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).

Download the full review by clicking here. Or:

Jesus Tradition, Early Christian Memory, and Gospel Writing: The Long Search for the Authentic Source

by Alan Kirk

(Eerdmans, 2023)

Biblical scholars want to get to the roots of the gospels—the very earliest memories of Jesus and his world. Though scholars know about all the major concepts at work—Q, the Urgospel, priority—it seems like a definitive solution to the Synoptic problem is hopelessly unattainable. Why the impasse? And where do we go from here? 

In Jesus Tradition, Early Christian Memory, and Gospel Writing, Alan Kirk guides us through the history of biblical scholars’ quest for the authentic source. Kirk reveals that outdated assumptions about ancient media realities have caused the past two centuries of academic deadlock. Using cutting-edge scholarship on orality, memory, and tradition formation, he shows how the origins of the gospels may be found in the memory practices of the earliest Jesus communities.

Scribal Memory and Word Selection: Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bible

Raymond F. Person Jr.

(SBL, 2023)

What were ancient scribes doing when they copied a manuscript of a literary work? This question is especially problematic when we realize that ancient scribes preserved different versions of the same literary texts. In Scribal Memory and Word Selection: Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Raymond F. Person Jr. draws from studies of how words are selected in everyday conversation to illustrate that the same word-selection mechanisms were at work in scribal memory. Using examples from manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, Person provides new ways of understanding the cognitive-linguistic mechanisms at work during the composition/transmission of texts. Person reveals that, while our modern perspective may consider textual variants to be different literary texts, from the perspective of the ancient scribes and their audiences, these variants could still be understood as the same literary text.

See a video of Prof. Person's 2021 presentation at SBL.

Scribal Memory and Scribal Performance

A new approach to text-critical "variants"

by Ray Person, Ohio Northern University

Presented in the Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts (PC-BOAT)

At the SBL Annual Meeting in San Antonio on 20 Nov 2021

See the 2023 book Scribal Memory and Word Selection: Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bibleat the SBL website.

To watch the video, click this link or watch in the window below:

https://vimeo.com/650111458