The Samaritan Version Of The Book Of Numbers With Hebrew Variants: A Close Textual Study
by David Lee Phillips /
2014 / English / PDF
107.4 MB Download
My first book was all about 4Q22, the finest scroll of Exodus. This book presents its textual twin, 4Q27, the most important extant witness of Numbers. These scrolls from the fourth cave of Qumran preserve the Samaritan text-type at the same time that they lie at the foundation of Judea-Christian culture. Half the effort is to determine the autograph Hebrew letters for each word, the grammar of its pronunciation, and the end of each sentence. A critical text approaches the autograph by comparing all extant manuscripts of Numbers, and this is done in practice by comparing the variants of three text-types. Because Biblical Hebrew is a language that has been extensively studied in all major universities and has been made widely available in Protestant culture, it is useful to present the critical Samaritan Hebrew text in the form of each and every word that varies from Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. The second half is to express ancient Hebrew in modem English. Previous renderings have relied on literal phrases marked by semi-colons or have featured paraphrases. This translation seeks to stay as close as possible to the voice of the verbs and non-verbs of the Hebrew sentence. A good example of the literary style of the autograph is the extensive use of the imperative aspect of the verb. Ultimately, Hebrew sentences should be expressed in clem· American English.
