Variants as the fingerprints of defective scribes

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

10 March 2010

My engagement with conventional textual criticism or as an Adventist should see it, textual analysis, led me to the conclusion that how you see the broad picture affects how you will present the particular aspects of the data.

What does it mean?

Orthodox churches are divided into different streams of tradition and so the Catholic Church favors the Latin Bible translation and the Syriac Church favors the Syriac Bible translation, the Coptic Church favors the Coptic Bible translation, the Armenian Church favors the Armenian Bible translation, the Greek-Orthodox Church favors the Greek translation. The Jewish tradition favors the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew. They pay a lot of attention to the Targum Aramaic translations of that Hebrew text in their commentaries by the Rabbis of the Middle Ages and later.

The Latin Bible is the Vetus Latina (195 CE) or the Vulgate of Jerome (395-403 CE).The Syriac Bible is the special edition of Leiden which selected readings from manuscripts dating between the 6th to the 12th centuries CE. The Coptic Bible is the text compiled from manuscripts later than the 6th centuries CE. The same can be said about the Armenian texts. The Greek Bible, most people try to say, is the Septuagint (LXX) but the Septuagint is non-existent and an ever elusive objective (says its editor J. Wevers).

When Qumran manuscripts were discovered and they were placed earlier than the Christian era or coming of Christ, and especially when scholars like A. Penna and M. H. Gottstein (in the 1950's) found so many variants comparing between 1QIsaa and the Vulgate, Vetus Latina, socalled byzantine LXX, Syriac Peshitta, Targum (Coptic following mostly the byzantine LXX readings with some exceptions), the churces were very excited. They felt that it proved that their versions and the readings with variants to the Hebrew text, were old. 

Armed with their broad picture of the comparisons with Qumran and its variants, they suddenly wanted to push the case for the majority rules situation: many witnesses against the Hebrew cannot be wrong due to the number and variety of languages the witnesses are coming from. Coming to this understanding, they thought that their versions' value was raised to the status of equal position with the Hebrew. Thus, the broad picture that emerged for them is that it was not a case of one text (Hebrew) over all the others but all texts (Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, Ehtiopic etc), all these were equal.

A methodology was subsequently designed that text reconstruction should be made by eclecticism, little from this one and a little from that one, discriminating against none and rejecting none.

A kind of "ecumenical approach" became the psychological basis of conventional textual criticism. Skepticism surged against the Hebrew text form as far as grammar is concerned and as far as syntactical, grammatical forms are concerned.

It is within the heyday of this approach that this researcher has started to study textual criticism. At first they sounded very convincing but then I asked myself this question: if there are so many differences between them, where is the Word of God? God does not speak in contrasting forms, contrasting and conflicting messages. There is harmony and singleness in what He says. Only one of the texts could be correct.

Analysing Qumran was a sobering experience. The manuscripts are filled with errors and corrections and errors in the corrections, sometimes by three different hands. A very thick book was devoted to serious research of these by Maleachi Martin.

If variants at Qumran is the result of errors uncorrected, then the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition, which was used to correct some errors in the first place, has to be the superior tradition here.

Thus, for me the one text only theory originated. The consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition is the very Word of God and exactly in form the way God intended it to be and all the versions are deviations from them. Qumran and the versions shares these variants and if Qumran is defective, so are these versions. It is bad news for the churches and versions, but this is the reality. So what does this mean?

a. The truth lies not in what the Vulgate as opposed to the consonantal text of the Masoretic said on the issue, or the Syriac as opposed to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition (Hebrew), or the Coptic, or the Vetus Latina, or the Targum or the Greek.

b. The variants that these texts share with Qumran as opposed to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition (Hebrew), are the fingerprints of defective scribal practices at Qumran.

c. There is ample evidence that someone had access to a good copy of the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition but that by difficult access to that text, the person seemed to read it, memorize it, walked away and dictate it to another who did not have direct access to it in order to correct his errors or slips of the ear. So Qumran texts originated. Some may argue that Maleachi Martin indicated in 1958 that up to four different scribes at times corrected the Isaiah scroll from Qumran cave 1, and that is true, but still their remain a substantial amount of errors or fingerprints of defectiveness that were reproduced by the versions who had access to copies of this Qumran scroll or the scroll itself.

d. Is it just my imagination or did I read somewhere that emperor Severus in the days of Origen was keen to donate to the Jews some Deuteronomy manuscripts from the library in Rome and since this is the days that Origen reported that some manuscripts were found in caves near Jericho, did someone deposit in those days these manuscripts there? The Late Roman IV lamp at the entrances of caves 4, 1, 11 proves that someone visited during the days of Origen the caves.

e. The textual variety theory of Emmanuel Tov et al (E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992]: 117) for the Second Temple Period, based on theories as set out supra, should be shifted aside as non-valid.

f. The words "textual plurality and variety" has no place in a Seventh Day Adventist approach of textual analysis. It is based upon what scholars called "diplomatic text approach" (see Johann Cook's lectures in 1984).

h. There were not "many original texts" in the Second Temple Period (contra Tov 1992: 174).

g. In his broad picture, Tov tries to uphold this variety view of text for the Second Temple period by pointing out to pro-MT Jeremiah texts like 4QJer^c and pro-LXX texts like 4QJer^bd (Tov 1992: 178). However, scrutiny of these texts point to an opposite view.

h. The way Tov and Barrera developed their broad view is to discuss the (1) One Text theory of Paul Lagarde followed by the (2) Vulgar Text theory of Paul Kahle, Sperber, Greenberg, Ginsberg and Nyberg; followed by the (3) Locale-Text theory of William Albright and F. M. Cross et al ending with their own later view of the (4) Literary Development of the Urtext theory of Emmanuel Tov and Trebolle Barrera. The current Adventist view of this researcher is to revert back to the (5) Urtext theory with the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition as the only Urtext (Van Wyk 2008).

Dear God

You speak only one way and through one form of the text. Your words are not approximate. Thank you for preserving the Hebrew text for us in its consonantal form that is the exact original of the authors who wrote it, whether Moses, Samuel or any other. In your Name, Amen.