Subject: Koren vs BHS text

From: "Harold P. Scanlin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:06:59 -0500

In addition to the valuable resource list shared by Price, some (most?)
editions of the Koren Tanakh include a list of differences between their
edition and other editions.  Their list does not include matres lectionis
differences; thus for the Torah only Gen 9:29 and Deut 23:2 are listed. 
Further, the list is not necessarily a comparison with BHS.  My guess is
that it is a comparison with the second Rabbinic Bible.

We now have a new Tanakh, just published in a Hebrew-English diglot "Stone"
edition by Mesorah Publications, Brooklyn, NY.  It will be interesting to
see how well this Hebrew text is received in the Jewish religious community
as something of a rival to the well-received Koren edition.  As far as the
text is concerned, in a very preliminary check I have spotted a few
readings in Stone which agree with L (via BHS?) but it generally agrees
with Koren.

All this suggests the need for a careful electronic comparison of the major
editions and manuscripts along the lines already undertaken by Price.  The
electronic status of the different texts is not well documented.  This
would, of course, be a major first step.  My understanding of the situation
is as follows:

BHS (extremely close to L):  the Westminster-CCAT file in its most recent
release(s) should be considered the authority for this file.  It should be
noted, however, that the Westminster morph version includes some changes
not introduced in to the latest printed edition of BHS (1990).   Many of
these changes will be introduced into the next printing of BHS (probably
1997).  Note that practically all of the 1990 and upcoming 1997 changes are
teamim.  The revised edition of BHS, tentatively designated BHQ (Quinta),
should advance the accuracy of the electronic file even further. 
Ultimately, these files will be available for academic research.

Koren:  Is the electronic file available for research?

Aleppo:  currently appearing in print (for the extant portions of the ms)
in several editions:
        HUBP:  Isaiah, Jeremiah forthcoming
        Bar Ilan Miqraot Gedolot:  Joshua - Isaiah
        Breuer edition (Jerusalem: Kook, 1989), but I have detected a
number of examples where it does not totally conform to the ms.
Does anybody know if there is an electronic file for Aleppo?

Davka CD-ROM, "The Holy Scriptures" and "Bar Ilan Judaic Library" CD-ROM: 
I am under the impression that these files are essentially related to the
Rabbinic Bible.  Does anyone have more information?

Harold P. Scanlin
United Bible Societies

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From: "Dale M. Wheeler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 07:56:18 -0800

> I ran a computer collation of the Koren text with the BHS text I have on my
>system [Torah only]. 

Where did you get an electronic version of the Koren text ??  I'd dearly
love to get my hands on that...

***********************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Th.D.
Research Professor in Biblical Languages        Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street                               Portland, OR  97220
Voice: 503-251-6416    FAX:503-254-1268     E-Mail: [email-masked] 
***********************************************************************

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From: "Dale M. Wheeler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 08:10:39 -0800

James Price wrote:

>system [Torah only]. Most of the differfences are due to (a) different uses
>of the Matres Lexiones [vowel letters W and Y]; and (2) Koren's failure to
>use Maqqeph [dash], particularly in a compound name; (3) different spelling
>convention of the pronoun HW) vs HY) [by the way, this latter difference is
>limited to the Torah]. The following is a list of the variants between the
>texts:

You can obviously ignore my immediately prior message; I got so excited
that I sent the response without reading the rest of the digest...oops...

I really appreciate the time you put in sending me that list.

The areas you observed are exactly the the areas I've observed consistently
when comparing BHS/MorphHeb with Even-Shoshan; the issue of the maters has
no doubt led E-S to put maters into his lexeme (or should that be
concordanceme ?) whenever possible, even when the word never occurs with a
mater in the text; BDB, KB2, and KBS are considerably more reluctant to do
that.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 06:16:13 -0500 (EST)

Lewis Reich wrote:

<< 
 I wonder if it is appropriate to describe the equidistant letters 
 matter as a theory, since what is being reported is a result, and as 
 far as I know, no particular theory was advanced in the statistical 
 articles to account for the result.  >>

The SS article did not propose a new theory, but was an attempt to test the
ELS codes in Genesis to see if they conform to an existing theory. The
existing theory was described in an article in the Journal of the Royal
Acadamy of Sciences which stated that, in an intelligent literary text, pairs
of meaningfully related words tend to be found in close proximity in contrast
with pairs of non-meaningfully related words. This literary phenomenon was
demonstrated to be generally true by rigorous statistical analysis. In other
words, intelligent literary texts exhibit this characteristic.

The authors of the SS article tested ELS codes in Genesis for this
characteristic. They selected the names of 32 medieval rabbis from an
encyclopedia, and paired their names with the date of their birth or death.
The assumption was that such name-date pairs constitute valid meaningfully
related word pairs. The experiment undertook to measure the overall proximity
of a number of instances of each name-date pair, and to statistically compare
the cumulative proximity of the 32 name-date pairs with that of 999,999
randomly arranged pertubations of the names and dates. That provided a large
control group of non-meaningfully related name-date pairs.  Their conclusion
was "that the proximity of the ELS's with related meanings in the Book of
Genesis is not due to chance."
 
This implies that the authors consider their experiment to demonstrate that
at least some ELS codes in Genesis exhibit one characteristic of intelligent
literature that cannot be accounted for by chance. This idea violates the
expectations of natural intuition. It suggests that in addition to the
intelligent arrangement of the letters in the surface text of Genesis, a
secondary intelligent arrangement was imposed to include 
additional hidden information. While such an idea is not impossible, it is
very unlikely and is open for very careful scrutiny. While I am very
skeptical, this work cannot be dismissed lightly. Several of us are going
through the methodology and assumptions of the experiment very thoroughly to
detect any flaws.

James D. Price