Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction [Paperback]

How did the Old Testament get to us in such good shape and what are the apologetics for such a claim? Can someone who is not a student of Hebrew get some basic information on this subject? The answer is `Yes', with some effort, since the book is geared to an intermediate student of Hebrew, as stated near the end of the book.

Author Ellis Brotzman says that it is a "miracle" that Old Testament even exists, and a "double miracle" that it is highly accurate after its transmission from ancient times! I am very impressed with the care of the Old Testament by the Jewish custodians of the scriptures for such a long period of time. We have them to thank (through God's Providence) for what we have today. To explain how, Brotzman stayed fairly high-level, taking us from the creation of the original manuscripts to the present day, through different text styles, different language translations, and through the different gyrations of textual criticisms. Textual criticism, I found out, is a very organized, scholarly methodology of condensing the various texts into one that is as accurate as possible for our use today. To this end, Brotzman patiently goes through enough of the Hebrew language characteristics to allow us to understand what textual criticism is about. For example, I found that for hundreds of years early on, the Hebrew text was originally entirely consonantal, with the vowels being transmitted only through oral tradition. Later, the oral tradition was changed to written, and the vowels were indicated by adding the appropriate number of dots below the appropriate consonants. He lets us know in a general way how that works and the affect it has on the transmission accuracy of the text. He also gives examples of standard BHS texts with the margin notes on the sides and bottoms and what they mean, and the references they point to (other manuscripts, frequency of different types of errors, etc.). He also talks about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the great roll they play in validating the accuracy of the textual transmission. He then gives us some actual case studies from the book of Ruth and how the scholars settled the variant readings through textual criticism, applying the methodologies he describes earlier in the book.

The book took some work for me to understand, but it was worth it.

is concise enough to be understood and does lend something to the neat field of OT Text Criticism. it isnt exactly written for the expert in the field of hebrew knowledge (this is only my 4th semester of it), but the title says it all, "a practical introduction".

A good introduction to the issues inherent in Hebrew text criticism, but more accessible to the beginner and less intimidating than Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Brotzman also provides a helpful introduction to the transmission of the Old Testament text. His approach attempts to balance theological concerns with the data of textual criticism in a way that introduces the issues in a non-threatening way. His footnotes cover a wide swath of both Jewish and Christian scholarship on the transmission of the Hebrew Bible.