(^) CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION
The Hebrew Scriptures and other ancient Near Eastern Traditions
It has been said that the textual history of the Hebrew Bible represents a unique develop-
ment in the ancient Near Eastern textual corpus.^1 No other ancient Near Eastern text ap-
pears to have undergone quite the same recensional activity.^2 Whether we view the back-
ground of biblical texts as conforming to the regional delineation of textual traditions,^3 or
as stemming from more diverse localised sources,^4 we must still reckon with the problem
that the biblical text seems to have undergone a degree of recensional activity that has not
yet been recognised in other ancient Near Eastern textual traditions.^5
(^1) S. Talmon, "The Old Testament Text," (^) The Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to
Jerome 2 (eds P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) 161.
See the comments in J.H. Tigay, "Introduction," Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (ed. J.H. Tigay;
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985) 2-3. 3
See F.M. Cross, "The History of the Biblical Text in the Light of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert,"
Harvard Theological Review 57 (1964), and "The Evolution of a Theory of Local Texts," Qumran and the
History of the Biblical Text (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975). More recently see F.M.
Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995^3 ) 188-94 and From Epic to
Canon (Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998) 211 n. 12, and the references there. For a
critical review of the theory that calls into question some of its primary data, see G. Howard, "Frank Cross
and Recensional Criticism," 4 VT 21, 4 (1971), 440-450.
See S. Talmon, "Aspects of the Textual Transmission of the Bible in the Light of Qumran Manuscripts,"
Textus 4 (1964) 97-98, and "The Old Testament Text," The Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Be-
ginnings to Jerome (eds P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans; Cambridge University Press, 1970; repr., Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 162. 5
See J.H. Tigay, "The Evolution of the Pentateuchal Narratives in the Light of the Evolution of the Gil-
gamesh Epic," Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism (ed. J.H. Tigay; Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1985), where a comparative analysis with the evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic shows that
any conjectural process that scholars might develop to recreate the early forms of the Epic based on later
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