Determining the Text
Biblical Exegesis: Step One Part Two
As noted in part one, textual criticism should largely be left to the experts because it requires such technical skill.1 But a working knowledge can aid you when reading notes in your Bible.
For example, at Deuteronomy 30:16 in the ESV there are two footnotes:
If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God1 that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules,2 then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
The first footnote reads: “Septuagint; Hebrew lacks If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God”
What this means is, the Hebrew manuscripts do not contain the words “If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God” but Deuteronomy 30:16 in Hebrew simply begins with “that I command you today…” The ESV footnote is indicating that they have added the phrase “If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God” from the Septuagint and they believe the Septuagint here reflects the original reading of the text.
Or, 1 Samuel 1:24 reads:
And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three-year-old bull,3 an ephah4 of flour, and a skin of wine, and she brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh. And the child was young.
Footnote number 3, the first in this verse, reads: “Dead Sea Scroll, Septuagint, Syriac; Masoretic Text three bulls”
What this means is the Masoretic Hebrew text (the medieval Hebrew text) reads “three bulls,” but the Dead Sea Scrolls (ancient Hebrew text), Septuagint, and Syriac (an Aramaic translation) read “three-year-old bull.” And the ESV editors believe the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, and Syriac reflect the original reading.
There are at least four types of “tools” that can help us grow in our understanding of textual criticism and help us understand these footnotes in our English Bibles, and thus determine what text to study, teach, and preach.
1. Introductions
The first thing we need is an introduction on the complicated discipline of textual criticism. David Alan Black’s New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide is a great place to start, though admittedly it only covers the New Testament. A little beefier, but still accessible and covering the Old Testament, is Paul Wegner’s, A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History, Methods and Results.
Two other excellent resources are chapter three on textual criticism in Jason DeRouchie’s How to Understand and Apply the Old Testament: Twelve Steps from Exegesis to Theology and chapter two on textual criticism in Andrew Naselli’s How to Understand and Apply the New Testament: Twelve Steps from Exegesis to Theology. I highly recommend both of these books.
Working through one of these books would be an excellent starting point to understand the exegetical step of textual criticism.
2. Witnesses
A “witness” is a manuscript or group of manuscripts that testify to a particular reading. Grossly they can be lumped together as “Dead Sea Scrolls” or “Septuagint,” etc., or they can be further broken down in “text-types” such as the proto-MT type or LXX-type of Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, or the “Western” New Testament text type as reflected in codex Bezae from the 5th century.2 Most English Bible footnotes are going to note witnesses at the higher level of Septuagint or Dead Sea Scrolls etc.
Being familiar with the witnesses (their language, their date, the material they are written on, their relationship to the original text etc.) will help you understand the footnotes in your English Bible. These books are quite technical, but a detailed overview of the Old Testament witnesses can be found in Ernst Wurthwein’s book, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica (now in its third edition) and a great overview of the New Testament witnesses can be found in Bruce Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (now in its fourth edition, but the third edition is preferable).
If a footnote in your Bible’s says “Syriac” or “Septuagint,” these books will give you the context to understand what that means.
For those wanting to go a little deeper, Barthelemy’s Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project and Tov’s Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (now in its fourth edition) are great Old Testament resources. Aland and Aland’s The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism is also very good for the New Testament.
3. Commentaries
By commentary, I do not mean commentaries on books of the Bible, though academic commentaries will often have helpful notes on textual criticism, but I mean textual criticism commentaries.
For the Old Testament—and you will have to find these on thriftbooks or somewhere similar—Dominique Barthelemy’s Preliminary and Interim Report of the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project in five volumes provides a commentary on textual variants in the Old Testament text. This resource was created for Bible translators. It is helpful because it contains a four point scale to state the level of certainty over the variant. A letter A indicates that this form of the text has a high probability; B indicates that there is some doubt about the form; C indicates that there is considerable doubt about the form; and D indicates that the form of the text is highly doubtful.3
There are two textual commentaries for the New Testament: Comfort’s New Testament Text and Translation Commentary: Commentary on the variant readings of the ancient New Testament manuscripts and how they relate to the major English translations and Metzger’s, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament.
Metzger’s book is largely a commentary on the textual decisions made by the committee for the UBS4 Greek text of the New Testament. This Greek text, which is equivalent to the NA27 (and now replaced by the UBS5 and NA284), is the basis of most English translations. Understanding the variants will require knowledge of Greek since English translations are not provided. But this resource is helpful because, similar to Barthelemy for the OT, a rating A–D is provided. These ratings express the committee’s confidence in knowing the original text. A “letter {A} signifies that the text is certain, while {B} indicates that the text is almost certain. The letter {C}, however, indicates that the Committee had difficulty in deciding which variant to place in the text. The letter {D}, which occurs only rarely, indicates that the committee had great difficulty in arriving at a decision.”5 So even if one does not know Greek, they can understand the certainty with which the original text is known by consulting this commentary.
Comfort’s book is a lot larger and contains more explanation in English, and as the title indicates, makes note why certain English versions differ when the difference is due to a textual decision. In other words, while English versions will differ due to translation style, they also differ because of different decisions taken regarding the original text and Comfort makes note of these.
If purchasing is not an option, a free option, which is still helpful and likely more accessible because it is in English are the extensive notes for the NET Bible which can be accessed here online.
The NET notes are grouped as “sn” for study note (often explaining terms, such as what an “ephah” is in the verse above); “tn” for translator’s note explaining how/why a word was translated the way it was; and “tc” for textual criticism. So the “tc” notes in the NET Bible explain a lot of the textual decisions made by the translation committee.
For example, 1 Samuel 1:24 in the NET reads:
Then she took him up with her57 as soon as she had weaned him, along with three bulls,58 an ephah59 of flour, and a container60 of wine. She came to the Lord’s house at Shiloh, and the boy was with them.61
When compared with the ESV above, you can see the NET follows the Hebrew in reading “three bulls.” The footnote at this point in the NET Bible notes that the LXX reads “tc LXX with a three year old bull.”
You’ll also notice a difference if you compare the last sentence of 1 Samuel 1:24 in the NET, “…and the boy was with them” with the ESV, “And the child was young.” The ESV lacks a note at this point, but the NET Bible includes a long note, which reads:
tc The translation follows the LXX. Although “with her” can be conjectured instead of “with them,” the context of the LXX assumes the presence of Elkanah as well as Hannah. The MT has the unusual structure “and the boy was a boy,” possibly the result of dittography. If the MT is correct, perhaps we are to understand two different meanings of the same noun, e.g. “the boy was a servant.” The noun נַעַר (naʿar) is commonly understood to refer to a young man or a servant (HALOT s.v. נַעַר), however, it refers to the infant Moses (Exod 2:6) and to Benjamin when he may be well past adolescence (Gen 43:8). Further those called נַעַר (naʿar) may not simply be servants, but someone in line to receive a position of rank. Samuel does become a servant, or apprentice, and turns out to be in line to replace Eli. Yet since he has not yet been given to Eli, this seems like an odd place to remark on his being an apprentice.
At Deuteronomy 30:16 the NET Bible follows the Hebrew, unlike the ESV which follows the LXX, thus reading:
What21 I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are about to possess.22
Footnote 21 acknowledges the LXX reading, but does not opt to put it in the Bible as the ESV has done.
So, if you are unable to get Metzger, Comfort, or Barthlemey, the NET notes are a good place to start to have a textual difference explained.
4. English Translations of Witnesses
When reading the Bible, it’s good to have a textual commentary on hand to further explain the footnote in your English Bible. But these notes have to be selective, dealing with the largest differences. So it is also beneficial to have copies of the witnesses yourself to consult. For example, while reading the Old Testament in the ESV, you could also have open an English translation of the Septuagint.
A word of caution. It is preferable to consult the witnesses in the original language, and also preferably on the original manuscript if at all possible. One time I was examining a textual variant in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was using the editio princeps of the DSS, the standard printed edition of the text. A particular variant in the DSS had been labeled as a variant from the Masoretic text—which does happen. Specifically, this variant had been marked as agreeing with the LXX and differing from the MT. However, this variant was based upon a supposed single different consonant in the word which changed the meaning of the word and the verse. The consonant however was also marked in the editio princeps as hard to read. Amazingly, many of the ancient manuscripts are available online in high resolution to consult. So I tracked down the specific manuscript to look at this hard to read consonant. What I found, at least to my untrained eye, was barely an ink drop before the manuscript had been ripped. Not only was 90% of the consonant missing from the manuscript, the remaining ink drop seemed as if it could be understood as either of the contested consonants. Thus, I did not know why editors had placed the consonant which they did in the editio princeps, granted they marked it as hard to read.6 However, had I not consulted the ancient manuscript, I could have been led to believe that this manuscript was actually a witness to a Hebrew Vorlage to the LXX, but instead I concluded, at least at this word, the ancient DSS manuscript was not a witness to the LXX-text type.
That caution aside, having access to the ancient versions in the original language is helpful. Minimally, having the Göttingen Septuagint and Latin Vulgate would be preferable, in addition to having access to the Discoveries in the Judean Desert for the DSS. Additionally, one should have access to the Aramaic Targumim and Syraic Peshitta of the Old and New Testament.7
Knowing that an English translation is motivated by many factors and often decisions are made on slight evidence and this evidence is often not granted to the reader, it is still helpful to have English translations of the versions and many are available online for free. Below are the standard English translations of the ancient versions:
Dead Sea Scrolls — Abegg, Flint, Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English — again, read my caution with the Hebrew print edition of the DSS and multiply that caution for this English edition.
Septuagint - New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS) - free online
Aramaic The Aramaic Bible (19 vols)
Vulgate Douay Rheims Bible - free online
Is it Worth It?
I would encourage you to take the first step in adding textual criticism to your exegetical toolkit. A first step would be getting an introduction listed above to become familiar with the textual variants and then begin using the extensive NET Bible notes to familiarize yourself with the variants. After that, I would begin getting familiar with the Septuagint as it is the most important translation of the Old Testament and is often the source of many of the New Testament’s citations of the Old Testament.
That may seem like a lot of hard work. Do I really need to do that? Won’t that make my Bible reading dry and academic? I beg to differ.
At the very least, you will become more confident in God’s Word and experienced in textual variants seeing that the variants are not different in substance. And you’ll be equipped to understand the variants in the Bible for yourself.
For example, Luke 3:36 reads that Cainan was the son of Arphaxad. Luke chapter 3:23–38 relies a lot on the genealogies in Genesis, but this Cainan is not found in the the whole Hebrew Bible. But Genesis 10:24 notes that “Arpachshad fathered Shelah” not Cainan. It is not impossible for genealogies to skip generations, but what source did Luke use to determine Arphaxad fathered Cainan who then fathered Shelah? Instead of just rubbing your head, you could look at one of your textual commentaries or you could get out your copies of the ancient versions. And you might find that at this point in the LXX, the text reads: “καὶ Αρφαξαδ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Καιναν, καὶ Καιναν ἐγέννησεν τὸν Σαλα…” (“And Arphaxad became the father of Kainan, and Kainan became the father of Sala…”). So evidently Luke was using the LXX text. This doesn’t answer the question of what was the original text of Gen 10:24, but it does help you understand how Luke got his information and also reinforce that no textual variants affects any major doctrine.
Though, Augustine “recommends before all things to those who wish to study Scripture to apply themselves to the (textual) Criticism of the Bible and to correct the mistakes of their copies.” Wellum, Systematic Theology: From Canon to Concept, Vol 1, 262–3.
The Western text type has most variants in the book of Acts.
Dominique Barthelemy, Preliminary and Interim Report of the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, vol 1 (New York: United Bible Societies, 1974), viii.
The UBS5 and NA28 do have differences in the main body of the text within the Catholic Epistles from the UBS4 and NA27.
Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed (Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 14.
Since I only looked at this one variant, there could have been other variants in this manuscript aligning it with a particular text type and thus giving evidence to read the contested consonant a particular way. That being said, the consonant in view, lacked evidence either way.