Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 61:2 (NA 2010)
Article: Which Hebrew Bible? Review Of Biblia Hebraica Quinta, Hebrew University Bible, Oxford Hebrew Bible, And Other Modern Editions
Author: David L. Baker

TynBull 61:2 (2010) p. 209

Which Hebrew Bible?
Review Of Biblia Hebraica Quinta, Hebrew University Bible, Oxford Hebrew Bible, And Other Modern Editions

David L. Baker

Summary

Three major critical editions of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament are in preparation at present: Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), the Hebrew University Bible (HUB), and the Oxford Hebrew Bible (OHB). This article is a comparative review of these three editions, followed by a briefer review of six other modern editions: British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament, Jewish Publication Society (JPS), Jerusalem Crown (JC), Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia (BHL), and the Reader’s Hebrew Bible (RHB). Finally, there is a brief discussion of implicit editions and electronic editions, followed by concluding remarks on the usefulness of the various editions.

1. Introduction

1.1 The Biblia Hebraica Series

It is just over a hundred years since the first edition of the series entitled Biblia Hebraica (‘Hebrew Bible’) was published, edited by Rudolf Kittel (1906). This used the sixteenth-century text of the second ‘Rabbinic Bible’, which remained the standard text of the Hebrew Bible until the beginning of the Twentieth Century.1 It also included a

TynBull 61:2 (2010) p. 210

brief critical apparatus (notes on variant readings in ancient manuscripts and translations). A corrected second edition was published in 1913.

The third edition was published from 1929 to 1937, with three major innovations. First, the printed text was that of a single Hebrew manuscript from the early Eleventh Century, the Leningrad Codex (abbreviated L, kept in the National Library of St Petersburg).2 This manuscript is generally considered the earliest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in existence. Second, the shorter Masoretic notes (masora parva) were included in the margins. Third, there was a much more substantial critical apparatus, with many proposals for emending the text where it was deemed corrupt. Albrecht Alt, Otto Eissfeldt, and Paul Kahle were very much involved in the production of this third edition, but the reputation of Kittel was such that it continued to be known as the ‘Kittel Bible’, and commonly abbreviated BHK. This became the standard critical edition for a generation of scholars, though many of the more speculative proposals were rightly treated with a pinch of salt.

Four decades later a fourth edition appeared, between 1967 and 1977. The names of the editors (Elliger and Rudolph) were less prominent, and t...