Studies in St. Mark's Isaiah Scroll, VII מחקרים במגילת ישעיהו של מנזר סאנט-מארק, [ז]

I. Some scholars (e. g., Lowth, Bredenkamp, Box, Fischer, and Kissane) had supported the emendation of masoretic בניך "your sons" in Isaiah xlix 17 to בניך "your builders"; as put by R. Kittel in his Bibila Hebraica 3, "1 c Var P [= Codex Petropolitanus] (G) VT (A[rabica]) "בניך. When the St. Mark's Isaiah Scroll (SM) was published, with its reading בוניך, W. Baumgartner (in Theologische Rundschau, XIX [1951], 115) accepted this reading as the seventh in a list of ten variants in this Scroll which he regarded as superior to those preserved in the masoretic text (MT). The writer dealt with the first six of these ten variants elsewhere; for references, see either "Studies V" in Israel Exploration Journal, IV (1954), p. 5, n.*, or else "Studies VI" in Hebrew Union College Annual, XXV (1954), n.*. Here he deals with the above-mentioned seventh variant. II. As so frequently, Kittel's so-called critical apparatus in Biblia Hebraica is both misleading and incomplete :— (a) Kittel has erred in stating flatly that Codex Petropolitanus reads בניך; had he examined this codex in H. L. Strack's reproduction he would have seen for himself that it reads בניך. (b) Kittel had erred further in citing the Arabic as evidence for בניך; no secondary version is evidence for any but the primary version from which it is derived. In this case, the Arabic reflects only the Septuagint from which it was translated, and has no bearing at all on the original Hebrew text or Vorlage. (c) On the other hand, Kittel has erred in not citing the Minor Versions (where Theodotion and Aquila read בניך, and Symmachus reads בניך) — which are much more important for the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible than, say, the Vulgate, — and in not making it more clear that there is a dual tradition of בניך—בניך not only in the Minor Versions but also in the Targum. III. This article submits full and integrated data to prove that masoretic בניך is here original, and that בניך is quite secondary, — exactly as, e. g., in chapter liv 13, where SM reads בוניכי (sic!) for MT בניך. (a) Several scholars (e. g., Franz Delitzsch, Dillmann, Feldmann) have noted that "sons" rather than "builders" is preferable in our context, and even demanded by it. Thus, e. g. (1) כלם in v. 18 and מי ילד-לי את-אלה in v. 21 both go back to "sons" (not "builders"!) in our verse; (2) our very word בניך, parallel to ובנתיך, is found in the section following on our own (vv. 8 ff.) as well as in the section which precedes our (vv. 12, 15); (3) as put by Dillmann, "...nicht von Bauleuten ziehen sich die Zerstörer zurück, sondern von den wiederkehrenden Zioniten..." (b) From the Septuagint, Minor Versions, Targum, Peshitta and Vulgate it becomes clear that two text-traditions were current already during the Second Jewish Commonwealth, namely, בניך and בניך. Which of the two is original, and how did the secondary tradition come into being? (1) The original spelling of our word was the defective בניך; the plene form (בוניך), if the participle were intended, would have prevented the vocalization בניך. On this reasonable assumption, it is easy to understand how an originally intended בניך came to be read בניך, what with מהרסיך ומחריביך immediately following. Conversely, if the original vocalization were ב(ו)ניך, it is difficult to believe that the infinitely more carefully guarded masoretic text-tradition would have overlooked the antithetical מהרסיך ומחריביך and turned an intended בניך into בניך. (2) Even apart from מהרסיך ומחריביך, there is a satisfactory explanation for the secondary origin of בניך. It is well known that during the Second Jewish Commonwealth and afterwards, in keeping with the Biblical pattern (e. g., בבל and root בבל; יעבץ and root עצב; משה and root משה), the Jews loved to play on words. Thus on the word בניך in Isa. liv 13 וכל-בניך למודי יהוה ורב שלום בניך, ("And all your children should be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children"), the Babylonian Talmud (Berakot 64a end; and parallels) records the statement, "Rabbi Eliezer said in the name of Rabbi Hanina: Wise men increase peace in the world, as it is written in Scripture וכל בניך למודי יהוה ורב שלום בניך; do not read בניך "your sons" but בניך "your builders (educators)..." Again, the word בנות in Cant. i 5 (שחורה אני ונאוה בנות ירושלם) is cited in the Midrash Rabbah on Exodus (§ 23) in this manner: "Our rabbis said, 'Do not read the בנות of Jerusalem but the בנות of Jerusalem". IV. When the received, masoretic text is satisfactory in every respect, no emendation is warranted; the received text must be less than satisfactory and the proposed reading must be both justifiable per se and superior to the masoretic, to be methodologically acceptable. In our case, masoretic בניך is thoroughly satisfactory in every way, whereas proposed בניך is quite inferior from several points of view, and, in addition, its secondary character is quite apparent. V, The so-called apparatus criticus in Kittel's Biblia Hebraica3, swarming as it does in nearly every line with errors of commission and omission, has now been made even more misleading by the irresponsible addition of the variant readings in St. Mark's Scroll in the book of Isaiah (by Otto Eissfeldt). In this case, it may be said that finis coronat opus! The serious student of the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible would do well to ignore completely the footnotes in Kittel's BH3 and go directly to the sources. And so far as the variant readings in SM are concerned, none of them antedates the text which came in time to be called masoretic, and all of them are the product of a combination of poor memory, ignorance, carelessness, and the lack of any intention to copy the Hebrew text of Isaiah in the manner that a careful scribe would copy the best available scroll of a sacred Hebrew text.