Unearthing Text-Critical Possibilities through Lexical-Syntactic Analysis: A Case Study from Judg 15:3

Abstract

In the discipline of text criticism of the Hebrew Bible, one is usually alerted to the possibility of textual corruption either by a reading that poses significant logical or syntactic difficulties in its immediate context, or by the presence of significant variants in ancient manuscripts and translations of that text. In this article, however, it will be argued that occasionally, even when a reading seems to enjoy unanimous support from ancient manuscripts and versions and poses no significant difficulty in context, there remains the possibility of textual corruption. Using Judg 15:3 as a test case, this article will show that when even seemingly trivial lexical-syntactic irregularities such as the use of the notoriously fluid מן preposition in conjunction with נקה are noted and carefully analysed, new text-critical possibilities that would otherwise be overlooked may come to light.