Critical Editions of the Hebrew Bible

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The works of Plato, the New Testament, Shakespeare, and most great works in the western literary tradition, have all been published in critical editions. The conspicuous absentee from this list is the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Old Testament), which, despite its profound impact on western civilization, has not been afforded the same treatment. Instead, scholarly editions print the text of a single manuscript from the start of the 11th century CE, over a millennium after the completion of the Hebrew Bible. An international group of scholars is addressing this desideratum by publishing The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition (hereafter HBCE). The proposed project will enable the completion of volumes on 1 Kings and Psalms 100-150 in this series. Each volume will contain an introduction, a critical eclectic text with critical apparatus (i.e., a critically reconstructed text that uses readings from multiple witnesses), and a commentary on the development of the text and the reasoning behind the reconstruction of the critical text.The work of textual criticism - and the task of putting together a critical edition, in particular - requires many skills, research hours, and perspectives. The traditional skill-set of the biblical text-critic includes high proficiency in at least five languages, intimate knowledge of the textual traditions transmitted in those languages, and experience in recognizing a range of known scribal practices. Recent developments in the study of textual criticism now also require the text-critic to engage a number of methodological issues with confidence, and to master sister disciplines like Hebrew linguistics, literary criticism, and Dead Sea scrolls studies. Complete mastery of the many aspects involved in producing these editions would entail a lifetime of study. To produce the best text-critical work possible, we propose a project centered on collaboration that will enable us to draw on the expertise of our colleagues around the world.The proposed project will produce critical editions of 1 Kings and Psalms 100-150 for publication with SBL Press. Given the stature of the publication series, these editions will rightly be considered the leading scholarship in textual criticism of these two texts. In addition to the printed versions of these editions, SBL Press will publish a free, online version of the data that they will maintain long past the end date of the proposed project. The project will disseminate its findings to the wider public through a series of six public forums at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and through podcasts based on these events that will be hosted by Oxford's Educational Media Services and iTunes.