1. Discuss textual criticism in I Chronicles 20:3. Preinterpretation, which is part of General Introduction, consists of inspiration, canonicity, and reliability (reliability is made up of variants and textual criticism). Textual criticism is the study and comparison of manuscripts in order to restore an original reading to the original writing of the author. We do not have the original Old Testament writings. Therefore, we have to rely on copies and copies of copies.

I Chronicles 20:3 says,"And he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David with all the cities of the children of Ammon. And David and all the people returned to Jerusalem."

II Samuel 12:31 says, "And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brickkiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem."

I Chronicles 20:3 and II Samuel 12:31 are two parallel passages. In the two, the Bible says that David conquered the Ammonites, gave them tools, and put them to work destroying their own city. The KJV makes it sound like David could be brutally killing his enemies ("put them under"), but the NIV says that he "assigned them to labor." These extreme translation differences occur because of a graphic similarity of letters. The third letter in the verb in I Chronicles is "R", and another Hebrew letter that looks a lot like it ("M") is in the passage from II Samuels. Somewhere through time, a scribe probably copied the word incorrectly. The KJV translate one Hebrew letter, and the NIV conjectures that the other one is probably true. This type of error is very, very rare in the Old Testament.

2. Discuss textual criticism before the Dead Sea scrolls (1947, 1948). Textual criticism involves (a) the autograph version (the original), (b) manuscripts (Latin "hand" meaning written by hand which was very laborious and time consuming for scribes), (c) source versus target language, (d) exemplars (what the scribe used as the source), and (e) one-to-one correspondence (one word in the target language and in the source language where the word is the same in each).

3. Discuss some of the causes for scribal errors. Some causes of error were (1) graphic similarity (one Hebrew letter looks a lot like another ("R", "M", and "D")), (2) aural similarity is how the hearer hears something (if someone called the text out to him), (3) haplography (when something appears twice in the exemplar but only once in the copy because the scribe lost his place) or dittography (when something appears once in the exemplar but gets copied twice to the copy).

4. Discuss the use of the Septuagint as a translation aid. The Septuagint is a translation of the Old Testament into Greek. A lot of Jews lived in Alexandria, Egypt during the years before Christ, and many of them spoke Greek. The Septuagint is sometimes called LXX because of the tradition that 70 Jewish elders all translated the Hebrew into Greek text individually without any differences. In understanding the original Hebrew, a translater can use the Septuagint to see what Greek word was used in that translation.

5. Discuss the word of the Massoretes. The Massoretes were Jewish scribes in Tiberius (an early center of Judaism in the 1st century) who around 900 and 1,000AD meticulously copied the Old Testament. The label "MT" is attached to the Massoretic texts, and they used safeguards to prevent miscopying. First, they "pointed" the texts. Hebrew is written without vowels, and they placed dots (or points) above and below the Hebrew letters to more clearly indicate the copied word. They used dots because they did not want to change their original copy. Second, the Masora magna were comments at the bottom of the page where they might say how many other times a particular word had appeared in the Old Testament. Third, the Masora parva was the side comment area, and fourth, the Masora finalis was the comment area at the end of the book. In this final comment area, they would list the total number of verses in the book, the total number of words in the book, the middle verse in the book, and the middle word of the book. By these pointers, the scribe could have confidence that the copy was accurate or even exact.

6. Discuss the Dead Sea scrolls. These scrolls were discovered in 1947 and 1948 near Quram and consisted of biblical and non-biblical scrolls and fragments. A common abbreviation for the scroll of Isaiah was 1QIs^a, where "1" meant the first cave, "Q" meant Quram, "Is" meant the Isaiah scroll, and "^a" meant the first Isaiah scroll. The similarity of the Massoretic text of Isaiah and this Dead Sea scroll version was greater than 99%. The Jews had copied the Old Testament very, very, very accurately.

7. Discuss the use of textual criticism in Isaiah 14:4. In this verse, the KJV says "golden city" and the NIV says "fiore", and this difference is because of the two different texts. The KJV is using the MT version, and the NIV is using the Dead Sea scroll. Two words have 5 letters. The MT text shows a "D", and the Dead Sea scroll shows an "R". The NIV committee decided that the Dead Sea scroll rendering was the better reading.

8. Discuss some applications of textual criticism. Textual criticism can be applied in (1) doctrinal statements (there have never been any differences in any of the texts that have influenced doctrine) by saying "inerrancy in the original" (referring to the autograph version) because the translated version can technically have some translation errors (we sometimes say "working" inerrancy), and (2) translation as that would apply to apologetics. None of the differences between the KJV and the NIV occur because of using different texts.

9. Name some related books. Some books are: (1) The Text of the Old Testament, by Worthman (talking about the Massoretes and the Septuagint), (2) Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, by TOV (very complete and comprehensive), and (3) Textual Criticism (a general introduction by Forbes Press (Guide to Biblical Scholarship), and (4) Textual Criticism of the Old Testament, also part of the Forbes series.

				Tom of Bethany

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