Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: SESB 2.0 Version with Apparatus and WIVU Introduction
Friends,
Does anyone has any thoughts about it?
There is not preview at logos.
Thanks
Bishop Salamat
Comments
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I think it's a great addition to the Logos library. Here is a pretty fair review of the publication, I include it here in case you can't read PDFs at the link:
Biblia Hebraic Stuttgartensia. Wide Margin Edition. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson
Publishers, 2007, lxxii + 1574 pp., $69.95.
Until 1929 available texts of the Hebrew Bible were essentially reprints or
edited versions of Jacob ben Hayyim’s Second Rabbinic Bible, first published by
Daniel Bomberg in Venice in 1524/25. Ben Hayyim based his work on late
medieval manuscripts and other earlier printed editions. This text served as the
textus receptus behind all early Old Testament translations, such as that of
Luther and the King James Version.
Beginning in 1929, Rudolf Kittel decided to jettison the later eclectic ben
Hayyim text and adopt in its place the earlier text of the Leningrad manuscript B
19A
(L; dated AD 1008) as a base for the new edition of his internationally
acclaimed scholarly work known as the Biblia Hebraica (first published 1906).
Kittel died in 1929, but ten years later Albrecht Alt and Otto Eissfeldt were able to
revise and publish the edited fascicles in the third edition of the Biblia Hebraica
(Stuttgart: Württembergische Biblelanstalt, 1937). Although Kittel edited only
five of the twenty-one fascicles, the work has commonly become known as Kittel’s
Biblia Hebraica (BHK). BHK has been criticized for its frequent willingness to
correct and emend the B 19A
text based on conjecture. BHK has served as the
base text behind the Revised Standard Version and other translations of the Old
Testament of the same period.
A revision of BHK was undertaken from 1967-77 to reflect more accurately
the text of the Leningrad manuscript. This new revision was published in 1977 as
the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft).
BHS has gone through five revisions or “editions” since its initial publication. The
fifth and last edition of BHS was published in 1997. A newer version called Biblia
Hebraica Quinta has been started and several fascicles have been released. See
for example, Biblia Hebraica Quinta: General Introduction & Megilloth (BHQ;
Deutsche Biblegesellschaft, 2004). Since some scholars refer to BHQ as the fifth
“edition” of Biblia Hebraica (which it technically is), students confuse it with the
fifth edition of BHS.
The first BHS edition was initially published in a large easy to read format
(9.4 x 6.5 in), and this volume has since become commonly known as the Editio
Maior. A small print version (7.6 x 5.6 in) known as the Editio Minor first
appeared in 1984. This compact Editio Minor was less expensive and
consequently made BHS more accessible to a larger audience. However, the
smaller print made a few accents, vowel signs, and some sigla and text of the
critical apparatus more difficult to read with the unaided eye.
The smaller Editio Minor has proved to be very popular and has been reprinted in various formats. In 1994 it was bound together with the 27th revised
Nestle-Aland New Testament Greek text in the somewhat expensive Biblia Sacra
Utriusque Testamenti Editio Hebraica et Graeca (Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft). In 2007 an inexpensive paperback edition of the fifth edition
of BHS was released. In my personal experience the bindings of both of these
reprints have not stood up very well.
In 2007 Hendrickson Publishers offered the academic world a reprint of
the fifth edition of the BHS text as a “wide margin edition” (9.4 x 7.1 in). This is
sometimes misleadingly referred to as a “large print edition.” But this is incorrect
because Hendrickson reprinted the smaller Editio Minor text as the basis for its
edition. The text is exactly the same, except that Hendrickson added 1½ to the
outside of the page and nearly 2½ to the bottom. The edition contains a number
of welcome additional blank leaves at the beginning and the end of the volume. If
they were able, I would have preferred a reprint of the larger Edition Maior, even
if it meant a loss in the space available for notes.
The quality of the binding is good and strong and reassuring as well.
However, the weight of the paper is light and consequently thin. The average pen
or highlighter bleeds right through the paper. This is disappointing in light of the
fact that the intent was to give the user adequate space to add notes and
comments on the side and bottom of the text. Gel pens bleed through quickly and
ballpoints leave a tell tale heavy impression on the reverse side. Several writing
implement manufacturers (like G. T. Luscombe, TUL, and Zebra Pen Corp.)
make pens and highlighters specifically designed for the thin papers used in
Bibles published today. These work better on the Hendrickson reprint.
Hendrickson’s wide margin edition remains a serious option for the
student or pastor who desires to annotate the Hebrew text as they study. The
price is reasonable and comparable to the hardcover Editio Minor. Despite the
thin paper, I would prefer Hendrickson’s wide margin edition to the Editio Minor.
Nevertheless, there are a few other issues that students may want to consider
before purchasing a Hebrew Bible.
It took Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft ten years from the beginning of
publishing fascicles to complete the publication of BHS. Six fascicles of BHQ have
now been published. If the same time schedule is maintained the final
publication of BHQ could be accomplished by 2014 or thereafter. A less expensive
version of BHS might do until BHQ arrives on the scene.
The wide margin edition might not appeal to all students. Bible software
has made it easier to add notations and comments to the electronic text of the
Hebrew Bible. This is true for a number of Bible texts as a whole. My students are more electronically connected, and some prefer reading and translating the
Hebrew text right from the computer screen. In this case, hyperlinks are very
productive on the computer, but not available in printed formats.
While Hendrickson had no control over the matter, the nature of the BHS
text must be considered before making a purchase. It is true that BHS is the only
“critical” option that we now possess in the translation and study of the Hebrew
text. Depending on the needs and interests of the student, other texts may prove
more fruitful.
BHS is not a perfect text; nor is it any better in bringing us closer to the
autographs than the textus receptus of Ben Hayyim’s Second Rabbinical Bible.
There are small oddities in BHS. For example, the editors chose to place
Chronicles as the end of the Writings just like Ben Hayyim’s version. But in the
Leningrad Codex B 19A Chronicles starts the Hagiographia. The editors also
introduced sigla for petuhot and setumot where they were lacking in L.
Even more serious is the eclectic nature of G. E. Weil’s edition of the
Masorah included in BHS. The Masorah Parva in the margin of BHS is an edited
version of the Masorah of L, and must be used with caution. The first apparatus
under the text contains references to the Masorah Magna (MM) as collated by
Weil in a separate volume. Unfortunately, this very helpful resource is hard to
find and not available to most pastors.
Finally, the text critical apparatus of BHS follows text critical methods
essentially practiced before the last century. The editors of each fascicle gave only
what they deemed important of the ancient texts and versions with their own
preferred suggestions and conjectural readings. Little consideration is given to
inter-textual errors and problems within a given version. In addition, BHS was
published too early to take advantage of the full impact of the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls on the discipline of textual criticism of the Bible.
Despite these problems, BHS is still the best academic text available.
Consequently, Hendrickson’s wide margin edition will appeal to students and
scholars alike. Being aware of the peculiarities of BHS should alleviate for a
period any mistaken conclusions concerning the Masorah and the textual
criticism of the Hebrew Bible. At least, this would be true while we wait for the
publication of BHQ. But even then, there will be no guarantee that all our
problems will be solved.
Stephen J. Andrews, PhD
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary0
