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Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: Texts, Terms, or Techniques?

In Brill, Geza Vermes, József Zsengellér, Pieter B. Hartog, Qumran on October 13, 2015 at 6:27 am

2015.10.19 | József Zsengellér. Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: Texts, Terms, or Techniques? A Last Dialogue with Geza Vermes. JSJSup 166. Leiden: Brill, 2014. ISBN: 9789004268159.

Review by Pieter B. Hartog, KU Leuven.

Many thanks to Brill for providing a review copy.

Few terms have generated such lively debates as Geza Vermes’ “Rewritten Bible.”1 Two major impetuses have informed these debates. First, the recovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These finds brought to light previously unknown writings which some scholars argued must be included in Vermes’ category. Classifying these writings under the header of “Rewritten Bible” had a double effect: on the one hand, the category broadened, as it could now also include halakhic (e.g., the Temple Scroll) and other writings; on the other, the category grew increasingly narrow, as the writings attributed to it became mainly those of Second Temple Judaism (Vermes had included later texts such as Sēfer ha-Yāšār).

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The Text of the Hebrew Bible. From the Rabbis to the Masoretes

In Elvira Martín-Contreras, HB/OT, Hebrew Bible, Lorena Miralles-Maciá, Pieter B. Hartog, V&R unipress on July 6, 2015 at 9:29 pm

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2015.07.16 | Elvira Martín-Contreras, Lorena Miralles-Maciá. The Text of the Hebrew Bible: From the Rabbis to the Masoretes. JAJSup 13. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014.

Review by Pieter B. Hartog, KU Leuven.

Many thanks to Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht for providing a review copy.

The development of the text of the Hebrew Bible has enjoyed a renewed interest in recent years. But whilst studies on the text of Scripture in the Second Temple period abound,[1] the period subsequent to it tends to be ignored. The reasons for this neglect are easy to see. The period between the Rabbis and the Masoretes is traditionally considered a “dark age” in the history of the biblical text. What is more, this era is commonly taken as one in which a single textual tradition (the Masoretic Text or MT) was dominant – in contrast to earlier eras, where textual fluidity and pluriformity prevailed.[2] Read the rest of this entry »