quences.^54 Alternative readings, on the other hand, are divided into five subcategories:
linguistic-stylistic changes, lexical interchanges, harmonisations, exegetical changes, and
additions (glosses, interlinear and marginal corrections, remarks, etc.)^55
Alternatively, Talmon employs a synthesis of textual and literary criticism to describe a
process of transmission that allows for creativity on the part of authors and copyists
alike.^56 Expansionistic or clarifying changes, such as conflation and lexical interchange,
as well as complex literary devices, such as inversion, reiteration and parallelism, are
used by writers and copyists regularly. Talmon maintains that “an undetermined percent-
age of the variae lectiones derive from the impact of ongoing literary processes of an in-
tra-biblical nature.”^57
In her analysis of the differences between the synoptic passages of Samuel-Kings and
Chronicles, S. Japhet outlines the process whereby the text was updated from Biblical
Hebrew to Late Biblical Hebrew, which in her analysis reflects a diachronic develop-
ment. While it pertains only to verbal forms, Japhet’s analysis can still be informative for
our present purposes. Common differences between the sources are described as: substi-
tution of rare or poetic roots for more common forms; changes or deviation in the mean-
(^54) See E. Tov, Textual Criticism, 236-58.
(^55) See E. Tov, Textual Criticism, 258-85.
(^56) See S. Talmon, "The Textual Study of the Bible," 338-58.
(^57) S. Talmon, "The Textual Study of the Bible," 380.