Scribal Memory and Word Selection

Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bible

(SBL Press, 2023)

by Raymond F. Person, Jr.

A Review by Werner Kelber

15 June 2024

From the review:

In the most general sense, this book is about scribal practices reflected in texts that were leading up to and culminating in the Masoretic consolidation of the Hebrew Bible. More explicitly, it examines the work of scribes who were engaged in rewriting previously existing ancient Jewish manuscripts, undertaking “one of the most literate tasks in the ancient world: Vorlage-based copying” (299). When ancient scribes were copying manuscripts, what were the compositional, cognitive, and linguistic processes they were involved in? It stands to reason, therefore, that Person’s study concerns itself with compositional practices rather than recitational activities, and with the reproduction of manuscripts more than their transmission to hearers. In sum, the objective of this monograph is to reexamine rudimentary aspects of the ancient Jewish copying culture and, in considering the ramifications, to explore “what a new model for historical criticism might look like” (ix).

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In the most general sense, this book is about scribal practices reflected in texts that were leading up to and culminating in the Masoretic consolidation of the Hebrew Bible. More explicitly, it examines the work of scribes who were engaged in rewriting previously existing ancient Jewish manuscripts, undertaking “one of the most literate tasks in the ancient world: Vorlage-based copying” (299). When ancient scribes were copying manuscripts, what were the compositional, cognitive, and linguistic processes they were involved in? It stands to reason, therefore, that Person’s study concerns itself with compositional practices rather than recitational activities, and with the reproduction of manuscripts more than their transmission to hearers. In sum, the objective of this monograph is to reexamine rudimentary aspects of the ancient Jewish copying culture and, in considering the ramifications, to explore “what a new model for historical criticism might look like” (ix).

Scribal Memory and Word Selection marks a point of culmination in Person’s prolific scholarship of the textual traditions of the Hebrew Bible. For the past thirty years his academic pursuits have encompassed a wide range of topics and sensibilities. In addition to the epistemological implications of copying, his research interests have included ancient Jewish historiography and literary creativity, everyday conversation and oral-scribal modes of operation, questions concerning classification and nomenclature, the cultural construction of such key concepts as “text,” “word,” and “variant,” a reassessment of the criteria of the historical critical paradigm, and above all, we shall see, the study and reevaluation of textual variants. Throughout his writing career he has been focusing on issues, methods, and paradigms that are both intrinsic to biblical studies and those that lie outside the discipline. The present volume is a good example of his informed engagement with comparative and interdisciplinary studies. While the subject of this book is admittedly confined to a rather limited aspect (31), its impact, we shall see, affects central features of the historical paradigm. Person himself is of the opinion that the “conclusions in this volume generally apply well to all ancient and medieval literature” (4, note 8).

Looking over the author’s publication history, a clear trajectory leading up to the present publication is discernible. Two books in particular stand out for having played a distinctive role in the promotion of key ideas which turned out to be instrumental in the writing of the present volume. In his study on The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles (2010) Person was heavily focused on multiformity present in the traditions of the Hebrew Bible. The phenomenon of textual plurality was going to be a prime incentive for many of his major theses. Using the example of the Deuteronomic History and the Chronicler’s History, he argued that these two textual bodies were not so much theologically dissimilar as they were representative of a theology entirely compatible within the limits of a normative multiformity. Additionally, Person recognized the close alliance that exists between multiformity and the oral medium. Multiformity, he observed, was a salient characteristic of the oral medium, and a common feature in the literature of ancient Israel which was “a primarily oral culture” (68-69). For quite some time, therefore, Person has shown a keen interest in matters of orality. In this regard, his work has drawn substantially from the comparative study of oral traditions. Mainly it reflects close familiarity with the oral traditional categories developed by Milman Parry and Albert Lord. In the volume From Conversation to Oral Tradition (2016), Person introduced a systematic overview of the field of conversation analysis, thereby further expanding his comprehension of oral epistemology. Originating in sociology and sociolinguistics, Conversation Analysis concerns itself with language in everyday social life as talk-in-interaction. It has found usage across a wide range of academic disciplines (linguistics, anthropology, psychology, etc.). The elaboration of all three features – oral-scribal multiformity, oral-traditional categories, and Conversational Analysis – heavily contributed to the present volume. Moreover, having served as one of the co-editors of The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media (2017), Person finds himself in a position of exceptional familiarity with past and present communication theory and media studies. In the present volume, many of the topics and hermeneutical sensibilities documented in the Dictionary have come to fruition.

The goal of the monograph is the construction of a model of the Jewish copying culture that is closely commensurate with communication practices of the pre-Gutenberg history, and “deeply rooted in the historical and cultural realities of the ancient world” (305). The implementation of this project resulted in an exceptionally important book which invites a thorough rethinking of the standard approaches to the ancient manuscript culture. Its relevance reaches far beyond the confines of the Hebrew Bible.

This review heavily centers on theory, elaborating the epistemological, hermeneutical, and media features of the book. But it needs to be stated that Person’s argumentation rests on a painstaking text-critical analysis of ancient biblical manuscripts, based on many specific examples. His primary textual traditions are MT, LXX, and the DSS, as well as SP, and to a limited extent the Vulgate.

Since textual multiformity and pluralism furnish the fundamental epistemological rationale behind the principal topics treated in Scribal Memory and Word Selection, the phenomenon will serve as a suitable entrée into Person’s study. To be sure, textual fluidity of the biblical tradition hardly requires special pleading. That the textual history of the Hebrew Bible prior to its Masoretic formation was far from being a model of typographic fixity is well established and manifestly reinforced by the biblical findings among the Dead Sea Scrolls (73-74). On this matter Eugene Ulrich has articulated what can be assumed to be a widely accepted opinion: “The Scriptures [of what came to be the Hebrew Bible] were pluriform (as was Judaism and Christianity) at least until 70 CE, and quite possibly as late as 135 or beyond” (“The Bible in the Making: The Scriptures Found at Qumran,” 65). The question is no longer the biblical tradition’s plural nature itself, but what to make of it, how to interpret the phenomenon, and how to assess its implications. In Person’s own words: “What is the role of textual plurality in the work of a scribe copying a manuscript? This is really a guiding question for this volume . . .” (21).

Fully aware that historical criticism has been operating with a model that did in fact make allowance for the plural nature of the biblical tradition, Person is at pains to delineate its rationale and to reassess its validity. The formal designation he has attached to the model is MT-priority paradigm, a term of capital importance in his overall argumentation. This paradigm has dominated the historical-critical scholarship of the Hebrew Bible, and it enjoys widespread scholarly acclaim and usage up to the present time, despite what Person and others consider to be “evidence to the contrary” (37). As indicated by its label, the MT-priority paradigm privileges the MT in scholarly dealings with the textual traditions of the Hebrew Bible. Simply put, it exemplifies a status of the discipline where “the vast majority of scholars did use only the MT as the biblical text” (5). Person’ book, from start to finish, both highlights the pervasiveness of “the reigning paradigm” (5, 11), disputes the plausibility of its core premises, and carves out a way toward a replacement model.

When applied to the copying processes, the MT-priority paradigm suggests a communication scenario that is widely familiar and routinely associated with scribal practices. Accordingly, the scribal copyist works within the boundaries of two texts, the Vorlage text that is physically present before him and ready to be duplicated, and the text presently under construction. In carrying out his objective, the eyes of the copyist are moving back and forth from one text to the other, and back again to the initial one, while his mind is closely attentive to the navigation of his chirographic-cognitive activities. He is expected to stay within the parameters defined by the two texts, and he is restrained from straying outside his assigned project. Given this scenario, the use of short-term memory, a mental disposition narrowly focused on the two texts, is both sensible and imperative for carrying out his assignment. What gives the Vorlage additional authority is its identification as the original text. Person traces the rationale for the premise of originalism to Karl Lachmann’s text-critical model which postulated a textual family tree, presided over by the archetype, and followed by textual descendants, “that is, those readings that varied from the original text in its transmission history” (6). Based on the genealogical logic of this model, most biblical scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were inclined to attribute originality to the MT and to identify as variants those versions that differed from the original. Whether variant readings were recognized as accidental lapses or intentional revisions, slips of memory or late additions, they were customarily viewed as scribal errors, e.g., as versions corrupted by copyists (200). Duty-bound as scribes were assumed to be to their Vorlage text, those who deviated from it were held accountable for having “abandoned their task of copying during the transmission process” (24). In other words, whenever scribes failed to produce duplicative language, scholars were prone to charge them for having defaulted on their obligation to strictly abide by the singular, original version of their Vorlage. What this amounts to, therefore, is that versions departing from the standard came to be called variants, and variants were judged to be deficient. There is more to it. When measured against the benchmark of the single MT, those versions that were defined as variants contributed to the tradition’s plural elements. But the plurality made up of variants, and that is the crucial point, was deemed to be a defect.

            The above description summarizes the MT-priority paradigm in terms of a configuration of six interrelated components: allegiance to the genealogical logic of the text critical model; tradition conceived in terms of linear interrelations; textual priority of the MT; single, correct reading by adherence to the MT template; variants as scribal errors owing to their divergence from the original; short-term memory confined to a two-text scenario. In their aggregate, these six constituent features comprise “the dominant paradigm” (1) which Person aims to challenge.

Resuming the subject he had advanced in his previous work about face-to-face-talk-in-interaction, Person commences his critical analysis of the MT-priority paradigm with the application of categories derived from Conversation Analysis (CA). Let it be noted that he initiates his appraisal of the intensely textual paradigm with practices operational in primary orality. Arguing from the viewpoint of Conversation Analysis, he focuses his attention on the implementation of word-selection: how do we select words in everyday verbal exchanges? Person singles out three selection-mechanisms that regularly occur in the poetics of ordinary talk: category-triggering, sound-triggering, and visual-triggering. These three word-selection mechanisms form the controlling structure of much of his book.

Category-triggering, the most important mechanism of the three, is based on the premise that the enunciation of a word connotes a range or category of words that share a semantic or cultural sameness with the triggering word. In a continuing conversation, the earlier word can influence the selection of a later word that is understood to be of the same general category. While the later word appears to be different from the first, it is assumed to be of the same category, hence understood to be essentially carrying the same or nearly the same meaning. In the case of sound-triggering, the sound of a word gives rise to a sound-alike word in the subsequent conversation-in-progress. The third mechanism of word-selection, visual-triggering, has not been fully developed in conversation-analysis which prioritized audible data. However, Person is of the opinion that in conversational contexts visual cues (such as gaze, nods, gestures, etc.) were essential attributes not to be overlooked.

Locating all three selection-mechanisms in the social interaction of a speaking culture, Person’s objective is to illustrate analogous features in the comparative study of oral traditions and in oral-derived manuscripts - pursuing relations that have rarely been explored (56). We are treated to an exceptional approach which seeks to corroborate that attributes indigenous to conversation analysis are applicable to oral tradition and textual poetics, and illustrative of scribal variants and textual multiformity.

By way of example, Person observes that “the formulaic system in Serbo-Croatian epic is an exaggeration of category-triggering,” and that the frequently encountered ring composition “can be understood as exaggerations of conversational practices” (57). More broadly, he suggests that what Albert Lord had called the “special grammar” and John M. Foley the “traditional register” of oral-derived texts embodies “specific adaptations of the poetics of ordinary talk” (64; cf. also 71). Category-triggering and sound-triggering, he summarized, have become adapted and assimilated to oral tradition, and they help us understand text-critical “variants” (64).

The argument about word-selection leads Person to probe deeper into the issue of sameness versus difference as regards the understanding of the notion of “word,” and to raise epistemological questions about the semantic range and quality of “word” in ancient communication practices. What precisely prompts the rationale of category-triggering to posit sameness in the face of manifest difference? At this point Person draws on interviews that have been given to Serbo-Croatian guslari, epic singers who were performing to the accompaniment of an instrument of very simple design (57-62), and whose renderings have become widely known through the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord. Two major conclusions emerged from the interviews. One, what the interviewer recognized as being more than one word, a sequence of words, the singer insisted was a single word, when he was “playing his gusle (a one-string instrument) and singing this phrase (58).” Two, when discussing repeated performances of the same epic, the interviewer pointed out performative variables, while the singer was adamant in stressing that nothing was different: “no more, no less” (60). When the order of more than one word was changed in a repeat performance, the singer determined that he was managing “not only one word, but the same word” (58). Such was the case of repeat performances: while persons versed in print literacy were likely to be struck by varying degrees of differences, the ancient performer declared a state of full identity. By way of explanation, Person observes that in the Gutenberg culture words are customarily understood as single units, lexically fixed in standard dictionaries. It is a concept by no means absent from conversation analysis. But in orally-derived or -determined cultures words quite often do not admit of, nor are they exhausted in, a simple, single definition. Talks-in-interaction are regularly negotiated by means of “a broader understanding of word” (44). The living social context requires adaptive flexibility and seeks recourse even to nonverbal forms of communication. Thus, in common parlance and in oral-traditional literature, a single “word” can well be equivalent to more than one word: it may include a poetic line, or multiple lines, “or even the entire epic rather than a lexeme” (57). Moreover, the notion of a word’s sameness can encompass degrees of variability which to the print mindset plainly constitute difference. Hence, Person’s assessment: sameness and difference are not givens, universally applicable across the wide expanse of history, but they are “our culturally determined notions” (61), and the differing conclusions reached by the interviewer vis-à-vis the singers are definable as “a clash of cultures” (58). These deliberations on sameness (or identity) and difference, and the implied issue of singularity versus plurality, bring Person back to his primal focus on multiformity and to his leading question, stated for a second time: “What is the role of textual plurality in the work of the scribe copying a manuscript?” (27; cf. 21).

            Person takes his chief project of “reimagining text-critical variants” (93) to another level by explicating category-triggering via a typology of four sub-divisions: synonymous readings, lists, harmonization, and person-reference. The first subdivision concerns texts which Person unequivocally names synonymous readings. In this case, he is building on, and greatly expanding, the work of Shemaryahu Talmon, who may have been the first biblical scholar to apply the term synonymous to textual variants. Under this category Person identifies four forms of textual variation: differing versions of single words, transposition of word order of same phrases, differing versions of more than one word, and double readings in more than one manuscript. He agrees with Talmon that “there is no justification for terming these readings early and late, primary and secondary, original and copy” (93). Nor is there any logical basis for reconstructing the so-called original version, the prime aspiration of classic text criticism. Moreover, the variants are not intelligible as products of ideological, theological intentionality, but are suitably described as synonymous readings, e.g., types of variants that exhibit different wording, in many cases without any appreciable difference in meaning. Person finds the notion of synonymous entirely compatible with his idea of category-triggering: influenced by the Vorlage text the copyist has memorial access to a larger range of options, and he uses a word that is different, but semantically comparable with the text before him. Defined in this manner, certain variants are misconceived as erroneous deviations from a perceived original, and more adequately understood as memory variants. Person’s pivotal designation for the copyists’ selection of textual variants is scribal memory, a term that figures in the title of his work. It is also being used by David Carr, Shem Miller, and Alan Kirk (New Testament), and it is implied in the work of Emmanuel Tov, Alger Doane, and Cambry Pardee (New Testament).

            Person’s second subdivision of variants concerns lists and the mechanisms of list-construction. As he explains, the common assumption guiding much of biblical scholarship is that lists, notwithstanding their transparently variable character, represent a fixed genre. Furthermore, the genre of lists is often thought to be traceable to something of a master list that appears suitable for “accurate historical reconstruction” (105). Behind multiplicity is presumed to lie originality, or something close to it. Such is the concreteness of a list’s genealogies, itineraries, camping arrangements, temple vessels, etc., that their cataloging appears to be designed to “take us back to the earliest period of ancient Israel” (128). Fixity, historicity, and originality are widely held postulates of list constructions. Once again, Person demurs and emphasizes the element of multiformity. That scholarship has not taken seriously enough the full implications of the variable inventory of lists is a matter of concern for him, because lists are no exception to the “textual plurality and fluidity” that characterizes the Hebrew Bible (74). Of the four cases Person discusses, the two most detailed analyses are about towns and cities (samples taken from Joshua and 1 Chronicles) and foreign peoples (samples taken from Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua). These listings bear the mark of textual fluidity in terms of numbers, order, and naming, and it implies memorial strategies more than yearning for historical veracity that help explain their variability. In Person’s terms, the rationale for the list’s textual variability may not have been generated as much by “the scribe’s present geographical knowledge,” as by his “traditional knowledge of the past” (121). The scribes, “not constrained to copy the list verbatim” (130), work with their Vorlage texts by associatively engaging the category of Levitical towns and foreign peoples. Scribal memory is the key to the selection of a list’s items.

            A third subdivision of textual variants is about harmonization, “a common feature of the textual fluidity found in the literature of the late Second Temple period and late antiquity” (162). In constructing this part Person relies on and reappraises Tov’s work on harmonization in the Pentateuch. The term presupposes a scribe’s familiarity with more than one textual version, and frequently conjectures that the harmonizing process was inconceivable without the physical presence of an additional text. The rationale of harmonization, it is widely accepted, is to bring perceived textual discrepancies into closer alignment. Either expressly or implicitly, harmonizing strategies are assumed to take the form of an expansion of given texts. Underlying this assumption, Person observes, is the text-critical principle of lectio brevior potior, encouraging interpreters to distinguish between earlier and later versions, taking as given that there is an original text. When understood in those terms, Person suspects that harmonization is drawing on “the standard MT-priority paradigm of an original text that can be reconstructed through the application of text-critical principles such as lectio brevior potior” (162). Questioning whether a scribe’s copying work required the consultation of a second physical scroll (158), he contends that in most instances what was at a scribe’s disposal in addition to the Vorlage were “mental texts, including memories of oral texts” (163).

Thus, if scribes were able to access more than one version of a given Vorlage, it was because they shared a mental-memorial familiarity with a tradition that embraced plurality. This takes Person back to the issue of multiformity. If multiformity itself is a feature that characterizes tradition, certain variants that were assumed to result from scribal efforts to remedy perceived textual inconsistencies are more likely the products of scribes working within the norms of a broadly conceived tradition (164). What to the modern interpreter appear to be inconsistencies, to the ancient scribe may not appear to be textual alterations at all (165). Person still takes the argument one step further. If a Vorlage is susceptible to variable formulations and capable of being reproduced in more than one form, then the copied manuscripts can be understood as “faithful . . . and yet also necessarily incomplete representations of the fullness of the broader tradition” (164; cf. 19, 150). Hence, variants that are attributed to harmonization may find a more plausible explanation as scribal copying in accord with the norms of the tradition’s multiformity.

            The fourth subdivision of variants has to do with person references, noun-epithets that help define the identity of individuals. They are a well-known feature in Homeric scholarship. In the case of “the swift-footed Achilles,” for example, the epithet is selected less in conformity with metrical imperatives than to explore a range of poetic capabilities. Inherent in the category Achilles is a series of attributes, each of which stands for “the whole of Achilles’s personality” (180). Analogously, Person applies the concept of person references to the Hebrew Bible where they serve the identification of major characters (Moses, David) and of minor characters (Ahab, Abner). Person observes considerable fluidity in the use of pronouns, names, titles, and other forms of person epithets. In his view, by and large these variants do not serve harmonization purposes, nor are they attributable to particular textual sources or layers any more than they result from ideological changes of a presumed original text. They are better understood as synonymous readings resulting from category-triggering within scribal memory.

            Following the discussion of the fourfold typology of category-triggering, Person turns to sound-triggering, the second word-selection mechanism. As was the case with all previous examples, variants influenced by sound are evident in everyday conversational practices and in orally rooted literature. Person examines sound-triggering under the twofold label of alliteration and wordplay. Alliteration refers to “the repetition of the same or similar consonantal sounds” (202). Wordplay based on sound-triggering often serves to extend meaning, disclose hidden senses, or exploit ambiguities. When applied to names and places, for example, it infuses a subject with additional significance. Sound-triggering, just as category-triggering, can occur in all forms of language, and it is observable across the biblical traditions, including compositional and translational projects. The exploration of sound-patterning is therefore valid in Vorlage texts, in copied texts, and in translations such as the LXX. Once again, Person renews his objection to the MT-priority paradigm. The common practice of giving preference to the MT and the corresponding limitation to a single perspective “has hampered our understanding of the poetry of the Hebrew consonantal text” (226). In consequence of this practice, variants were identified either as deviations from an assumed original or as incorrect copying. Engaging a plurality of textual traditions makes him appreciate meanings specified in the vocalized MT and the Greek of the LXX vis-à-vis the unvocalized, consonant-only Hebrew version. Since sound-triggering can impact all scribal work, he counsels caution about any unreflective identification of variants is concerned (207).

Visual-triggering is Person’s third example of word-selection mechanisms. In a close study of relevant texts, he singles out six representative cases of textual variants that are frequently conjectured to have arisen from scribal lapses. Homographs refer to identical consonants yielding different meanings, raising the question of how to determine the original reading. Interchange of Letters concerns the substitution of similarly shaped consonants (as for example a daleth and a resh), which arouses suspicion that it was caused by a scribe’s visual confusion. Division of words describes the scribal practice of managing a scriptio continua through different spacing methods, resulting in varying readings. Metathesis involves (usually) two consecutive letters exchanging places within a word, a feature often explained as the outcome of scribal mis-readings. Haplography applies to a scribe’ shortening of a textual passage by skipping over words which begin or end with similar letters. Many of the above-mentioned variants are widely understood to be scribal errors based on visually caused misunderstanding in the process of copying. Stichography, the sixth mechanism, has to do with a manuscript’s graphic layout, indicating a particular type of spacing between words, the so-called stichs, designed to enhance not only the visibility but also the performability of the text.

Person challenges the notion that variants are in all instances adequately defined as scribal mis-readings of their Vorlage text. While he is not discounting that scribes do indeed make errors (68), he likewise states that “I prefer to avoid the language of error” (189). This option is grounded in his conviction that, contrary to a widely accepted view, “many of the errors seem to me to be synonymous readings” (274). In fact, interpreters’ commitment to the single, original MT is a principal reason for their preference of one reading to the exclusion or devaluation of all others. In Person’s view, the ambiguities inherent in the unvocalized text often serve as a hermeneutical trigger. The consonantal arrangement can offer the scribe an option of choosing among more than one phonetically acceptable reading. Also, sometimes an “erroneous” variant turns out to be an excellent contextual fit; it makes good sense when read in the larger context. Last not least, there is the issue of a millennial media history separating contemporary from ancient linguistic sensibilities: what to the modern reader appears different and flawed (when measured against the MT template), may to the ancient scribe be an alternative version, and not a variant at all.

Scribal memory is the principal agent in category-triggering, sound-triggering, and visual-triggering, which is to say that all triggering operations are mnemonically mediated. It is, however, noteworthy that the role memory plays, reaches beyond the confines of short-term memory, this interface between a scribe and his Vorlage; it engages what Person calls “the broader tradition” (19, 33, passim). Whether one calls it an enlargement of a Vorlage’s wording due to triggering mechanisms or a scribe’s mental engagement in extratextual meanings, these are two sides of the same copying process. This brings Person to introduce the concept of long-term memory. It is the kind of memory that extends the copying situation and brings into play what at one point he calls “the libraries held in scribal memory” (27). One observes that two forms of memory are involved in copying. There is still another way in which Person amplifies and refines the theory of scribal memory. Relying on the work of Jonathan Vroom, he adopts two of that author’s crucially important terms drawn from cognitive psychology: phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad (259-65). Presuming a link between graphic letters and sound, phonological loop connotes remembering as a process aided by “phonologically coded information” (260). Processing knowledge in the form of visual and spatial items, the visuospatial sketchpad expresses mnemonic abilities to remember non-verbal information such as shape of words, lacunae, smears on manuscripts, etc. Jointly these audio-visual memory functions provide insight into the cognitive function of scribal memory, and they temper any rush to judgment as far as the identification of variants is concerned.

At this point I summarize Person’s own theory of the ancient verbal arts which is designed to displace the conventional sixfold MT-priority paradigm outlined above. Placed in parentheses are an abbreviated references to the conventional paradigm. In summation, Person’s theory vis-à-vis the MT-priority paradigm is as follows: allegiance to multiple textual traditions (vs. Lachmann’s text critical model); tradition conceived as oral-scribal-memorial interrelations (vs. textual tradition as linear interrelations); multiple “originals” (vs. priority of MT); multiformity of readings (vs. single correct reading); variants as synonymous versions (vs. variants as scribal errors); extension of copying scenario via short-term plus long-term memory (vs. copying via short-term memory).  

Person is confident that his project “will likely require a paradigm shift in which even basic terms need to be reinterpreted” (308, cf. 4-6). Indeed, the full impact of Scribal Memory and Word Selection poses far-reaching nomenclatural, methodological, and media challenges to premises rooted in the historical criticism. Notions such as scribal memory, mnemonic triggering mechanisms, and synonymous rather than erroneous readings are relative newcomers to the historical paradigm. Refraining from commonplace terms such as author and even copyist in favor solely of scribe makes heavy demands on the scholarly imagination (310; cf. 91). Besides, would a text-centered scholarship be receptive to the concept of scribes working under the influence of sound patterns? Will proponents of the MT-priority paradigm give their assent to the premise of a close link between memory and manuscript? Moreover, can text criticism familiarize itself with the idea of variants understood as poetry, and not as deficiency? Similarly, will biblical studies be able to replace the classic definition of variants as departure from the norm with Person’s proposal of the normality of textual synonyms? Also, not to be forgotten: can text criticism refocus its habitual commitment to the original text toward textual multiformity?

Lastly one may ask whether biblical scholarship, in particular text criticism, could refocus its implied or explicit commitment to originalism toward the notion of textual multiformity. More than once Person takes the consequential step in asserting that “I do not share the assumption of an original text” (287; cf. 138, 259), and he comes to the equally serious conclusion that “we can have multiple originals within a tradition that characteristically values textual plurality” (303; cf. 162, 245, passim). When he states that “I am rejecting the very idea of an original text” (259), his point is not, I take it, that the original text is out of reach, but rather that it is non-existent. If one remembers Arnaldo Momigliano’s assessment that “the whole modern method of historical research is founded upon the distinction between original and derivative authorities” (“Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” 286), the profound significance of Person’s refutation of originalism can hardly be overstated. He is asking for nothing less than a displacement of the MT-priority paradigm.

I am a little puzzled, though, why Person is asking for a paradigm shift from “the MT-priority paradigm to the text-critical paradigm” (4). Why does his project of “reimagining text-critical variants” (93) prompt him to hold on to the designation of “text-critical paradigm” for his new model? Has he not demonstrated all along that it is precisely text criticism, that has, at least since Lachmann, provided the theoretical foundation for the construction of the MT-priority paradigm - the very paradigm which he seeks to displace? In challenging the notions of original text and variants, the centerpiece of text-criticism, has he not, along with the MT-priority model, also displaced text-criticism? Text-criticism does not seem be an appropriate label for a hermeneutical model that takes the multiformity of the oral-scribal-memorial culture of the biblical tradition with utter seriousness.

Scribal Memory and Word Selection exemplifies the deep involvement of oral-scribal-memorial sensibilities in the ancient Jewish copying culture. To have demonstrated this is Person’s signal achievement. Notwithstanding the admittedly “quantitative limitations” of his study (233), he succeeds in presenting a concrete picture of the media complexities surrounding and implicating biblical texts. The reader comes away with a clear impression of how much we are missing as we narrowly focus on the quiescent space of writings.

            In view of a vigorous debate currently underway among memory theorists, one feels inclined to ask whether a particular conceptualization of memory has informed Person’s study. Among the numerous memory-based arguments under discussion, does Person’s scribal memory adhere to a particular theoretical model? It seems easier to state what scribal memory is not, than what it is. Manifestly, the term “scribal memory” is ill understood, oft used as incidental to or a mere by-product of the texts. It bears no resemblance to Maurice Halbwachs’ thesis which argued that remembering was reconstruire more than retrouver. Memory’s central problematic, the recovery of the past and the re-presentation of the absent, is not the point either. Nor is scribal memory properly characterized as a vehicle for storage and retrieval. More to the point, Person’s scribal memory is engaged in copying processes, and its effects are multifaceted, including social and mental, textual and extratextual, corporeal and cognitive, short-term and long-term, auditory and visual aspects. Its specific activities are directed toward reactivating tradition. This has nothing to do with allegedly flawed variants, and everything with thinking tradition-honored, memorable thoughts. Three times Person introduces the theoretical designation of “collective memory,” using it in reference to the tradition (32), the traditional text (240), and the scribes (302). Space does not permit inclusion of current deliberations of social, collective, and cultural memory (see, however, Sandra Hübenthal). Suffice it to say that I deem it worthwhile to strengthen the theoretical grounding by probing more deeply into memory theory, although I realize I am asking for more than Person’s study intended to accomplish.

Person’s application of Conversation Analysis is likely to be met with some objections. A scholarship that is operating in a densely intertextual web and habitually disposed to text-bound thinking will find it difficult to accord conversational orality a sense of priority. But if it can be acknowledged that the ancient scribes “lived in a primarily oral culture” (68-69), the notion of spoken words affecting scribal culture appears to be historically defensible, and the conversational approach may be at least as reasonable as a resolutely textualist hermeneutics. One of the key issues Person has taken over from the oral-conversational register is the concept of word. The idea that words in the oral, oral-scribal medium engage a wide sphere of reference and intimate a broad range of meanings furnishes the rationale for the triggering mechanisms. Whether it be the Vorlage text or the copied text, their tradition is always perceived to be larger than either text’s material existence. The question I would raise is whether in view of “the broader tradition,” the scribe viewed both his Vorlage text and his copied text as “incomplete” renditions (150). To my knowledge, oral performers, such as the Serbo-Croatian guslari, never thought of their present performance as being incomplete any more than they considered any of their past performances as incomplete. Does not the concept of “multiple originals” militate against, and in fact undercut, any sense of incompleteness?

In the spirit of media sensibilities cultivated by Person’s Scribal Memory, I take the liberty of concluding with an observation about the artwork on the cover of this book. It exhibits a fifteenth century masterpiece featuring a scribe in the process of copying a book. This same picture serves as cover for all other volumes published in the SBL series Text-Critical Studies. The scribe is pictured in a sitting position, holding a writing tool, probably a quill, in his right hand, while his left hand is resting on the open Vorlage text that is positioned on a lectern. Placed on his lap is a second open book, apparently the text he is in the process of writing. There is a third open book, placed next to the lectern. It is reasonable to assume that all three books are directly involved in the copying process. Two more open books are noticeable, one placed on a table in the back and the other on a bench to the left. Can one assume that they stand ready to be consulted, if necessary? In addition, nine more books are scattered across the scene, all of them closed and some only partially visible. With the exception of a single scroll at the far end of the room and detached from the copying scene, it is impossible to escape the impression of a thoroughly bookish scene. Viewers find themselves projected into a book-cluttered space. The room itself is structured by a geometrical design of thoroughgoing linearity. Sharply drawn lines shape the table holding the lectern with the Vorlage, the table in the back, and the bench on the left. Rectangular lines frame the window, although we are not offered a view of the outside world. In all, the representational design of the picture is modeled on a logic in space - the very image of the copying activities that Person’s book seeks to displace.

In fairness, could it be otherwise? Speech and memory, the two sensory dimensions essential to Person’s project, are materially unrepresentable. Time is the medium in which speech is moving, and human interiority is where mnemonic activities transpire. “Mental texts” are neither visible nor audible. To be sure, we have found means of spatializing time (clocks, calendars), and visualizing memory (physical memory aids). But spatialized time is not time in its own actuality, and memory aids tell us nothing about memory’s cognitive processes. Speech and memory are spatially and visually incommunicable.

Granted these media complexities, the fact still remains that the book’s cover does not adequately represent the author’s thesis of the ancient Jewish copying culture. What is worse, it depicts the very communications realities that he has undertaken to deconstruct. For this reason, the cover is likely to mislead its readers.