Featured What is more important, Greek text, or translation philosophy?

Translation philosophy is a bigger concern for me. And, translation philosophy has a lot to do with what Greek sources are used and combined.

 

No clue. This is not my area of strength.

 

The difference is that the poor text will only be poor in some areas while the poor translation will be poor in all areas

 

What is your sound translation philosophy?

 

Concerning this second edition printed by Bomberg, Gergely Juhasz wrote: “For his edition, Bomberg relied on fourteenth and fifteenth-century manuscripts that mainly followed the Ben Asher text but also showed certain influences of the Ben Naphtali text” (Arblaster, Tyndale’s, p. 94).

In an introductory article to a facsimile edition of The Leningrad Codex, Victor Lebedev wrote: “It is well known that the first editions of the Hebrew Bible were based on fourteenth- to fifteenth-century manuscripts reflecting a mixture of the Ben Asher and the Ben Naphtali traditions” (Freedman, p. xxv). Page Kelley maintained that “these manuscripts [used by ben Chayyim] represented a mixture of traditions, which were further mixed in ben Chayyim’s text (and Masorah)“ and that “the Second Rabbinic Bible is not viewed as a pure ben Asher text” (The Masorah, p. 25).

Emanuel Tov asserted that “it has been demonstrated” that the second Rabbinic Bible “does not reflect any specific manuscript” (Textual Criticism, p. 46). Tov wrote: “No single source has been found from which the editors of the first two Rabbinic Bibles could have derived their biblical text” (p. 78).

Bleddyn Roberts wrote: “The ben Chayim text does not follow any manuscript or authority in detail, and therefore shows an eclectic text. It has been shown that though a Spanish manuscript was the basis, the text frequently deviates from it, and the divergent readings reveal traces of ben Naphtali and both Ma’arbae (Western) and Madinhae (Eastern) readings” (Old Testament Text, p. 88). Roberts added: “The text of ben Chayim was substantially that of the ben Asher recension, but, based on young and sometimes corrupt manuscripts, it included occasional foreign matter that showed adherence to the ben Naphtali and other recensions” (pp. 90-91). In his foreword, Aron Dotan claimed: “Their desire to rely on Ben Asher’s text was never more than a pious wish, for the text was only known by hearsay. All the evidence about Ben Asher’s readings was second- or third-hand. It derived from masoretic remarks in biblical manuscripts, from the writings of the grammarians and Masoretes, and the lists of differences between Ben Asher and his opponent Moses ben David ben Naphtali” (Biblia, pp. viii-ix). Norman Gottwald maintained that “Ben Chayyim used Tiberian manuscripts but he worked eclectically, drawing now from one and now from another manuscript” (Hebrew Bible, p. 121).