Restoring the Greek Tobit

Weeks, Stuart

Abstract

The modern consensus that the “Long” text of Tobit is earlier than the “Short” has brought about a paralysis in attempts to restore the Greek, with the very unsatisfactory text in Sinaiticus coming to serve as our de facto best effort. It is important to appreciate that the Long witnesses do not constitute a specific and coherent recension, capable of reconstruction in its own right, but are potentially miscellaneous texts, that happened individually to elude the two major revisions of the tradition. Original readings are preserved in both the revised and unrevised witnesses, and if we are to progress then we need to employ and evaluate all those witnesses. The paper ends with an attempt to reconstruct the original form of 4:7-19, which is lacking in Sinaiticus, as an illustration of the scope for such progress.

Citation

Weeks, S. (2013). Restoring the Greek Tobit. Journal for the Study of Judaism: In the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period, 44(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-12340377

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Mar 7, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 15, 2013
• Journal: Journal for the Study of Judaism
• Print ISSN: 0047-2212
• Electronic ISSN: 1570-0631
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 44
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-15
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-12340377
• Keywords: Tobit, Text criticism.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1496102
• Publisher URL: http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15700631-12340377