Thursday, September 9, 2010

Hendel Responds to Williamson

A while back, several blogs noted the critique of the Oxford Hebrew Bible published by H.G.M. Williamson.

I have just noticed that Ron Hendel, the editor-in-chief of the OHB (who has received some attention recently for other things), has written a response to Williamson. It is not in print yet--it is labeled as "forthcoming", but I don't see which journal will publish it. Nevertheless, you can read it, along with a few other articles about the project, here.

As a side note ("in the interest of full disclosure"), Hendel informs us that he had asked Williamson to edit Isaiah for OHB, but Williamson had "politely declined" (p. 1 n. 1). The editors of Isaiah listed here are J.J.M. Roberts and Eugene Ulrich.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

The Same Thing Again, but This Time, Hengel

I'm still stuck on the same issue, and I just want to add a brief comment from a distinguished NT scholar.

Martin Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its Canon (Baker, 2002), p. 44:

"In contrast, only fragments of Aquila were found in the Cairo Geniza."

The context of this statement makes it clear that Hengel is thinking of these Aquilanic fragments as Jewish.