A Proposed New Method of Textual Criticism in the Old Testament (Concluded)

Author(s): Paul Ruben

Source: The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Oct., 1935),
pp. 34-42
Published by: University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/529224
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 A PROPOSED NEW METHOD OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM
IN THE OLD TESTAMENT-Concluded
PAUL RUBEN

F) Hos. 7:1-7.-1. These verses that contain, it seems, the first

stanza of the whole speech (7:1-16), give us but a blurred vision of
what the Israelites are accused of by the prophet; and the very fact
that similar charges are leveled at the people several times makes us
doubtful as to what they actually consisted of. Happily we can gain
firm ground by observing that we have here two Qinah-lines and one
Qinah-Ko0:ov 5

1 -..
..-."
** - T . . .

1 n.%6
W. r):r

It is probable that the third line gives us an account of those U'b 7y

mentioned in the second; wherefrom it would follow that verses 3 and
4 are not, in their present form, parts of the original text; for they in-
terrupt the apparent connection of verses 2 and 5. And as we may
suspect that there was once a K&Xovparallel to '131 t:122=Cr; , the
suspicion arises that all the other sentences and verses of this section
contain disfigured elements of the missing member. But first we must
attend to the restoration and exegesis of the foregoing K, Wa.
"=Ij and tREM n can only be understood de conatu, "When I
intended to restore to health my people I when I wanted to heal
w
Israel"; cf. II Kings 2:1, r ' r,"When the
Lord intended to take up Elijah." The cure mentioned here probably
refers to the wounds inflicted by a hostile inroad, and had been per-
haps announced by the prophet as a divine promise, after some im-
portant offices of the state had been filled through the influence of
the religious party. Instead of 51 we must write '56b, for the
prophet is speaking here of things past, as the perfects show:
.1`M,
T :
, 2 b* z5M; the 1 was probably added by some
*"" *

2.AM-2.•.2,
.bZ, .'
This was partly seen by Budde.
34

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 A PROPOSED
NEW METHODOFTEXTUALCRITICISM 35
critical authority who believed to refer here, as in many
other passages, to the future. I tr.1-2 2.- discuss here fully the mean-
shall not
ing of =
I.T
.16 In our verse, which is the earliest passage where
r.2 it signifies "to restore to health" (I
it occurs, 1V'), and from this
medical signification probably all its shades of meaning are derived.
The beginning of the third line seems to have been 1
2t - -,
"They have ground the spirit of the counselors." El has read,
at the end of verse 4, Kacdr~7 LLKpvY 7raaca4?vUvLc7(HP 86); some
manuscripts of G57have roi uvwoi~vaL aibr boXov; they are followed
•ts
by J, donec fermentareturtotum. It is not impossible to connect
with what precedes; but by writing and connecting it with what *'Z
follows we gain a predicate \I .*n
and a Qinah-KrCXov too. Mt is
used in the same sense: Ps. 32:3, "?!i,
'Ir i
t'I'Slt. These words, as T~Nr.are ':T-
they stand, probably1.8
meant to say:.
"When I concealed my sins, my bones languished, while I was groan-
ing all the day long with pain"; but this is hardly right, because "my
sins" and "with pain" are not in the text. Write "i:~ .i :

"when I groan my spirit dwindleth,"58and cf. Job 16:6, 1 -r_ ,

lt
.onN
r A0; ' IT'VI;M and " •1Nt rep-
W. . .
resent both the merely physical reaction or non-reaction to pain,
and are opposed to the confession of sins (vs. 5).59 Instead of MT's
123t, T has Ot, GAS 111". , GB it seems that the
from '•12;
which all our readings can be derived was =iD (T)
reading
and that this was corrupted into I (MT, J), while in G's text
3 was to be corrected by " written above the line; this resulted in
I?tr~'i J had 1Ib*2 and turned it into All the variants
.
lead us to write *' %1'.:.mean "kings." For
this, however, cannot
"t; is
here an individual event reported, as is shown by MF1Vin the sec-
ond line. Translate "counselors" and compare the Assyrian and
56Among more recent inquirers about the phrase must be mentioned Preuschen,
ZATW, XV, 1-74; Dietrich, ibid., Beiheft 40; Baumann, ibid. (N.F.), VI, 17-144.
'7HP 22, 36, 42, 49, 51, and others.
58 Kennedy reads ~ "When I groaned, life itself was ebbing
away" (J. Th. St., XXII [1921], . 381). I.,
_ •.E.
59See also my note on Zeph. 2:2, AJSL, LI, 187; cf. Ps. 143:7, ~"
, "My
spirit faileth." Furthermore, =11 seems to be a coextensive synonym if..•l
of I Sam. 1:
15 (G) has 011 ('i oirp& ,&pa), where MT reads ['l lI-; is corrupt);
(Job 30:25
n
the word is perhaps identical with the Assyr. s2mu, "storm."
.p na.

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36 THE AMERICAN OF SEMITIC
JOURNAL LANGUAGES

Syrian use of the root. It would lead me too far were I to discuss
some other passages where this word occurs (Hos. 7:16; 8:4; Isa.
30:4[?]; Mic. 1:14).
In the second part of the third line has been ably corrected
17•t•''-
into i~' by Sievers, "they have made drunk"; the object of
is most likely nr11; it must denote a class of officials as
this verb ."
tr*:, '
"it, and, probably, There is an Assyrian root
held ~'r:. to.
hamdmu that was by Delitzsch mean possibly "to govern,"
"to lead" (HWB, p. 282ab), by Jensen "to command" (KB, VIa, 367),
while Meissner and Rost consider as its original meaning "to hold"
(Beitrdge zur Assyriologie, III, 359). The substantive hammu, "re-
gent"-it occurs in a proper name-is thought by Delitzsch to be
derived from this root; so we might read here r~ r, "government."
Yet I should prefer 1;";, "the police," deriving it from the root W i ,
which means "to see" in Jewish Aramaic and in Palestinian Syriac,
"to defend" in Arabic;;. it would not be the only piece of Syrian im-
* the same
port within Hosea. T renders C'2•S 1N:
•p nr'C; "t)= ;.
translation is found in Jer. 9:1, where it*•stands for
"l'".2
But we have no right to assume that T read too, in our Hosean
n~•• ,
passage (for Mr); to understand that, one need only observe how dif-
ferently the words ]•ER7. are translated by T, Jer. 9:1, and
Hos. 7:4. %V" is perhaps here, as in Job 16:7, the translation of

r)7; both 1R (MT) and rr1m(T) may be derived from a reading rx-
the ' being written above the R as its correction-and 1p may
be corrupted from "they have fettered"; cf. Arab. caniya, "he
was a captive"; the -',
word occurs also in other biblical passages. As to
I would combine it with Arab. ladlada, "looked," "peered";
13.bpg,"experienced
ladtldd, guide"; the "spies" might be people who, serving
Hosea's party, had to find out if a citizen, say, was addicted to an il-
legitimate cult. "They have worn out the spirit of the counsel-
ors I made ill the leaders I the police they have made drunk with
wine I and put the 'spies' in fetters." Incessant political argument,
poison, wine, and force seem to have been the means wherewith the
revolutionaries of Ephraim and Samaria did away with the instru-
ments of the clerical party. There is no ground for assuming that this
sa See Noldeke, op. cit., LIV, 15; Meissner, MVA G, IX, 230 ft.

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 A PROPOSED
NEW METHODOFTEXTUAL
CRITICISM 37

verse has anything to do with II Kings 15:13 ff., as Marti thought; I

am inclined, after a critical examination of all Hosean remains, to
date it about 730.
2. But do we now know more about the missing first KWXovof the
second line? Its meaning might have been "So far they have worked
in the dark"; but that does not come true. In order to recover the
meaning and the words, I propose to make use of the verses of which
I have not yet spoken: the end of verse 1, the beginning of verse 2,
and verses 3, 4, 0, and 7. The three verses that compare the people
impeached to an oven cannot all be genuine; the most obvious explana-
tion for so much similarity with so much difference would be that the
same graphical data are dealt with here in different ways. The words
"rn. UT In• '=3]' [ ":
=•D cannot be Hosean in this
'rrT :
r-'=.t
'"rT ?1.
form, as "t•"T refers us to the sins of an earlier time, while the *#
-
- --

prophet speaks of the present and the time immediately preceding it-
as • t shows. Nor do the rather general remarks of verse 1,
M12.•
"They have committed falsehood, They steal and rob," agree with
the special accusations of verse 5, which are concerned with political
events."l And whatever shape we give to verse 3, whether we write
or , or or we shall
I"l UL'•", 00•71 t1"pM'•,
never be able place it before verse 5 ('1;
'.• to,Mtt" as anybody who
tries it can see. Of the suspicious verses, only .1b.),
this verse 3 looks like
a Qinah-K&Xov; in the three verses referring to the oven, there ap-
pears tendency toward parallelism or at least at a short caesura-like
a
stop in the middle; but they lack the compactness of the genuine KwXa.
The words '1 (vs. 2), if I have restored them rightly,
".'.•.!
have good parallelism; b_:1-they cannot be Hosean, as I have said,
but
on account of "n-'tdT.
Before trying to recover the basis from which these suspicious
verses may have been derived, I must give as briefly as possible the
reasons why I sometimes deviate from the Masoretic text.
In verse 1, T, G, S seem to have read more than MT: T M'b[2],
G 1IbN, S '35;62 all these readings may be corruptions of *'Q5
?1~5

61 According to Duhm, the words from of vs. 1 up to (vs. 2) are an

. some9. poem (ZA T W, XXXI,
extensive insertion, perhaps a quotation from In.T. 24).
,
152 r4.t Jl.Z :r?4 (T); btln-l jl5b (G); %Mb %I-pr J '.7r (S).

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38 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES

and this perhaps stood before "Before my face they have com-
q1:.
mitted falsehood" (cf. Jer. 6:7).
In verse 2, MT has =Z1bb, T, G, S perhaps is
the right text. G has, instead of l :2222;
/ I225.
6•s2Nb•l, 67rows viaooav
s boVnres rT Kapbi~ a'TrJv; he seems to have found three words
instead of bl=1' $21, i.e., probably three variations of an obscure
set of letters. avv~wbav is perhaps the rendering of i'l,'; in Isa.
7:2 (where MT has 67M), G has avvecvrmTev, S,'Int; " in Matt. 18:
19, S has (1'1 for oavvE~c0va, while the Syro-palestinian version
has the Afel; cf. Eccles. 7:15, for oav r'obrcpovf6cVs,
i',SR ]'; ,
etc."3 This surmise leads me to conjecture as the right text:
: &
T. t [MT]

"And they will not deceive me, as they intend," say by acts of external
devotion. What follows would agree with this.
In verse 4, El and J have two words instead of "171• (rpos bXhlyov
rbXts, paululum civitas); they probably read 17s"FlT;64 T read,
Sw
besides 7•2: i (~'z );65 G's &r 4Xowysseems to be a render-
ing of • cf. Isa. 44:16; 47:14, where 11R (G: vrip)is said of
Ri-; S has
a warming fire; 1'5i . I believe Imt to be the right read-
•'•' [S]
"•rI~zt[MT,G]
' w [MT,T]
%.
[T]
.
T [E'(J)]
•.•
ing; I"
'i , "that ceases being stirred." MER•t, MT, T,
•-•1
J; G, S. I cannot explain G's KaTaKalaaaros (where MT
i'2=). At the beginning of the verse both T and El seem
has i•_b,
to have read 7R: t"'-M (6:,0/ : 'bE r536,as TOb LoXEUELY
and this may be right-the of "R:2 being a
K7rvupob/,elot)L,
63 I have taken these quotations from Schulthess, Lexicon Syropalaestinum.
64• Xi-oL stands for 1.7T Isa. 24:6 [G, Z1, 81].
*6 This is confirmed by what follows:
nIr i .

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 A PROPOSEDNEW METHODOF TEXTUALCRITICISM 39

late addition-as G has instead of MESH 1I~t y171

If that is would be both"nmasculine
,- and
(I q XV). so, 'i)3
,35 in this passage.
feminine
Verse 6, =2ip, MT; G's a'VKabV7aav,66is perhaps the translation of
2l , cf. Ezek. 21:3, " Ka KaTaKavO7raovTat; T adds b1l
? •i
which may stand for b1. (cf. TJ' Gen. 24:56). I1'P
z..7,
-tr
is perhaps denominated from 2 , "fight": "They have quarreled
1
continually." Schorr has corrected 102=18 MT, G into C "7Z'-6;
G (6bZ/ ~AMER" ') and T s"2 17 have more letters than MT;
perhaps P' 7 was written above 'I in order to correct it into
! ' i, and was corrupted into Nl: and "The whole night
"• heat of their
the "7,
anger sleeps."
The basis seems to have been:

13V folwn 67 letr

The Y bee de the:1
by r esito inZx* verse

*2.2•. ..........................2... 1
...... .,=
........=1 ....... M .W
. 4
. N.. t..t .. .0

4, the
versedoings
O- Ml; of now ine1
have versethem
6, thethey of
are/1; in verse
before 7, the ,
y face.
...Their
p.P.15 surrounded...
1
.of recensioconsists of two readings that seem to be derived
The. following letters have been added by the
The infrom.
verse
restitutors"
I Z
1,) and of HIM"';the of YVIZ; in verse 3, the 2 of t2•r•2; in
b of X
verse 4, the qR*; in verse
Forvoidofsensearetheir"pleadings"
of wp .
6, the W1 of I
RVI;
andfoolish in verse 7,
aretheir"tablets the
ofen-
The recensioconsists of two readings that seem to be derived from

For void of sense are their "pleadings"I and foolishare their "tablets of en-
circling"
Their doingshave now surroundedthem I they are beforemy face.
66 S follows G.
67 G (v, r4, Karapl6,oe&arokb) had the same text as MT. for he renders .;i 1 ,rahdbKT1•
(Gen. 7:11; 8:2. etc.).

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40 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES

(a) Iv Z t'~N Z . The Arab. safiya means "was light-witted"

= safiha;
"S. as to the Nifal cf. (b) the plural of
in Hebrew is `.Ir,
•.!:, Deut..h't..
(e.g., 9:9 ff.); the masculine end-
i.•
ing may be the result rn.~rof Syriac influence.68 The prophet seems to
disparage the political literature of his adversaries. (c) =' M,..
Cf. Ps. 22:13, where 1'7 the noun is formed like
.TI'C',";
. The anticlerical authors may have affixed these
13"s.I-,
tablets'2•.lIr
to some public building and may have called them "tablets of
encircling," because they expected by these writings to overcome their
adversaries, as one army overcomes another by encircling it. But, says
Hosea, now they are encircled by their doings; in Part III of
the line resumes the synonymous of-.=Part II. (d)
means "to plead" before a judge (Job M'•.• 13:18; 23:4; 32:15); it seems, _7g
however, that does not refer to oral pleading, but to written
party pamphlets. 'n.r(e) If this KW^Xcontains a few words more than the
normal this need not disturb us. Such irregular members
Qinah-K&•Aov,
are not at all rare. I still hold to what I wrote many years ago69about
the shifting of the caesura in the Q~nah-K^XAa; a critical examination
of the first chapter of Micah shows that all the lines of this poem con-
sist of four small parts, i.e., that they are what Duhm calls Langverse.
It is not improbable that the double (as in Mic. 1:4)
Qinah-KiJ•a
are but a specialized form of these Langverse.
TheS
word "' at the beginning of the second line belongs to 'VY
M 1I ""~ 7:" which sentence is an explanation
of ' Z :"-C,; it is owing to Hosea's wish to introduce his
b" i~
=•"•
antithesis of i•. and that the logical connection of lines
-".•- .i:
1 and 2 is somewhat obscured.

- - . - - T
"'T:- :

When I wouldrestoreto health my people, when I wouldheal Israel,

Thenthe iniquityof Ephraimwas discovered andthe wickednessof Samaria.
For void of sense are their "pleadings"I and foolishare their "tabletsof en-
circling";II
Their doingshave now surroundedthem I they are beforemy face.
They have wornout the spirit of the counselors,I made sick the leaders;I
The policethey have madedrunkwith wine I [andput the spies in fetters].
68 See what I have said about rIMH above (p. 36).
69 Jewish Quarterly Review, XI, 433 f.

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 A PROPOSED NEW METHOD OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM 41

IV
If my method is supported by the examples I have given, if there
really is a group of corruptions in the Old Testament totally different
from those known hitherto, then the question arises: What is the use
of this method? First of all, I believe, it will make the interpretation
of the sacred texts more definite and more reliable. Hebrew literature
contains works that with all their simplicity are of exceeding distinc-
tion and power; it would seem to be our first duty toward them to re-
store their texts as best we can and to give them back the clear-cut
features that have been blurred by corruptions. The readings that
can be discovered, as I think, by this method are far older than any
that have been transmitted in a direct manner. For most of the resti-
tutions are found both in MT and in G, the work of the restitutor
having been done before the Alexandrian translation, even that of the
Pentateuch,70 was taken in hand; which means that we can bring our
guns far nearer to the besieged fortress than we could before.
Second, the more reliable and the more definite our texts become,
the more we get to know about those verses that grew obscure just
because of their uncommon expressions and their political contents,
the better shall we be able to fix their dates and to discover their rela-
tions to contemporary and to earlier literature and to the public af-
fairs of their time, and thus add a few facts to our scant knowledge
of Hebrew history, both literary and political. The examples I have
given here have been chosen merely to illustrate the method; so I
have taken very simple cases which, I hope, may have some cogency
but which are not very interesting for the student of history and
literature. But I venture to say that my attempts to restore many of
the older prophecies in the manner explained have led to results that
might change some of our views as to their background.
Third, of the other disciplines that have grown around Old Testa-
ment exegesis there are two which are most likely to benefit by the
proposed method: lexicography and religious history. If the examples
I have given prove anything, they prove that many, if not most, of
the old corruptions have been caused through words that had become
unknown; and however important it may be to pay attention to the
70 It seems to me that such verses as Exod. 32:25; Lev. 23:16-17 cannot be restored
to their original form except by the method I propose.

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42 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES

things (the Realism), there cannot be any doubt that every new voca-
ble discovered in one passage can soon become the key to another
passage. As to religious history, it would be a mistake if textual criti-
cism were to be expressly on the lookout for new information about it;
criticism has to shed its light impartially upon passages interesting and
less interesting; and, besides, the Hebrew prophecies, though inspired
by a god, tell us far more about historical circumstances than about
religious practices. Yet it so happens that, by using my method, I
have been able to unearth some curious facts concerning the sacrifices
of the first-born, and rain-charms, and the name of the god of Israel.
Fourth, if my theory should be confirmed by more examples, it
would add something to what we know about the history of transmis-
sion of the sacred texts. We shall perhaps never be able to say when
and where the men lived who created the recensio;but possibly we can,
by determined research, learn by and by a little about the restitutors.
So much seems probable: Among the restitutions connected with the
minor prophets there are two verses that appear to have been written
not far from Antiochia ad Orontem,i.e., hardly earlier than 300 B.C.
HAMBURG, HOCHALLEE 108, GERMANY

CORRECTIONS TO AJSL, LI, No. 3 (APRIL, 1935)

P. 178, n. 31: Add: The different vertical readings may be derived from
one word-t-?D
Cnl.
P. 179,1. 20, and p. 186, 1. 6: for read a?5 i
"•5[i2]
P. 186, 1. 5: for [2~~i:12 read -"[nt12. "E

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