From Variants to Editions: Identifying and Tracing Variant Literary Editions in the Hebrew Bible
Presenter: Bodor, Attila
Period: 20–23 July 2026
Event title: European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS) Annual Conference
Event type: Conference
Unit: Textual Criticism of the New Testament, the Old Testament and the Qur’an
Location: KU Leuven, Belgium
Degree of Recognition: International
Abstract: Since the discoveries in the Judean Desert, textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible has increasingly shifted from attempts to reconstruct a single “original text” to approaches that take seriously the textual plurality of Second Temple scriptural writings. On this view, some extant witnesses preserve traces of late Second Temple textual and literary development, reflecting scribal reshaping of inherited texts and blurring any clear boundary between composition and later interpretation. A key concept for describing this phenomenon is that of variant literary editions: discrete literary traditions that circulated in the late Second Temple period and are partially recoverable from interrelated variants preserved across multiple witnesses. Yet the category remains contested, and its use in textual-critical practice is often uneven. This paper reconsiders the concept of variant literary editions and the phenomenon it is meant to describe, aiming to make the category more operational within biblical textual criticism. It asks which kinds of differences between witnesses are best explained as evidence for a distinct literary form, rather than as transmissional change. After surveying recent scholarship—paying particular attention to the category’s emerging role within the Biblia Hebraica Quinta project—the paper proposes working criteria for identifying edition-level alterations. These criteria are then tested on two corpora: (1) the harmonizing/expansive Pentateuchal tradition attested in several Qumran manuscripts and in the Samaritan Pentateuch; and (2) the Old Greek and Old Latin versions of Kings, which at points appear to reflect a literary form distinct from the MT. The paper argues that recurring, conceptually linked clusters of variants can indicate editorial activity and thus provide stronger evidence for discrete literary editions than do isolated transmissional differences.