The Idea of a Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible: A Genealogy

The modern scholarly conversation about critical editions of the Hebrew Bible is 500 years old. In light of the new HBCE edition, it is worth exploring the major turns in this conversation and their conceptual entailments. The HBCE project is, in some respects, an affirmation of Wellhausen's position, against Nöldeke's, on the validity of eclectic method in textual criticism. It also resumes Geiger's emphasis on the exegetical importance of scribal revisions.