Old Testament Textual Criticism provides the basic knowledge for students to get the most from Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS). Ellis R. Brotzman explains the significance of scripts and writings of the ancient Near East, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Hebrew manuscripts for students of Hebrew exegesis.

Essential introduction for intermediate Biblical Hebrew students ( )

Essential introduction for intermediate Biblical Hebrew students ( )

Very lucid and easy to understand. Explains all of the technical language and difficulties of doing the textual criticism of the Old Testament. ( )

As advertised, a practical introduction to Old Testament textual criticism.

The authors assume a basic level of familiarity with Hebrew and Greek and seek to set forth a basic primer on the tools, resources, and work of textual criticism of the Old Testament. The reader is introduced to what textual criticism is, how it works, the terminology involved, modern editions of the text, the history of the transmission of the text, the types of variants and their likely origins, the Hebrew texts themselves, and ancient translations of Hebrew texts and how those ancient texts can attest to their original Hebrew antecedent (their vorlagen). The authors conclude with an exercise in exploring the text critical issues in the book of Ruth. Additional resources are continually cited; appendices are included to provide assistance in understanding all the Latin terms in BHS, the philosophy of textual reconstruction, and other resources.

The book is modern, clear, and a very good introduction; it does well at clarifying things that might seem very complex and strange to the new student. From it one can profitably turn to other books on textual criticism.

Highly recommended for those with some familiarity in Hebrew and Greek and are interested in OT textual criticism.

**--galley received as part of early review program
**--reviewer went to college with one of the authors (Tully) ( )