What is the ‘Text’ in Textual Criticism?
In: Vetus TestamentumSearch for other papers by Ronald L. Troxel in
Current site
Google Scholar
Textual criticism has long used terms and phrases incorporating ‘text’ without scrutinizing whether they are defensible. Contributing to this problem has been imprecision in the definition of ‘text’ itself. Contemporary scholarship has nibbled at the edges of a definition, but no focused consideration has been given to pinpointing what it is textual criticism criticizes. This essay examines the concepts underlying talk of ‘text’, positing that ‘text’ must be defined within a matrix with author and reader. A text’s production and preservation reflects its reading communities’ conferral upon it of the status of ‘text’. Although establishment of the earliest recoverable form(s) of a text remains important, that must be paired with understanding a text’s role in shaping and reflecting the lives of its reading communities. Careful definition of ‘text’ and the nomenclature that describes it can bring clarity to conceiving the task of textual criticism.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
1
Brennan W. Breed, Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014).
-
4
D. C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (New York/London: Garland Publishing, 1994), 1. Although ‘text’ is now applied to a breadth of media (D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts [Cambridge University Press, 1999], 13), this essay concerns the sorts of written or printed documents studied in textual criticism.
-
8
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, ed. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), 148.
-
9
Ibid., 146.
-
10
Ibid., 148, his italics.
-
12
Ibid., 141.
-
13
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Sheed and Ward, 1975), 260.
-
15
Ibid., 20-22.
-
17
Ibid., 281-82.
-
19
Ibid., 25.
-
20
Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 1980), 310.
-
21
Umberto Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161.
-
22
Idem, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 61.
-
24
Ibid., 68.
-
25
Ibid., 180.
-
26
Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 158.
-
27
Adrian Wilson, “What is a Text?,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012), 343, his italics throughout.
-
28
Ibid., 345.
-
37
Ibid., 21-22.
-
38
Ibid., 29-30.
-
40
Ibid., 228.
-
41
See Jerome J. McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Charlottesville/London: University Press of Virginia, 1992), 28.
-
43
Ibid. Compare idem, A Rationale of Textual Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 84.
-
46
Ibid., 23.
-
47
Ibid., 78.
-
49
Ibid., 90, my italics. Tanselle posits that even works shaped orally by multiple people represent “a single mind that provided the impetus for each work” (ibid., 75).
-
51
Ibid., 235-36.
-
52
Ibid., 240-41.
-
53
Ibid., 236.
-
54
Ibid., 250, my italics.
-
55
Ibid., 237. Compare ibid., 240.
-
59
Ibid., 121.
-
60
Ibid., 102.
-
61
Ibid., 90.
-
62
Ibid., 104-05.
-
64
Ibid., 13.
-
68
Ibid., 346.
-
69
Friedrich Delitzsch, Die Lese- und Schreibfehler im Alten Testament nebst den dem schrifttexte einverleibten Randnoten klassifiziert (Berlin/Leipzig: Vereinigung Wissenschaftlicher Verlager, 1920), 1.
-
70
Ibid., 131, my translation.
-
71
Ibid., 132.
-
72
Compare Felix Perles, Analekten zur Textkritik des Alten Testaments (Munich: Theodor Ackermann, 1895), 2.
-
77
Michael V. Fox, “Text Criticism and Literary Criticism,” in Built by Wisdom, Established by Understanding (College Park: University of Maryland Press, 2013), 343.
-
79
Ibid., 347. Cf. idem, “Editing Proverbs: The Challenge of the Oxford Hebrew Bible,” jnsl 32 (2006), 5.
-
85
Ibid., 354.
-
92
Ibid., 59.
-
93
Ibid., 60.
-
94
Ibid., 61.
-
95
Ibid., 63.
-
96
Ibid., 68.
-
100
Jacques Derrida, “Living On: Border Lines,” in Deconstruction and Criticism, ed. Harold Bloom et al. (New York: Seabury, 1979), 84, cited by Breed, Nomadic Text, 73.
-
101
Derrida, “Living On,” 84. In fact, Derrida confesses that he retains the term ‘text’ only for “strategic reasons” (ibid.).
-
105
Ibid., 357.
-
106
Ibid., 351.
-
107
Ibid., 349.
-
112
Ibid., 330.
-
114
Ibid., 69.
-
115
Ibid., 39.
-
116
Ibid., 40.
-
117
Ibid., 38.
-
118
Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, The Book of Isaiah, Sample Edition with Introduction (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1965), 15.
-
120
Ibid., 25.
-
121
Ibid., 15.
-
122
Ibid., 25, my italics.
-
126
Idem, “What is a Biblical Book?,” in From Author to Copyist: Composition, Redaction and Transmission of the Hebrew Bible, ed. C. Werman (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015).
-
127
Ibid., 256.
-
128
Ibid., 257.
-
129
Ibid., 259.
-
130
Ibid., 260.
-
131
Ibid., 261.
-
132
Ibid., 262.
-
133
Ibid., 269.
-
134
Ibid., 271. The quotation is from Tov, Textual Criticism (3rd edition), 3.
-
135
Hendel, “What is a Biblical Book?,” 273. Hendel adopts Kant’s definition of a book as “a writing . . . which represents a discourse that someone delivers to the public by visible linguistic signs,” together with his differentiation between book as “a corporeal artifact” and “a mere discourse of the publisher to the public” (Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M. Gregor [Cambridge University Press, 1996], 71-72, cited by Hendel, “What is a Biblical Book?,” 256.).
-
138
Hendel, Series Forward in Fox, Proverbs: An Eclectic Edition, ix.
-
140
Ibid., 2.
-
147
Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1999), 57-59.
-
148
Ibid., 58.
-
151
See Molly M. Zahn, Rethinking Rewritten Scripture (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2011), 71-74.
-
153
Ibid., 283.
-
154
Molly M. Zahn, “ ‘Editing’ and the Composition of Scripture: The Significance of the Qumran Evidence,” HeBAI 3 (2014), 14.
-
157
Hermann-Josef Stipp, “A Semi-empirical Example for the Final Touches to a Biblical Book: The Masoretic Sondergut of the Book of Jeremiah,” in Insights into Editing in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, ed. Reinhard Müller and Juha Pakkala, Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology(Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 4.
-
165
Ibid., 141.
-
169
Ibid., 141, his italics.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 411 | 78 | 4 |
| Full Text Views | 324 | 7 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 383 | 258 | 4 |
What is the ‘Text’ in Textual Criticism?
In: Vetus TestamentumSearch for other papers by Ronald L. Troxel in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Textual criticism has long used terms and phrases incorporating ‘text’ without scrutinizing whether they are defensible. Contributing to this problem has been imprecision in the definition of ‘text’ itself. Contemporary scholarship has nibbled at the edges of a definition, but no focused consideration has been given to pinpointing what it is textual criticism criticizes. This essay examines the concepts underlying talk of ‘text’, positing that ‘text’ must be defined within a matrix with author and reader. A text’s production and preservation reflects its reading communities’ conferral upon it of the status of ‘text’. Although establishment of the earliest recoverable form(s) of a text remains important, that must be paired with understanding a text’s role in shaping and reflecting the lives of its reading communities. Careful definition of ‘text’ and the nomenclature that describes it can bring clarity to conceiving the task of textual criticism.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 411 | 78 | 4 |
| Full Text Views | 324 | 7 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 383 | 258 | 4 |