TRACKING CHANGES : A PROPOSAL FOR A LINGUISTICALLY SENSITIVE SCHEMA FOR CATEGORIZING TEXTUAL VARIATION OF HEBREW BIBLE TEXTS IN LIGHT OF VARIANT SCRIBAL PRACTICES AMONG THE JUDAEAN DESERT PSALMS WITNESSES

摘要

The Judaean Desert discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of the textualdevelopment and transmission of the Hebrew Bible. Accordingly, after almost seventy years ofresearch, four theories of textual transmission have become predominant. Nevertheless, in recentyears the need to incorporate Second Temple scribal practices and historical linguistics intocurrent philological methods and text-critical approaches has come to the forefront.This thesis proposes a linguistically sensitive schema for categorizing variation of Hebrew Bibletexts, which serves to incorporate historical linguistic insights alongside existing philologicalmodels. Using such a schema this thesis presents three case studies from the Psalms to testwhether or not the identification of variant scribal practices, as discernible from computationallinguistics, can sufficiently explain the variation found among Judaean Desert psalms witnesses.The conclusion affirms the validity and utility of such a schema and perspective for HebrewBible textual studies.