A Recent Popularisation Of Professor F.M. Cross’ Theories On The Text Of The Old Testament -- By: David W. Gooding
Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 26:1 (NA 1975)
Article: A Recent Popularisation Of Professor F.M. Cross’ Theories On The Text Of The Old Testament
Author: David W. Gooding
TynBul 26:1 (1975) p. 113
A Recent Popularisation Of Professor F.M. Cross’ Theories On The Text Of The Old Testament
I.
Throughout the last decade one fruitful source of knowledge of the contents of the manuscript fragments from the famous Cave 4 at Qumran has been the theses of Professor F.M. Cross’ PhD students.1 And very fine and thoroughly professional pieces of work they are. Now from the pen of the author of one of these theses,2 Professor R.W. Klein, comes a work of a somewhat different kind. His ‘Textual Criticism of the Old Testament’ stands fourth in the Old Testament division of a series of ‘Guides to Biblical Scholarship’, published by Fortress Press under the general editorship of Gene M. Tucker. It is written not, of course, for the expert, but for college or seminary students, some of whom may “not yet have mastered Greek and Hebrew” (p. ix), for the “average exegete, pastor, rabbi, theological student or informed lay person” (p. 84): and it sets out to encourage all these people to engage, according to their several abilities, in the textual criticism of the Old Testament. The book everywhere breathes enthusiasm, which in itself is no small tribute to the impact that Professor Cross makes on his pupils. It is sincerely to be hoped that this enthusiasm will inspire a new generation of students with a sense of the importance of textual criticism so that they may be willing to qualify themselves rigorously for the work. It is scarcely a field for the unqualified.
TynBul 26:1 (1975) p. 114
A book of this kind naturally has to be not only as ‘uncomplicated’ as possible, but also selective, and doubtless no two authors would agree completely on what selection to make or how to simplify issues which in reality are very complicated. Faced with the choice Professor Klein has decided to select almost exclusively Professor Cross’s views and theories and so “to disseminate his insights for wider discussion” (p. ix). To balance this onesidedness he occasionally warns his readers that some of the views he propounds are very subjectively based, and that over these views “leading scholars vigorously disagree with one another” (pp. viii, 15, 69). On the other hand he rarely gives the views of the scholars who disagree with Professor Cross. Since, however, a beginner cannot be expected to know these views without being told, and without such knowledge can scarcely arrive at a balanced assessment of the present state of Old Testament textual criticism, the present article proposes to do two things: to discuss some of the views put forward by Klein, and, where it might seem helpful, to supplement the information he...
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