“If we look at Jewish literature as an object of edition, the situation is…rather exceedingly complicated”

If we look at Jewish literature as an object of edition, the situation is certainly not easier than in other branches, but rather exceedingly complicated. Looking first at literature by and ascribed to a single author, so-called authored literature, we have to face not only the question of different manuscripts and fragments, but also that of different text versions, perhaps consciously created by the author, or at least by scribes and schools on the basis of reasons difficult to reconstruct. Furthermore, centuries of Church censorship, of voluntary or forced expurgation of allegedly anti-Christian variant readings and texts, of public burning of manuscripts and prints of Talmud and Midrash as well as authored tractates, render modern edition-making no easier.

Giuseppe Veltri, “From The Best Text To The Pragmatic Edition: On Editing Rabbinic Texts”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martínez, Didier Pollefeyt, Peter Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 66.

Leave a Reply