Literature

Review of the BHS Reader’s Edition

When the opportunity to review the new BHS: A Reader’s Edition came along, I grabbed it. One of the reasons being that I for some reason decided to leave my copy of the Zondervan Reader back in the United States and I have been kicking myself ever since. I have been using the Olivetree Bible Study app on my tablet for reading instead, but I was eager to get my hands on a real book again to study the original languages.

That being said, click here for my full review of the Reader’s Edition, which will eventually be published in BBR.

Of course, a project of this scale should always dissuade a mere reviewer from overly harsh critique. The number of hours required to create the apparatus and indices involved in this volume alone deserves high praise. Furthermore, considering the extent of the information that had to be corralled into a user-friendly format, it should be unsurprising to find the occasional typographical error. These sorts of things detract very little from the overall value of the Reader’s Edition. If you want to keep up your languages, at about $60 this volume is an investment worth making.

A Slight Grumble or Two

Nevertheless, I do have some complaints. As you’ll read about in my review, I find the notation system to be slightly ill-advised. Essentially, whatever words get a footnote and gloss in a given verse are marked with a superscripted letter, starting with ‘a’ in each verse. This basically means that when you hit a word you don’t know, you check the letter tagging it, and then glance at the bottom of the page to get the gloss … the catch being that you also have to know what number verse you are on at the moment.

Of course, if you are absorbed in your reading (as you should be), you have no idea what verse you are on. That means that, for me at least, I usually have to reroute back to the word I don’t know, scan back or forward to find what verse I’m on, then go to the apparatus and try again to find the gloss. This can be a significant distraction and slow down the reading process. Far easier, in my view, to use consecutive numerals for every gloss and start over on each page.

Parsing Headaches

Another slight grumble is the parsing system. At first glance it looks like a new coding language, and personally I was a bit daunted initially. And in fact, it took about a month to get used to it, which does not mean I totally understand it yet (nor do I care to, since I do my own parsing, thank you very much).

Part of my frustration also stems from the fact that apparently some early editions of the Reader’s Edition did not receive their bookmark insert, which contains a handy reference to the whole coded parsing system. Fortunately, there is a remedy. One of the editors, George Athas, has provided it via his website for personal printing. You can also find it by clicking here:

BHS Reader’s Edition Insert

LXX Commentary Series: Part I – Brill

A while back I began a series of posts to overview the major contemporary translation projects of the Septuagint. Thus far I have dealt with the recent English translation, known as NETS (see here). Before moving on to the French translation project, La Bible d’Alexandrie (BdA), however, it makes sense to discuss one of the commentary series that is associated with English projects in the Septuagint. Note that there are two Septuagint commentary series (that I know of), distinguished below.

Septuagint Commentaries

15723755As I have been thinking about preparing a post for BdA, it struck me that I will need to discuss the fact that it is not merely a translation into French, but also a commentary. So when it is time for that post I will most likely make it two parts, one treating the translational approach into French, the other dealing with principles underlying the commentary, although they are of course inseparable.

And if I am going to talk about the commentary in BdA, then I also need to mention the similar efforts in the ongoing in English. So that is what I will start here, to be completed in two parts. For one, there is the  IOSCS Septuagint Commentary Series (SBLCS), which I will treat at a later point, and which is associated with the NETS project and interlinearity as a method. In this post I discuss the Brill Septuagint Commentary series (BSC), which is under the general editorship of (who else?) Stan Porter. The first volume on Joshua came out over a decade ago, and since then a number of other installments have appeared, even though completion is in the remote future.

(As an aside, one of the contributors to the BSC, W. Edward Glenny, will be the subject of one of my future LXX Scholar Interviews)

Brill Commentary Series (BCS) Methodology

One of the major ways in which the BSC differs from the work of BdA and SBLCS is in terms of the text used. As I will discuss in more detail in other posts, BdA employs Rahlfs’s Septuaginta as its base text, while the SBLCS uses critical editions such as Göttingen or the Cambridge Larger Septuagint (for details on which see here). The BSC on the other hand uses one of three main uncial codices – Vaticanus (B), Alexandrinus (A), and Sinaiticus (א). For example, the Genesis commentary is based upon Alexandrinus, as the other two uncials are defective in much of the book.

The rationale here is the aim of BSC to be a “literary commentary” on the Septuagint, which is thus treated – rightly so in many respects – as itself an early commentary on the Hebrew Bible and a source for New Testament study. As such, the LXX represents the reception of the Old Testament in a given community, Jewish or Christian, in the Greco-Roman world.

To this end, the BSC aims to provide “a commentary on the Septuagint in its own right,” and therefore makes reference to the Hebrew text “only when necessary” (Brayford 2007, 25). As far as I can tell, making reference is “necessary” in order to discuss features of the Hebrew that agree with the Greek version to provide coherence, and also to understand occasional differences. While there are points at which the BSC deals with text critical issues, commentators never claim one text tradition is “better” than another. Rather, “the Commentary examines the text as it is and interprets it in its own right from literary, historical, social, and theological points of view” (ibid, 26). One of the primary stated goals of the BSC series in this sense is to determine how that Greek text of the Septuagint functioned in its literary and religious community, although drawing such conclusions is often quite speculative since it is difficult to know the details of a given textual community.

In any case, the BSC approach is motivated by the conviction that it is impossible to discern the intention of the author or translator (not to mention the readers) of the Greek version of the Old Testament, which by contrast is the distinct aim of the SBLCS. Instead of the text-as-produced by the translator, the BSC focuses on the text-as-received by a community, or the Greek version as it could have been read and interpreted, according to a given text tradition. In that way, while presuming for the most part that the Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint was a proto-MT, the actual relationship between the Hebrew and Greek versions is not of primary importance, as the BSC is essentially reception historical in its approach.

Others to Come

As mentioned, I will also outline the approach of the other Septuagint commentary series in due course. Doing so, I hope, will provide a useful primer for the uninitiated to the major contours of contemporary LXX scholarship.

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Brayford, Susan. Genesis. Septuagint Commentary Series (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Review of Peterson, “The Authors of the Deuteronomistic History”

I recently received a review copy of Brian N. Petersons’s The Authors of the Deuteronomistic History: Locating a Tradition in Ancient Israel (Fortress, 2014). My research involves the book of Judges, and so I was eager to read this account of the authorship of the Historical Books, of which Judges is of course a part. I was particularly intrigued by the auspicious word “Ancient” in the title, as it gives a sufficient clue as to just what the book aims to do.

In sum, Peterson undertakes the task of identifying specific persons and their provenances who were responsible for the authorship and later handling and editing of the books of the Deuteronomistic History, or “DtrH” (Deuteronomy – 2 Kings). In his attempt to do so, Peterson suggests that this large section of the Old Testament canon was originally written by Abiathar, high priest of King David from Anathoth, who passed it on to his sons and later Anathothian priests, and was eventually finalized by Jeremiah or Baruch. Abiathar, to Peterson’s mind, had the knowledge, opportunity, and personal motivation to begin compiling the Deuteronomistic History, and to then bequeath it to the later custodians to continue the enterprise. He calls his book a “whodunit?” sort of investigation.

Locating a Tradition in the Academy

Of course, Peterson must deal with the mountain of secondary literature on this topic, the vast majority of which is set against his position. The default position is rooted in the work of a figure no less formidable than Martin Noth. Essentially, Noth was the first to suggest that the Historical Books were written not by anyone contemporaneous to the events themselves, but by a 6th century BCE author who was prompted by the events of the fall of Jerusalem and subsequent exile.

Martin Noth and a cigar

This anonymous author set out to account for those traumatic events using the language and theology of the book of Deuteronomy (hence “Deuteronomistic History”). Not long after Noth put forward this idea, Frank Moore Cross developed it by suggesting that the DtrH was initially part of King Josiah’s legal reforms, only to be later revised by Noth’s initial proposed author. The Deuteronomistic History hypothesis has undergone countless tweaks and re-evaluations in the last fifty years, even as it has become the default critical position in the academy. For his own part, Peterson poses his thesis as in fact not contradictory at every point to Noth’s view, but suggests that the holes in the consensus view commend reconsideration.

Evaluation & Prospects

Personally, I found this work refreshing. It was good to read a book that treats the Old Testament texts as credible within their own purported historical setting, rather than as necessarily late, retrospective efforts at national identity formation, or theological power claims within a dispossessed community. At the very least, I hope the broader academy can accept Peterson’s efforts as an interesting intellectual exercise in that respect, even if his thesis will face staunch opposition (if it is given attention at all). I have since read at least one other review of the book that is nothing more than a “mightier than thou” dismissal of Peterson as “naïve.” This type of dismissing attitude is unfortunately acceptable, or at least expected, in the biblical studies community.

While I am not entirely convinced that Abiathar is the “culprit” for original authorship, it is very plausible, and Peterson’s case is persuasive overall. His proposed time frame for its original composition and later growth certainly provides a suitable interpretive context. Furthermore, Peterson’s argumentation considerably strengthens the warrant for holding to early authorship of the DtrH.

Review of Peterson

Without further delay, here is my full review, which will come out in due time in JETS.