Equivalent to Comfort for OT?

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

Is there a tool (either in print or in Accordance) to Comfort for the Old Testament?  For all that I can read Hebrew, I never really managed to get my head around the apparatus abbreviations in the BHS; trying to sort them out when I'm translating or exegeting justs takes too much time.  I'd love something that deciphers these in plain English in the way that Comfort provides a more readable "apparatus" for the NT text.

[Helen Brown]

The NET Notes provides explanations of most significant variants, highly recommended and included in most Collections above the very basic ones.

[miketisdell]

The NET Notes provides explanations of most significant variants, highly recommended and included in most Collections above the very basic ones.

 

I love the NET notes but it very frequently misses very significant variants in the OT; the NT notes are a bit better.

 

BHQ is probably the closest, but it is not yet complete.

 

Example of BHQ from Deut. 9:18

 

9:18    ‏וָאֶתְנַפַּל‎   Of the five times that the hitpael of ‏נפל‎ appears in the Bible, three of them occur in this chapter (vv. 18 and 25 [twice]), in addition to once in Ezra 10:1, and once in Gen 43:18 (where it is used in the sense of attack). In Deut 9:18, 25, and Ezra 10:1, the context is one of prostration in part to pray (the verb ‏התפלל‎ occurs in proximity to ‏התנפל in Deuteronomy—in v. 26, while in Ezra it occurs in the same verse). In all three Deuteronomy instances G interprets, using the verb δέομαι, “to pray, to beseech,” while in Ezra G translates both verbs identically with προσεύχομαι! In the three cases here in Deuteronomy, both S and T testify to the same interpretative tendency to equate prostration with prayer, with TN being the most expansive: “I prostrated myself in prayer and begged for mercy.” Regarding the reading of προσέπιπτον here in v. 18 (attributed to Ἄλλος by Field, Origenis Hexaplorum, 1:287), Wevers (Notes, 166, n. 29) suggests that it may well derive from Aquila in view of his reading of συνέπιπτον at v. 25, while Dogniez/Harl (Deutéronome, 178) present it forthwith as Aquila’s.

יְהוָה1   Most likely inspired by v. 9, where a similar description of fasting for forty days and nights occurs, G makes this reference much more precise through its addition of “a second time as even the former” (cf. Wevers, Notes, 166–67). Regarding G’s occasional tendency to introduce an extra word into its renderings, see 2:6 ‏מַיִם‎.

‏חַטַּאתְכֶם‎   Since the sg. form when modified by ‏כל can be understood collectively, the pl. form in the versions may well reflect M.

 

I was also going to include the BHQ apparatus for this verse but when I tried to copy the text I got an error.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2018 by miketisdell

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

I had forgotten about NET notes; it's been a while since I referenced them.  I just checked them for the passage I was working with (2 Kings 5), and NET notes do not discuss the points from the BHS apparatus that interest me; indeed I don't find any notes in that section of NET notes that refer to textual issues documented in the BHS apparatus.

 

The textual commentary from the BHQ is far closer to what I'm looking for.  Based on the short video on the product page, the apparatus itself would be just as opaque to me as the BHS apparatus, if it weren't for the presence of the commentary.  Unfortunately, the fascicle for the passage I was working on isn't out yet.   Even if it were, I'm not sure I quite have the budget/need for the entire BHQ, given that I'm a parish pastor and not an academic.  But I will certainly keep my eye on it!