some of his emerging interests (the text of the Torah and the proto-MT), including some of his recent central studies on the development of the text of the Torah, the enigma of the MT, and the Scripture text of the tefillin. The topic that continues to interest me is the condition of the text of the Hebrew Bible in the last centuries preceding the Common Era and the first century thereafter. As students of the Bible, we ought to free ourselves for a moment from our printed editions and focus on the wide variety of texts that the ancients had in their hands before the Masoretic Text became the dominating force in the field. It is my aim to focus on all the texts that were circulating in ancient Israel in the last centuries preceding the Common Era.
The names of the four volumes of my Kleine Schriften may be somewhat confusing. The connoisseur will detect a shifting of interests, but because the interests themselves have changed only subtly, the titles of the volumes resemble one another. It would be best to distinguish between the Collected Essays, Volumes 1–4 according to their dates (1999, 2008, 2015, 2019).
The previous volumes are:
The Greek and Hebrew Bible: Collected Essays on the Septuagint (VTSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 1999).
Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran: Collected Essays (TSAJ 121; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, Septuagint: Collected Writings, Volume 3 (VTSup 167; Leiden: Brill, 2015).
The present one is named:
Textual Developments, Collected Essays, Volume 4 (VTSup 181; Leiden: Brill, 2019).
I am indebted to Prof. Christl M. Maier, editor in chief of the Supplements to Vetus Testamentum series, for accepting this volume to this series. I am further grateful to the dedicated staff of Brill Publishers, especially Suzanne Mekking and Liesbeth Hugenholtz, for a job well done. TAT Zetwerk performed marvels with my computer files, combining human skill and computer programs. Thanks are due to the publishers of the original papers, all of whom kindly agreed to their republication in the present volume. My daughter Ophirah Tov helped me by skillfully proofreading the original manuscripts of all the chapters and saving me from many a mistake. Ms. Shiran Shevah competently read the page proofs of this book and improved its text in many small details, and she, too, found mistakes. She is also to be thanked for her experienced help in creating the indexes.
I dedicate this volume to the anonymous scribes and translators who performed a work of love when transcribing and translating Scripture texts. Their personality is visible in many aspects; they were guided by their inspiration, religiosity, and enthusiasm when copying and translating, thus perpetuating the text of the Bible and the Bible as a book. They considered it their task and their right to alter the text considerably in early centuries and subsequently to make small changes, leaving many riddles for the scholar. It is incumbent upon us to unscramble these riddles.
Emanuel Tov
Jerusalem, 1 July 2019