Customer Reviews

The Text of Genesis 1-11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a relative newcomer to Old Testament textual criticism, I found this book most helpful. It taught me a lot, and provided me with a lot of information that I would otherwise not know where to find. It is, though, marred by a few slips. They may sound trivial, but textual criticism is largely concerned with what seem to be trivial slips! For example, Hendel fails to realise that the Italian scholar U Cassuto and the Israeli M D Cassuto are one and the same person. He does not note that he is referring to the second edition of Spurrell's book, though given that he dismisses it as of little value, he may not have noticed the fact that it is a second edition. But I do not want to suggest that these minor blots detract too much from the book.

This book summarises the available evidence for the original text of Genesis 1-11. It is far more comprehensive and easy to understand than Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensis (BHS). Particularly valuable is the essay on the lengths of the lives of the patriarchs from Adam to Abraham, where the Massoretic text, LXX and Samaritan pentateuch differ. Unlike BHS, Hendel presents his favoured reconstruction of the original text, rather than reproducing the Massoretic Text and confining amendments to footnotes. Many will find this preferable. However, it is not such an original approach as Hendel claims, having been used by Ball in the Polychrome Bible (oddly omitted from the list of references). A strange gap is that whereas Hendel lists even trivial variants from a handful of Hebrew manuscripts, he totally omits even major variants from all other Hebrew manuscripts. While most scholars argue that mediaeval Hebrew variants have little value, a selection of the most important ones would be of interest.