Canter Bridge

This early publication of the Hebrew University Bible project is a formidable achievement that pays tribute to the inestimable labor of its editor and editorial team.

The work represents a critical edition of the Aleppo Codex of the Book of Isaiah, widely considered to be the work of Ben Asher and the biblical exemplar commended by Maimonides.

In a preface that appears in both Hebrew and English, editor M.H. Goshen-Gottstein painstakingly and with striking clarity details the philosophy and pragmatic decision-making that produced the published text with its no fewer than six critical apparatii in the light of the history of the biblical text as we know it.

The first apparatus presents material from the Versions (principally the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Peshitta, Targum Jonathan, and R. Saadia Gaon’s Arabic translation). A second presents material from the Judaean Desert scrolls and rabbinic literature. This apparatus represents the project’s self-recognized innovation, for it dares to ‘overcome the methodological problems of using (rabbinic) material in the framework of an apparatus.’ The third selectively presents textual evidence from medieval Bible manuscripts. It is suggested that ‘rivulets’ that flow alongside the Mas(s)oretic river may in some such minor variants reflect a pristine text even though by the time of these manuscripts the Masoretic tradition had been directed into a well-defined channel. A fourth collects variants in spelling, vowels, and accents that do not affect the sense. A fifth and sixth provide space for the editors’ more subjective reflections upon the text and intertextual relations in, respectively, English and Hebrew.

The cumulative force of widespread collation of variants and selective presentation mark this work as a significant step forward in the study of the Hebrew Bible’s text.

In the face of the editorial challenge to manage the subjective-objective tension, Goshen-Gottstein ruminates—perhaps more darkly than circumstances require-that ‘(w)e are wrong in whatever we do: whether we overburden the apparatus by recording without discrimination each apparent textual divergence in a version or a Midrash manuscript, or whether we use our own judgment to decide which “facts” do belong in the apparatus. I tried the follow the golden mean.’

If Goshen-Gottstein is to be allowed such self-criticism, then students of the Hebrew Bible must be permitted to clamor for more of just this kind of error. Scholars of Isaiah now find it folly to exercise their craft without a copy of this volume near an elbow.