in effect became the ‘copy-text’ of the Hebrew Bible as it is reflected in all of the medie-
val manuscript evidence.^10 In the words of Eugene Ulrich “... the term ‘standard text’ im-
plies or even denotes a single text which is not only fixed, but is acknowledged to be ‘the
text,’ as opposed to other forms of the text.”^11
Some care is needed here, for it is not the view of the writer that either of these assump-
tions is necessarily incorrect, but it is important to highlight the position from which this
approach to textual criticism advances, for it significantly affects the way the evidence is
analysed.
There is, it may be said, a general preference when reconstructing ancient texts to present
them in a standardised form, even though in history many of these texts existed in differ-
ent forms. One need only look at Pritchard’s “Ancient Near Eastern Texts”,
Charlesworth’s “Pseudepigrapha”, or Foster’s “Before the Muses” to see that varying
(^10) That all variant readings in medieval manuscripts are genetic, and result from the corruption of a single
copy-text is illustrated clearly in M.H. Goshen-Gottstein, "Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts: Their History and
Their Place in the HUBP Edition," Biblica 48 (1967). See also S. Talmon, "Old Testament Text," 170-175.
The term ‘copy-text’ usually refers to an authoritative manuscript that is to be set in type, however its use
in this context seems justified, assuming, with the majority of scholars, that the faithful reproduction of this
specific text was the intention of copyists by the first century C.E. See primarily R.B. McKerrow, Prole-
gomena for the Oxford Shakespeare: A Study in Editorial Method (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939) 8, for
the use of the term in reference to the textual criticism of the plays of Shakespeare. Its use was properly
explored and defined in a lecture prepared for the British Institute by W.W. Greg that was actually deliv-
ered by J. M. Osbourne, in 1949 and published in 1950 (see W.W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text,"
Studies in Bibliography 3 [1950] 19-36). Most recently see the discussion in R. Hendel, "The Oxford He-
brew Bible: Prologue to a New Critical Edition," 11 VT 58, 3 (2008) 343-46.
E. Ulrich, "The Qumran Biblical Scrolls - The Scriptures of Late Second Temple Judaism," The Dead
Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (eds T.H. Lim, L.W. Hurtado, A.G. Auld, and A. Jack; Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 2000) 69 (italics in original).