Is this the Hebrew text we want?

[Gilbert Salinas]

Ewan,

I appreciate VERY MUCH your labor in this project!

Thanks for sharing your work.

Gilbert

[PrayingWolf]

I believe the Keter Aram Zova (Aleppo codex) is widely available in electronic form. The Hebrew University has been working on it for ages and they definately have it. I've also been reading it in HTML 4.0 RTL at http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/t/t0.htm

[jdarlack]

I believe the Keter Aram Zova (Aleppo codex) is widely available in electronic form. The Hebrew University has been working on it for ages and they definately have it. I've also been reading it in HTML 4.0 RTL at http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/t/t0.htm

Is anyone sure about the provenance of mechon-mamre's Aleppo text? I emailed them in the past to ask what the basis of their text was, and they seemed to indicate that it was compiled from the notes of a highly esteemed rabbi, but they did not give me any clear answer about the provenance.

~Jim

[Eric Kvaalen]

The current BW Hebrew text (as of BibleWorks 6.0) isn't "just" the BHS - it is the "corrected BHS" text. ... So, there is really no need to "fix" the current BHS text, and it stands as a good Hebrew text which very closely matches the Leningrad Codex (the original intention of the BHS).

The problem is not so much that there are, or were, differences between the BHS and L, but that L has many places where it is wrong (that is, has obvious mistakes or differs from most other manuscripts).

There are some places where the BibleWorks text is wrong, but I don't know if it follows L or not. For instance, in Genesis 30:37 it has W:_(ER:MO^WN instead of W:_(AR:MO^WN.

Actually, importing the Ginsburg/ben Chayyim text won't take much longer, and I have already got a working text in my copy of BibleWorks. The Text Comparison tool works well, and picks up the differences between WTT and the Ginsburg text.

How many differences are there? I think there are hundreds.

[paterdr]

Sorry to get into this conversation very late - 7 months after it's inception.

Eric Kvaalen wrote "... The Leningrad manuscript differs in hundreds of places from the standard Masoretic text." Some thoughts about "standard":

What is _the_ "standard" Masoretic text? Probably, in the context of the thread, this means the Bombrrg Rabbinic Bible (Venice 1524-5), the classic eclectic text also championed by Ginsburg. I'd love to have an electronic form of this myself, but this wasn't "standard" until put together in the 16th century. Generally accepted, yes, but I'm not aware that any divinely inspired process (except for love of the Hebrew Scriptures) was ever attributed to this process. (I don't want to step into a quagmire similar to the NT Majority text controversy.)

Is the Aleppo codex the "standard"? It should be, probably. A better Ben Asher text, without a doubt, but unfortunately incomplete after its partial destruction in well known circumstances. (The Hebrew University project and the Bar-Ilan University editions are based on this Ms for the part of it that has survived.) Leningrad B19a is accepted as the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures although it was copied some 60-70 years after Aleppo, and was pointed and corrected ways not always accurate, especially in the Masoretic apparatus itself.

Is "the standard Masoretic text" the phantom ideal Ben Asher text represented by the Kitab al_khilaf of Mishael ben Uzziel? According to statistics repeated in the General Introduction in the recently published fascicle of the Biblia Hebraica Quinta, (page xix) "In cases from Kitab al-hkilaf where ben Asher differs from ben Naphtali, [Aleppo] follows ben Asher in 94% and [Leningrad] follows in 92%. Both follow ben Asher in 90% of the cases where ben Ahser and ben Naphtali agree against other authorities (cited from Yeivin, Tiberian Masorah).

Alongside the so-called diplomatic or quasi diplomatic editions (BHK3, the Hebrew University Project and now the BHQ), there definitely are places in the academic world for eclectic editions (Rabbinic, Ginsburg) and "mosaic" editions, with the best parts of the various Masoretic codices "patched" together. (The big Masoretic Mss are Aleppo, British Oriental Ms 4445, Cairo, Leningrad B19a, B17, B34, Complutensian, Sassoon 1053, Sassoon 507, Cambridge Ms 1753.)

Unless they are obvious editorial choices, WTT differences from the Leningrad codex should be signaled to DBG or, better, to Westminster.

So, again, what is "the standard" Masoretic text? I'd like to hear more about this.

Finally, thanks ever so much for directing to http://www.bibles.org.uk/ . There is some really good material here, including the Ginsburg - Bomberg text and - wow! - fascimiles of Vaticanus and Alexandrinus.

Dan Pater

[Eric Kvaalen]

Sorry to get into this conversation very late - 7 months after it's inception.

Eric Kvaalen wrote "... The Leningrad manuscript differs in hundreds of places from the standard Masoretic text." Some thoughts about "standard":

What is _the_ "standard" Masoretic text? Probably, in the context of the thread, this means the Bombrrg Rabbinic Bible (Venice 1524-5), the classic eclectic text also championed by Ginsburg. I'd love to have an electronic form of this myself, but this wasn't "standard" until put together in the 16th century. Generally accepted, yes, but I'm not aware that any divinely inspired process (except for love of the Hebrew Scriptures) was ever attributed to this process. (I don't want to step into a quagmire similar to the NT Majority text controversy.)

Eric Kvaalen
La Courneuve, France
Is the Aleppo codex the "standard"? It should be, probably. A better Ben Asher text, without a doubt, but unfortunately incomplete after its partial destruction in well known circumstances. (The Hebrew University project and the Bar-Ilan University editions are based on this Ms for the part of it that has survived.) Leningrad B19a is accepted as the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures although it was copied some 60-70 years after Aleppo, and was pointed and corrected ways not always accurate, especially in the Masoretic apparatus itself.

Is "the standard Masoretic text" the phantom ideal Ben Asher text represented by the Kitab al_khilaf of Mishael ben Uzziel? According to statistics repeated in the General Introduction in the recently published fascicle of the Biblia Hebraica Quinta, (page xix) "In cases from Kitab al-hkilaf where ben Asher differs from ben Naphtali, [Aleppo] follows ben Asher in 94% and [Leningrad] follows in 92%. Both follow ben Asher in 90% of the cases where ben Ahser and ben Naphtali agree against other authorities (cited from Yeivin, Tiberian Masorah).

Alongside the so-called diplomatic or quasi diplomatic editions (BHK3, the Hebrew University Project and now the BHQ), there definitely are places in the academic world for eclectic editions (Rabbinic, Ginsburg) and "mosaic" editions, with the best parts of the various Masoretic codices "patched" together. (The big Masoretic Mss are Aleppo, British Oriental Ms 4445, Cairo, Leningrad B19a, B17, B34, Complutensian, Sassoon 1053, Sassoon 507, Cambridge Ms 1753.)

Unless they are obvious editorial choices, WTT differences from the Leningrad codex should be signaled to DBG or, better, to Westminster.

So, again, what is "the standard" Masoretic text? I'd like to hear more about this.

Finally, thanks ever so much for directing to http://www.bibles.org.uk/ . There is some really good material here, including the Ginsburg - Bomberg text and - wow! - fascimiles of Vaticanus and Alexandrinus.

Dan Pater

Sorry to answer you very late -- 2 years late! (I haven't been checking this forum.)

What I meant by "standard" was somewhat imprecise. There are many places where a particular manuscript differs from the vast majority, and this is true of "L" and the BHS. That is what I was complaining about. These are noted in the BHS footnotes, with a message like "sic L, mlt Mss Edd ...", which is abbreviated Latin for "that is what L actually has, but many (or most) manuscripts and editions have...". The first instance in the book of Genesis is at 2:18, where L and the BHS have a dagesh in the "he" at the end of the word "e`ese". There are many cases like this where there is a superfluous dagesh, or a dagesh missing. There are also plenty of places (first example in Genesis 16:2) where the vowel is clearly wrong.

There are also places (like Is. 44:25) where the BHS has a different consonant from most texts (in Is. 44:25 it is not clearly a mistake) or where a consonant is missing (like Hos. 13:15, where the BHS has "ben" meaning "son" rather than "beyn" meaning "between").

I admit that there may be lots of places where there is no clear majority text. But what bothers me is that BibleWorks (and others) use a text that in many places is clearly wrong.

[RickGross]

BibleWorks would very much like to enhance its offerings by including the ben Chayyim text, but we've not found an electronic version of this text unencumbered by copyright and of sufficient quality as to need only very minor editing. If anyone knows of such a version that might be available for inclusion in BibleWorks, please let me know, and I'll follow up with the text's owner. Thanks.

[Eric Kvaalen]

A few years ago I offered to take your Hebrew text and go through my BHS and find all the places where there's a footnote noting a difference between the BHS and most other texts, and change it manually. We talked about whether there would be copyright problems, and in the end it seemed that everything was all right. The German Bible Society didn't have a problem with your putting a modified version in your software along with theirs. After all, the result would NOT be their text anymore--it would be a majority text. I even did the book of Genesis to see how long it took.

[Michael Hanel]

Not sure if this website source is helpful or not: http://www.christianhospitality.org/benchayyim.htm

[Eric Kvaalen]

The Ben Hayyim Tanakh, which came out in about 1525, also contained many errors. I have read that it contained thousands of technical errors. This is perhaps to be expected, since typesetting is a laborious endeavor, and correcting errors was not as simple as it is today on a computer!

So be careful about texts calling themselves the Ben Hayyim text. They may contain more errors than the text presently used by BibleWorks!