Dear Bill (if I may):
Thanks for the informative survey of biblical text-history. I've been
away from this list for a while, and would like to throw in a couple of
[perhaps pedantic] observations.
In re: "A Brief History of the Bible - 10" I would suggest that
Augustine's preference for the LXX over the "hebraica veritas" is often
overstated, especially if one relies only on the evidence from _De
doctrina christiana_. It's important to take into account the evolution
in his attitude which followed from his correspondence with Jerome on
this topic. Further evidence of changes in A's thinking can be found in
_De civitate dei_, Books 15-17; here his attitude suggests that the
Hebrew truth is dispositive at least where question of Israel's history
are at stake. Augustine continued to believe, however, that the
multiplicity of textual variants of Scripture is providential -- as he
held in DDC.
A very useful overview of Augustine's evolving thinking may be found in
Anne-Marie La Bonnardière's article, "Augustin a-t-il utilisé la
‘Vulgate' de Jérôme?" in _St Augustin et la Bible_, ed. A.-M. La
Bonnardière, La Collection Bible de Tous les Temps 3. Paris: Beauchesne,
1986.
Also, about Herbert of Bosham -- one can read excerpts from his
commentary in a series of transcriptions (with their own learned
commentary) published by Raphael Loewe in _Biblica_ in 1953. Loewe was a
colleague of Miss Smalley's. For what it's worth, I am working on
Bosham's psalter commentary myself. One of the interesting things I've
found is that the psalter text upon which he comments is about equal
parts "LXX" and equal parts "Hebraica" as we know them from the Stuttgart
edition. That is to say, here is a good example of the "slopping about"
of Rom-Gall-Hebr Psalter texts that occurs in medieval usages --
sometimes derived from exemplars and sometimes from "faults" of memory.
Theresa Gross-Diaz notes this phenomenon in her study of Gilbert of
Poitiers' commentary.
Cheers,
--Deborah
Deborah L. Goodwin, A.B.D. "Don't talk to me of
the Duke of Monmouth!
Department of Theology Show me the exact
spot where Louisa
University of Notre Dame Musgrove fell!"
Tennyson.
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