OPINION
Another View Of
Biblical Revisionism
JEFFREY D. BALL
Special to The Jewish News
The Jewish News ran an article by Neil
Altman on Oct. 9 titled "Revisionist
Scholars Alter Bible Texts."
The author's premise is that a group
of scholars is operating with the inten-
don to destroy the long-established
traditions of Judaism and Christianity.
They seem to want to destroy our
long-intact scriptural heritage.
Biblical revisionism does exist. Polit-
ical, religious or other agendas some-
times drive it. It does not result in arbi-
trary or unilateral changes to our bibli-
cal texts. Changes to our Bible only
occur as the result of an incredibly
complex process of challenge and
rebuttal in scholarly literature and dis-
cussion, and only when the preponder-
ance of the evidence shows that a better
or more original reading of a given text
is possible. Even then, such changes are
almost always very minor in nature. It
is rare that there are any broad theolog-
ical implications to these changes.
In this article, the author shows a
part of that scholarly debate, but seems
to imply that the more radical side of
this debate will win easy acceptance
and result in equally radical modifica-
tions of the text as we know it.
The Hebrew Bible and the New
Testament are presented in the Altman
article as having been in fixed form,
almost since their authorship. In reali-
ty, all the evidence points to a very
fluid canon and text in antiquity.
There were many additional books
that circulated along with the ones
revered as scripture today; some we are
lucky enough to have — others have
eluded us. The process of determining
which books to include was never
completely settled.
Today among Christians, some view
the Apocrypha as canonical and others
don't,The Samaritans differ from
modern Jews in that they view a ver-
sion of the Torah as canonical and not
the rest of the Hebrew Bible. The earli-
est manuscripts of the New Testament
tend to differ from each other, in some
cases widely. The earliest translation of
the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which is
older than any Hebrew manuscripts we
have, makes it clear that the Hebrew
Bible differed greatly from the one we
have today. Establishing a "correct
text" is, therefore, a very necessary pur-
suit, and one which goes on and on.
Text (or textual) criticism is process of
Jeffrey D. Ball is co-owner of the Livo-
nia-based Dove Booksellers, which spe-
cializes in ancient and biblical studies.
establishing an authoritative biblical
text, for New Testament and Hebrew
Bible.
Altman's article seems to reflect a
common misunderstanding about the
goal of biblical text criticism. The
proper goal is to use the best manu-
script evidence to obtain a more cor-
rect or original text — not to simply
throw out what we have in order to
replace it with something else. Many
parts of our Bible are very difficult to
understand in the original languages.
Many people also suspect translators of
abusing their power and writing in
their own personal agenda. But what
can you do when the Hebrew or Greek
original makes poor sense according to
our current knowledge of the ancient
language? Would it not be an advan-
tage to find another manuscript from
antiquity that resolves the difficulty?
That's what we have in the Dead Sea
Scrolls to some extent. The Hebrew
texts are a thousand years earlier than
any prior known Hebrew manuscripts.
The big surprise is that the Scrolls con-
firm the accuracy of our medieval
manuscripts so strongly. They do con-
tain some variants, and although we
can't accept the Dead Sea Scrolls vari-
ants as superior readings in every case,
we can make use of an additional tex-
tual witness. What is the advantage of
having the Dead Sea Scrolls if we don't
use them to attempt to get superior
readings of the text?
Altman is aware of the extreme
interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls and
immediately targets DSS research as a
major source of revisionist activity. One
writer on the Scrolls, Hartmut Stege-
mann, is presented as a particularly
threatening revisionist. Altman says
that Stegemann advocates the inclusion
of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the
Temple Scroll, found at Qumran, as
the new sixth book of the Torah. In
researching, we find a very different
assertion. Stegemann says that the
author of the Temple Scroll envisioned
his own work as a sixth book of Torah,
but never advocates the changing of
modern versions or printed Bible.
Looking at New Testament revision-
ists, Altman turns to the activities of
the Jesus Seminar, a more radical
group of New Testament scholars. The
goal of the Seminar is to understand
the figure of Jesus explicitly, and to
weigh the various sayings of Jesus
according to historical probability. It
has long seen as possible that certain
words of Jesus may have been placed
into his mouth by the early church, for
its own political or theological needs.
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