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Our Motto, then, is…

Sunday, March 13th, 2022

Our motto, then, is “back to the Hebrew text”.

It is not enough to browse through various magazine articles, and retail at second or even at third hand the facts or fancies of others. We must get back to the ordinary Hebrew sources and verify the results for ourselves.

If need be, we must copy the devotion of the old Rabbis who did not scruple to burn the midnight oil in the prosecution of their studies. “Hananiah ben Hezekiah,” says the Babylonian Talmud, “is of blessed memory, for but for him Ezekiel would have been declared apocryphal, because his words contradicted the words of the Law: three hundred jars of lamp oil were brought to him, and he sat in his garret and solved the contradictions.” That is his example to Hebrew students to-day. Let them toil as he did at their Old Testament tasks. And they shall yet know something of the beauty of the language and the loftiness of the thought, when they have learned.

Adams, John. Sermons in Accents: Or, Studies in the Hebrew Text. London; New York: T&T Clark, 1906.

Acts 8:37?

NT Textual Criticism can seem esoteric and maybe some of it is. However, you may run into text-critical issues and decisions far more than you think you do. If you are using a translation of the scriptures (or of any other text) a number of different decisions and interpretations have already been made for you. Sometimes the editor and translators will call alert you to their decision in the footnotes and or margin notes of your chosen translation.

Disclaimer: The following summary is an oversimplification of how textual critical decisions are made. In general, I would say that text-critical decisions are made by those that follow into the following three main camps of reasoning:

  • (a) Those that go with the reading found in earlist available text or texts
  • (b) Those that go with the reading vast majority of textual witnesses
  • (c) Those that go with the reading they think reflects the text that their faith community has historical used and or that the church fathers used.

Now, If you own an English translation of the New Testament turn to Acts chapter 8. Now, check do you have verse 37 in the main body of your text or in a footnote? Are, you provided with any information about the manuscript evidence and different points of view? Which of the three camps mentioned above do you think the translators and or editors of your translation fall into at Acts 8:37?

Just for fun here are a few other opinions:

CASES FOR

CASES AGAINST

NEUTRAL / EXPLANATORY

Why Is Acts 8:37 Omitted from Some Translations and not Others? https://blog.logos.com/why-some-translations-include-acts-837-and-others-dont/

What do you think? How do you read the text?

Jeremiah 42:6 אֲנוּ VS אנו

The following widely used texts agree with having אֲנוּ
1)The Jerusalem Crown: Keter Yerushalayim (pg. 467)
(2) The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, (pg 867)
(3)Rabbi M. Breuer’s Tanakh( שנט or pg. 359 )
(3)Meïr Halevi (Letteris) Tanakh (pg. 812)
(4)Norman Henry Snaith’s Tanakh (Pg. 776)


These three popular versions leave אנו unpointed
(1) C.D. Ginsburg Tanakh (pg. 912)
(2) Koren Tanach (pg. 430)
(3) Adi (A. Dotan) Tanakh (pg. 712)
(4) The Stone Edition of the Tanach (pg. 1172)
(5)The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (pg. 1115)


TanakhML Project and the online Westminster Leningrad Codex 4.14 have אֲנַ֜חְנוּ in the text with אנו as a subscript. however, both also display other choices. If you click on אֲנַ֜חְנוּ in the TanakhML it will open another page with variants.