Collections & Collations of Manuscripts: Studies in Old Testament Text Criticism
Beginning with J. H. Michaelis in 1720,1 but primarily in the works of Benjamin Kennicott2 and J. B. De Rossi3 in the late 1700s a major effort was made to collect and collate the known medieval biblical Hebrew manuscripts. This was motivated by the continuing issues of both biblical inspiration and sola scriptura. Since the works of Cappellus, Morinus and others had cast doubt on the these very points, the gauntlet was taken up by these studies. As Goshen-Gottstein explains, “only the extensive study of Hebrew MSS could give an answer to the issue itself.”4 Kennicott for example, was convinced that “he could actually recover the original Word of God of the Old Testament,”5 probably based on his “belief in the inerrancy of Holy Scripture.”6 The end product was collection of variants that “consisted mostly of secondary scribal changes, parallelisms, normalizations, harmonizations or free associations.”7 Kennicott articulated his methodology thus:
“As to a Various Reading then, my opinion is - Varia est lectio ubicunque varie legitur. - whenever in two copies of the same writing the one differs from the other in word or letter or in the position of the same words or letters, every such difference is properly a various reading. And since every Variation from the original of an inspired author is a variation for the worse, every such variation is properly a corruption. Consequently, though every various reading proves a corruption to have happened, every various reading is not itself a corruption, because one of the various readings may be the true reading which obtained at first in the original.”8
As Reginald Fuller indicates, Richard Simon had already indicated that “copyists’ error must not be confused with genuine variant readings,”9 however Kennicott and scholars like Alexander Geddes, who utilized these massive collections tended to put these and other warnings aside.
These Herculean efforts however were methodologically flawed in several ways. First, the majority of the variant readings in these manuscript were actually those created in the medieval period. Second, the weighing of the manuscripts based on quantity was faulty. As Tov indicates, “in this context scholars usually quote the methodological rule formulated as manuscripta ponderantur, non numerantur, manuscripts are to be considered for their worth and not reckoned according to their number.”10 And third, although agreements were found between earlier versional readings and some of these medieval Hebrew manuscripts, their agreements were most likely coincidental.11
1 Johann H. Michaelis, Biblia Hebraica (1720); Sanders also mentions works by: Theodor Christopher Lilienthan (1770); Georg Johann Ludwig Vogel (1765); Johann David Michaelis (1771); Charles François Houbigant (1753) along with the London and Paris polyglots. Sanders, “Hebrew Bible and Old Testament: Textual Criticism in the Service of Biblical Studies,” 55-6.
2 B. Kennicott, Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum cum Variis Lectionibus Volumes I-II (Oxford: Clarendon, 1776-80).
3 J. B. De Rossi, Viarae Lectiones Veteris Testamenti Volumes I-IV (Parma: ex regio typographeo [Bodoni], 1784-88, repr. Amsterdam 1969); J. B. De Rossi, Scholia Critica (, 1798)
4 Goshen-Gottstein, “Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts: Their History and Their Place in the HUBP Edition,” in Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text, ed. Frank Moore Cross and Shemaryahu Talmon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 50.
5 Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor” in Biblical Criticism, 200.
6 McKane, Selected Christian Hebraists, 165.
7 Goshen-Gottstein, “Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts: Their History and Their Place in the HUBP Edition,” 52.
8 Benjamin Kennicott, The State of the Printed Hebrew Text Considered, 1753, volume 1, 272, quoted in Reginald G. Fuller, Alexander Geddes, 1737-1802: Pioneer of Biblical Criticism, Historic Texts and Interpreters in Biblical Scholarship, no. 3 (Sheffield: The Almond Press, 1984), 36.
9 Fuller, Alexander Geddes, 1737-1802: Pioneer of Biblical Criticism, 36.
10 Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 39.
11 Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 38-39. Tov is summarizing Goshen-Gottstein’s criticism. Tov also refers to a modern study by Cohen, in which the manuscripts from the Middle Ages can be divided into Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions. Tov writes, “In his view the Sephardi manuscripts are close to the accurate Tiberian manuscripts, while Ashkenazi manuscripts . . . reflect other ancient traditions. . . .”