Rewriting the Sacred Text

Though most treatments of the historical development of the Hebrew Bible focus on Hebrew witnesses the Old Greek texts paint a picture of the growth of the Bible that is both fascinating and diverse. Four different patterns of development are examined and evaluated in this study: a rewritten Hebrew biblical text; a pre-Masoretic biblical text; a rewritten Greek biblical text; and a lost Hebrew Vorlage. Readers who think the Bible was composed in Hebrew and then translated into Greek and other languages in a more or less linear fashion will be surprised to discover the complex course that many biblical witnesses traveled between original composition and inclusion in the Jewish and Christian canons of Scripture.