Traditional Textual Criticism Reconsidered: MT (codex L)-Ezek 35, LXX (papyrus 967)-Ezek 35 and its Hebrew Vorlage as Variant Editions and the Implications for the Search for the »Original« Text

Traditional textual criticism usually takes MT (codex L) as its point of departure, focusing mainly on select variants in small textual units in order to evaluate whether a given reading is preferable to an alternative reading. This approach, however, is insufficient for several reasons: a variant may belong to a cluster of variants made by an »editor-scribe,« or may be an »individual textual variant« made by a »copyist-scribe« in the long course of textual transmission. The nature of a variant can only be revealed by separately analysing passages or books in different ancient versions. Furthermore, traces of different scribal activities as discernable in many proto-masoretic and early non-masoretic manuscripts imply, as will be demonstrated in this article with the help from Ezekiel 35 as a test case that there is no rational way to reconstruct the »original« shape of a passage or a biblical book.