Parallel Texts in the Hebrew Bible, New Methods and Visualizations

📝 Abstract

In this article we develop an algorithm to detect parallel texts in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. The results are presented online and chapters in the Hebrew Bible containing parallel passages can be inspected synoptically. Differences between parallel passages are highlighted. In a similar way the MT of Isaiah is presented synoptically with 1QIsaa. We also investigate how one can investigate the degree of similarity between parallel passages with the help of a case study of 2 Kings 19-25 and its parallels in Isaiah, Jeremiah and 2 Chronicles.

💡 Analysis

In this article we develop an algorithm to detect parallel texts in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. The results are presented online and chapters in the Hebrew Bible containing parallel passages can be inspected synoptically. Differences between parallel passages are highlighted. In a similar way the MT of Isaiah is presented synoptically with 1QIsaa. We also investigate how one can investigate the degree of similarity between parallel passages with the help of a case study of 2 Kings 19-25 and its parallels in Isaiah, Jeremiah and 2 Chronicles.

📄 Content

Parallel Texts in the Hebrew Bible, New Methods and Visualizations Martijn Naaijer1*, Dirk Roorda2 1Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2Data Archiving and Networked Services, The Netherlands *Corresponding author: m.naaijer@vu.nl

Abstract In this article we develop an algorithm to detect parallel texts in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. The results are presented online and chapters in the Hebrew Bible containing parallel passages can be inspected synoptically. Differences between parallel passages are highlighted. In a similar way the MT of Isaiah is presented synoptically with 1QIsaa. We also investigate how one can investigate the degree of similarity between parallel passages with the help of a case study of 2 Kings 19-25 and its parallels in Isaiah, Jeremiah and 2 Chronicles.

keywords Hebrew Bible, parallel texts, linguistic data, visualizations

1. INTRODUCTION The reuse of texts is a well-known phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible. For example, in the book of Genesis we find various allusions to older Mesopotamian texts in the stories in the story of the flood [Hallo, 2003: 458-460]. There are also many cases of inner biblical intertextuality, such as the references to the story of Jacob and Esau in Hosea 1 and of course there exist numerous retellings of the Hebrew Bible in later ancient literature, such as the Genesis Apocryphon and the book of Jubilees, also called “Rewritten Scripture” [Parry and Tov, 2004]. In this article we focus on parallel texts within the Hebrew Bible. There exists a lot of literature on this issue, but there is no open source online tool available yet with which it is possible to search for parallel texts and with which it is possible to present these parallels synoptically and online1. There is no fixed definition of what exactly parallel texts are. [Endres, Millar and Burns, 1998: ix] describes them as:

1 There are various printed synopses. For a comparison of several of these, see [Verheij, 1992]. “…more than one “text”—whether clauses, sentences, verses or longer sections—manifest similar language, tone or structure. Parallels may be verbatim, nearly verbatim, structural, within the same book of the Bible, between different books of the Bible…”

In this research we will only study parallels with a certain minimal similarity of lexical characteristics. We developed a tool with which it is possible to find parallel texts within the Hebrew Bible and to visualize the results synoptically. In a similar we visualize the book of Isaiah in the MT and 1QIsaa. In section 2 the relevance of the study of parallel passages in the study of linguistic variation in Biblical Hebrew is described. The data, the software and the tool are described in section 3. The tool consists of two Jupyter notebooks, which can be found online2. They form an inseparable part of this article. In section 4 we take a closer look at a specific group of parallel texts, namely 2 Kings 19-25 and its parallels in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and 2 Chronicles and we present a method by which it is possible to compare different manuscripts of the book of Isaiah.

2. PARALLEL PASSAGES AND LINGUISTIC VARIATION IN BIBLICAL HEBREW Parallel passages in the Hebrew Bible play an important role in reconstructing the development and growth of biblical texts and also in the study of the linguistic variation in the Hebrew language they are used often to explain diachronic change. In most studies on diachrony in Biblical Hebrew, Archaic Biblical Hebrew, Early Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew are distinguished3. According to this chronological model Archaic Biblical Hebrew can be found in several poems in the Hebrew Bible [Sáenz-Badillos, 1993: 56-62] [Notarius, 2013]; the books of the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets4 are the best examples of Early Biblical Hebrew and the so called core late books5 are written in Late Biblical Hebrew. By comparing a characteristic late linguistic feature in one of the late books with its corresponding early alternative, scholars are able to uncover the chronological development of

2 https://shebanq.ancient-data.org/tools?goto=parallel 3 For instance “A History of the Hebrew Language” by [Sáenz-Badillos, 1993] is based on this division. 4 The Pentateuch consists of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, the Former Prophets consist of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. 5 The books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles are the core late books. Sometimes other books, like Qoheleth is also considered to be late by many, but not everyone is certain, see for instance [Hurvitz, 2014: 4] and [Young, 1993: 140-157] Biblical Hebrew. Very often scholars make use of examples in parallel texts, especially in the early books of Samuel and Kings an

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