Old Testament Textual Criticism

A Practical Introduction

Brotzman, Ellis R., Tully, Eric J.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781493404759
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Reference

A Readable, Updated Introduction to Textual Criticism This accessibly written, practical introduction to Old Testament textual criticism helps students understand the discipline and begin thinking through complex issues for themselves. The authors combine proven expertise in the classroom with cutting-edge work in Hebrew textual studies. This successful classic (nearly 25, 000 copies sold) has been thoroughly expanded and updated to account for the many changes in the field over the past twenty years. It includes examples, illustrations, an updated bibliography, and a textual commentary on the book of Ruth.

1

Writing in the Ancient Near East

Study of the transmission of the OT text begins with the origin of Hebrew writing and its development through time. But the field of Hebrew writing is just one small part of a fascinating area of study, the history of writing within human civilization. Clearly, within the scope of this book, no in-depth account of the history of writing can be offered. Yet it will be important to trace at least some of the main features of this story in order to understand more fully the details of the transmission of the OT text. This chapter is given, therefore, to a brief survey of writing in the ancient Near East and to a summary of the place of writing within the confines of the OT itself.

Sumerian Writing

The history of writing in the ancient Near East begins with the Sumerians toward the end of the fourth millennium BCE.1 This non-Semitic people either invented writing or adopted a writing system from another people, probably to assist in running their increasingly complex bureaucracies.2 The Sumerian system of writing, in its earliest stages, was pictographic; that is, signs were used to picture specific objects and thus call them to mind. An ancient text might consist of a succession of pictures which, when strung together, told a story.3

Pictographic writing, though a start, is limited in what it can represent. At an early stage, therefore, the Sumerians improved their writing by using one sign to refer to several different things. A basic sign that indicated “foot” was also used to indicate the verbs “to go,” “to stand,” and “to carry.”4 The gain that resulted from this development was somewhat offset by ambiguity in what was expressed. Early Sumerian writing did not indicate pronunciation or most morphological information such as pronouns or adverbial markers. In its interest in economy, the writing system was far removed from the spoken language and was incomplete.5 It functioned somewhat like a memory aid, in which the reader was required to supply information from his or her knowledge of the spoken language. Later, Sumerian writing became more explicit in representing morphological features (such as the plural).6

The major shortcoming of the Sumerian system is the large number of signs that were necessary to express thought.7 A second complication of the system is the existence of polyphones and homophones.8 Two additional features of the Sumerian language were developed to combat this ambiguity. Specialized signs, called determinatives, were placed before or after words to indicate the general class of object or person, and so forth. For example, there was a determinative for deity, another for certain human occupations, and the like.9 A second special sign, called a phonetic complement, was also used to enhance clarity in communication. For example, the Sumerian writing for the noun “wall” comprises two signs: (1) a pictogram that visually represents a city wall and (2) the bad-sign, which phonetically represents the pictogram’s pronunciation as [bad].10 Perhaps an illustration in English would be helpful. The ampersand symbol “&” is an ideogram that represents the conjunction “and.” To aid the reader in correct pronunciation, the symbol could be rendered as “& [and]” (see also the discussion of ideograms, also called logograms, below in Akkadian Writing).11 The system may strike the modern reader as cumbersome, but it provided a workable solution in its time.

Akkadian Writing

The Akkadians, a Semitic people, took over the Sumerian system of writing sometime in the middle of the third millennium BCE.12 It must be remembered that the Sumerians were not Semitic. Therefore, the Akkadians adopted a script of another, unrelated language and used it to express their own language. The system is called cuneiform because it consists of wedge-shaped signs created by pressing a triangular-shaped stylus into clay tablets. The major change introduced by the Akkadians was a much greater use of syllabic signs. Their writing system was not exclusively syllabic, however. Their six hundred to seven hundred signs included the following: six signs to represent vowels, ninety-seven signs that represented “open” syllables (consonant + vowel or vowel + consonant), more than two hundred signs that indicated “closed” syllables (consonant + vowel + consonant), and about three hundred signs that were used as ideograms.13 The ideograms were essentially the signs that the Sumerians had used before them, but they were probably pronounced as Akkadian words when the texts were read. Something analogous occurs when an English speaker reads “$2.00” as “two dollars.” A Spanish speaker would read the same symbols as “dos dólares.” Our modern numeral symbols are simply current examples of ideograms.14

The Akkadian language is important for biblical studies on several levels. In the first place, Akkadian is the earliest attested Semitic language, and its decipherment and study since the nineteenth century have proved helpful for the elucidation of features of the Hebrew language.15 The existence of the Akkadian writing system from the middle of the third millennium BCE onward sets the writing activity of various OT personages in a proper historical and linguistic context. Creation and flood accounts in the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian provide material with which to compare and contrast the biblical analogs, while Akkadian legal documents, royal annals, and correspondence provide historical and cultural information.

Egyptian Writing

Though many other ancient Near Eastern writing systems cannot be included because of limited space, at least one more needs to be mentioned before speaking briefly of the origin of alphabetic writing. The writing system of ancient Egypt is known as hieroglyphic writing. This earliest Egyptian writing system dates from around 3200 BCE.16 It consists of two kinds of signs: ideograms (things, actions, concepts) and phonograms (sounds).17 The system is definitely pictographic, but it is difficult to ascertain to what extent it was influenced by Mesopotamian writing. Egypt had trade relations with the East in the fourth millennium, and one of the ideas that came to Egypt may have been the idea of writing, especially for documenting transactions and keeping accounts. Penelope Wilson writes, “It may never be possible to tell from the archaeological evidence exactly how far Egypt was influenced by external factors, but if there had been contact, the Egyptians went on and developed their own writing system and its uses in their own way without drawing anything further from outside.”18

Hieratic, a cursive script written from right to left in horizontal lines, probably originated as a simpler form of hieroglyphic that could be used for writing on destructible materials such as papyri.19 Later, this developed into another cursive script called Demotic (ca. 700 BCE).20 In contrast to Mesopotamian languages, Egyptian writing maintained its pictographic character throughout its history.21 It never developed to the same extent that Akkadian writing did, that is, with a complete loss of si...