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WOLFGANG RICHTER, Biblia Hebraica transcripta. BH sup t . Vol. 1, Genesis. Vol. 2, Exodus, Leviticus. Vol. 3, Numeri, Deuteronomium. Vol. 5, 1 und 2 Samuel (Muenchenei Universitaetsschriften: Philosophische Fakultaet, Altertumskunde und Kulturwissenschaften, Aibeiten zu Text und Sprache im Alten Testament 33/1, 2, 3, 5; St. Ottilien: EOS, 1991). Pp. viii+ 485,
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+ 629,
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+ 701,
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+ 585. Paper DM 58, 68, 78, 63.
Biblicists are used to employing a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible like Biblia Hebraica (ed. Rudolf Kittel; 9th ed.; Stuttgart: Privilegierte Wuerttembergische Bibelanstalt; 1954), or the revised Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, editio minor (2d ed.; ed. W. Rudolph and H.-P. Rueger; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). Such editions present a collated masoretic manuscript with the masoretic textual notes, along with a critical apparatus enumerating significant variant readings and proposing emendations. If that sort of critical edition is textual in character, the series directed by the influential German scholar Wolfgang Richter is linguistic.
Richter's edition endeavors to present the full text of the Hebrew Bible in its complete linguistic form. On the right-hand pages is the MT, fully vocalized with cantillation as in most Hebrew editions, but also divided by clause or phrase into syntactic units, an uncommon feature. The phonology and morphology of the Hebrew are presented as they appear in the masoretic system, without indicating word-internal morpheme boundaries, and without making the underlying phonology any more transparent than it is in the phonetic reading tradition of the western masorah. The language of this reading tradition, Tiberian Hebrew, can...