Biblia Hebraica Quinta: The Fifth Edition of the Hebrew Bible

Open almost any scholarly commentary on the Old Testament written in the last century and the Hebrew it discusses comes, directly or indirectly, from one family of books: the Biblia Hebraica published in Leipzig and then Stuttgart. The family has had five members. The fifth, Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), has been appearing book by book since 2004 and is still unfinished. It keeps the manuscript its two predecessors printed, the Leningrad Codex, but it changes almost everything about how the evidence around that text is gathered, judged and explained.

Why a Fifth Edition?

The Family Tree

The name is literal. Quinta is Latin for “fifth”, and the full Latin title, Biblia Hebraica quinta editione cum apparatu critico novis curis elaborato, means “the Hebrew Bible in a fifth edition, with a critical apparatus prepared with new care”.¹ Counting from Kittel, the editions run as follows.

The first edition appeared at Leipzig in 1905–06, edited by Rudolf Kittel. Its Hebrew text was not a manuscript but the standard printed text of the day, the Second Rabbinic Bible issued at Venice in 1524–25 by Daniel Bomberg and edited by Jacob ben Hayyim. A corrected second edition followed in 1913.²

The third edition (Stuttgart, 1929–37) was the decisive break. Kittel and Paul Kahle replaced the Venice text with that of a single medieval manuscript, the Leningrad Codex, now in the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg and dated 1008/9. It also printed the marginal notes of the Masorah parva and gave a much fuller apparatus. Albrecht Alt and Otto Eissfeldt were closely involved, but the book was still universally called “Kittel”, abbreviated BHK.³ A printing of 1951, sometimes counted as the seventh edition, added a third apparatus with readings from the Qumran scrolls.⁴

The fourth edition dropped the editors’ names from the title and took that of its city: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, edited by Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph, issued in parts between 1967 and 1977 and reprinted with corrections several times, most recently in 1997.⁵ BHS has been the working Bible of Hebrew students for half a century. BHQ is its replacement.

What Was Wrong with BHS?

BHS improved on its predecessor. It merged the three apparatuses into one, recorded far more of the Masorah, was more cautious about conjecture, and listed more evidence from the Cairo Genizah and Qumran. Even so, Emanuel Tov summed up a long line of criticism: reviewers objected to “its inappropriate selection of variants, its lack of accuracy and consistency, and the insufficient attention given to the Qumran scrolls”.⁶

There were also problems of method. The BH series marked its preferred text with Latin imperatives such as l(ege) (“read!”) and dl (“delete!”), and its stated aim was to restore the presumed original wording of each book.⁷ In practice, an entry often appeared because a modern editor found a verse difficult, not because any manuscript or ancient translation actually read differently. Richard Weis, a member of the BHQ editorial committee, gives a clean example. At Jeremiah 23:3 both BH3 and BHS note that the verse has been added. No textual witness lacks the verse. The note rests entirely on an argument about literary consistency in Rudolph’s commentary on Jeremiah. BHQ has no entry at that point at all.⁸

A second example comes from David Baker’s review. At Exodus 23:3 every manuscript and every version reads דָּל (dal, “poor”), and the sense is clear: do not favour a poor man in his lawsuit. BHS nonetheless suggests emending to גָּדֹל (gadol, “great”), on the strength of the parallel in Leviticus 19:15.⁹ An apparatus built like that is a list of possible solutions to exegetical puzzles, not a report of evidence.

The Shape of the New Edition

A Manual Edition for Non-Specialists

BHQ was designed for a particular readership. Its General Introduction describes it as a Handausgabe, a manual edition, for “scholars, clergy, translators, and students who are not necessarily specialists in textual criticism”.¹⁰ Weis explains why this mattered. Much of that readership works far from well-funded libraries, so the edition had to be portable and affordable. That meant one volume of text, with a second volume of commentary, and therefore hard choices about what to include.¹¹

The German Bible Society’s description of the finished work matches that plan. The text will be issued in about twenty fascicles and then gathered into a one-volume edition, accompanied by a one-volume textual commentary that discusses the cases in more depth than the apparatus can.¹²

The Base Text: Still Leningrad

Like BH3 and BHS, BHQ prints the text of the Leningrad Codex, catalogued in St Petersburg as EBP. I B 19a. The German Bible Society describes it as “a diplomatic presentation of the text and Masorah (magna and parva)” of that manuscript, checked against new colour photographs made by the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont, California.¹³

“Diplomatic” here means that the edition reproduces the manuscript rather than a text reconstructed by the editors. The General Introduction gives three reasons for not attempting an eclectic text. The history of the Hebrew text is not yet well enough understood to support one. There is no agreement on which stage of that history such a text should aim at. And an eclectic text ought to rest on a much fuller presentation of variants than a one-volume edition can hold.¹⁴ There were practical reasons too. The Bible Society already had a fully proofed text of the Leningrad Codex, first in type and then in electronic form. Two other diplomatic editions of different codices were in progress, the Hebrew University Bible on the Aleppo Codex and the Madrid edition of the Cairo Codex of the Prophets, so it was useful to keep the Leningrad text in print. And as the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, it gives a single consistent point of comparison from Genesis to Chronicles.¹⁵

The policy has its critics. Baker points out that BHQ reproduces Leningrad “even when this shows obvious errors”, which sends readers back and forth between text and apparatus, and he questions whether such purism serves a non-specialist readership. He also notes that the edition already departs from the manuscript in small ways. Where Leningrad is damaged it supplies the text from other manuscripts. Where the scribe corrected himself it prints one reading. It does not copy the manuscript’s columns. And it marks section breaks with the letters ס and פ, where the manuscript simply leaves spaces.¹⁶

The Masorah in Full

The most visible change on the page is the Masorah. BHS printed the Masorah parva in its margins, but placed the Masorah magna in a separate volume and filled the page with cross-references to it. BHQ prints both as they stand in the Leningrad Codex. The Masorah parva sits in the side margins, and the Masorah magna is set between the biblical text and the apparatus.¹⁷ The notes at the end of each book, the Masorah finalis, are included as well.¹⁸

The Masorah is also reproduced diplomatically, with the scribe’s own inconsistencies left in place, whereas BHS tidied them up. Weis draws the consequence: because the Masorah is part of the text of a Masoretic codex, BHQ is in effect the first complete edition of the Leningrad manuscript.¹⁹ Every note of the Masorah magna is translated into English in the commentary section of each fascicle. The Masorah parva can be read with a glossary of its standard terms, and its rarer notes are translated as well.²⁰

English, Not Latin

The apparatus of BHQ is written in English. The Latin abbreviations and Gothic sigla of BHK and BHS are gone.²¹ The readings of the ancient translations, however, are given in their own languages and scripts. Weis records that the editors first tried to translate everything for readers who know only Hebrew and Greek, and abandoned the attempt. Readings in Latin, Syriac and Aramaic now appear as they stand in the witnesses. That makes the apparatus a more honest report of the evidence, though it shuts some readers out of parts of it.²²

How the Apparatus Works

Two Tests for Inclusion

The apparatus of BHQ is organised on what Weis calls “radically different principles” from BHS.²³ Because space is limited, a case is normally included only if it passes two tests. The variation must matter for translation or exegesis. And at least arguably, a different Hebrew or Aramaic text must lie behind it.²⁴ An exegetical difficulty alone is not enough. In Weis’s words, “only variation among the surviving witnesses is a reliable marker” of a case that needs a text-critical decision.²⁵

Some evidence passes automatically. All non-orthographic variants in the oldest Hebrew witnesses, the biblical scrolls from Qumran and the Samaritan Pentateuch, are reported whether or not an editor thinks they matter for translation, because such witnesses are old and scarce.²⁶ The German Bible Society’s summary adds that fragments from Qumran and the other Judaean Desert sites are fully collated, that every pre-Tiberian witness is noted for each case, and that at least two further Tiberian codices are collated for every book.²⁷ Cases of ketiv and qere, where the written text and the reading tradition differ, are recorded wherever they affect the meaning.²⁸

The apparatus also differs from BHS in what it reports for each case. BHS usually cited only the witnesses that disagreed with the base text, so a reader could not tell whether an unmentioned version agreed with Leningrad or simply had nothing to say. BHQ gives the evidence of all its regularly cited witnesses, including those that support the base text.²⁹ There are no reference marks in the running text, which keeps the page clean but means readers must check the apparatus to learn whether a verse has a textual problem.³⁰

Preferred Readings and the Reasons for Them

BHQ does not leave the reader alone with the evidence. In each case the editor indicates which reading he or she prefers, though in practice this only has to be marked when the preferred reading is not the one printed in the text.³¹ Weis is candid that this brings in an unavoidable subjectivity, and he describes how the edition tries to make it visible. Readings that are not preferred receive a short characterisation of how they probably arose, using a controlled vocabulary of abbreviations. Some describe mechanical slips, such as homarc (homoioarcton, an eye-skip between two similar word beginnings). Others describe the scribe or translator as a reader: assim-usu (assimilation to the usual biblical expression), assim with a reference to a parallel passage, or lit for a reading that belongs to a different literary edition of the book.³² Where a case needs more than a label, the commentary discusses it in full.

Behind the vocabulary lies a view of how the text was transmitted. Earlier editions in the series, Weis argues, treated scribes as mechanics whose errors left “rough” spots in the text, so that difficulty was a reasonable signal of corruption. The BHQ editors also see scribes as readers who sometimes changed a text to make it smoother or more fitting, so that transmission can polish a text as easily as damage it.³³ The typology owes much to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, whose final report, Dominique Barthélemy’s Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament, developed a detailed set of terms for changes made by scribes in their capacity as interpreters.³⁴

The label lit points to one of the field’s main discoveries since BHS. Some books circulated in antiquity in more than one literary form, as Jeremiah did in a longer Hebrew form behind the Masoretic text and a shorter one behind the Greek. A one-volume edition cannot print two Jeremiahs, so BHQ marks readings that derive from the other edition as “literary” and treats them as irrelevant to establishing the text at hand.³⁵

Weis proposes a typology to place the result among other editions. The Hebrew University Bible is a descriptive critical edition: it lays out the evidence but does not say which reading is best. BHQ and the eclectic Oxford Hebrew Bible project, now published as The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition, are prescriptive, because they state preferences. They differ in where they put those preferences. The Oxford edition prints its reconstructed readings in the text, while BHQ keeps the manuscript as a reference point and puts its recommendations in the apparatus. Weis calls BHQ’s type “collative” and argues that it keeps the subjective nature of reconstruction in plain view: the reader must combine base text and apparatus, and the resulting text exists only on paper.³⁶

The Debt to HOTTP

The Hebrew Old Testament Text Project was set up by the United Bible Societies in 1969. A committee of six scholars reviewed the textual problems most likely to affect translation. Its Preliminary and Interim Report appeared in five volumes between 1973 and 1980, and Barthélemy’s Critique textuelle followed from 1982.³⁷ BHQ took over the results. Baker lists the use of HOTTP as the first of its improvements on BHS.³⁸ The link is personal as well as institutional. Adrian Schenker’s involvement with the Biblia Hebraica began, the German Bible Society notes, in the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, and he directed the Institut Dominique Barthélemy at the University of Fribourg until 2005.³⁹

A Worked Example: Jeremiah 23:1–9

When Weis set out the principles of BHQ in 2002, he illustrated them with a sample page and commentary for Jeremiah 23:1–9, the oracle against the shepherds who scatter the flock and the promise of a righteous branch for David.⁴⁰ The sample is still the clearest published demonstration of how the new apparatus behaves, and Weis compares it point by point with the older editions.

What Drops Out

The first effect of the new criteria is subtraction. BH3 had two notes on verse 2 that recorded nothing more than fuller spellings of words in the text, with an extra vowel letter. Spellings like these make no difference to translation or exegesis, so BHQ leaves them out.⁴¹ The note in BH3 and BHS that verse 3 is a later addition disappears as well, for the reason given above: no witness lacks the verse.

What Comes In

The second effect is addition. In verses 1–5 alone, Weis counts seven potentially substantive cases that BHS does not mention at all, one of them a case where the editor prefers a reading other than that of the Leningrad Codex.⁴² The selection that results, he notes, comes very close to the core of substantive cases in the first two apparatuses of the Hebrew University Bible for the same passage. What the HUB adds beyond that core is mostly variation within the Greek tradition, readings from rabbinic literature and medieval manuscripts, and differences in the versions that do not affect the meaning. That material is essential for specialists but rarely matters to translators.⁴³

The sample also shows the languages of the evidence. Readings are cited in Latin at verses 1 and 6, in Syriac at verses 4, 5 and 8, and in the Aramaic of the Targum at verses 4 and 5.⁴⁴ The difference in reporting is visible too. At one point in verse 8, BH3 cited only the Greek and passed over a Syriac variant, a plural passive verb without a suffix. BHQ gives the testimony of every regularly cited witness.⁴⁵

“My Flock” or “My People”?

In verse 3 the Lord promises to gather “the remnant of my flock”, צֹאנִי (tsoni). The Old Greek has “of my people”. The Hebrew University Bible, which in principle offers no verdicts, comments that the Greek “hardly” reflects a Hebrew עַמִּי (ʿammi, “my people”). BHQ characterises the Greek reading as assim-usu, an assimilation to the usual biblical expression. Weis points out that the two judgements come to the same thing. Both prefer the Masoretic reading, and both explain the Greek as a move towards a familiar phrase.⁴⁶ The example shows how thin the line between a descriptive and a prescriptive edition can be. It also shows the purpose of the BHQ labels, which put the editor’s reasoning on the page.

Preferred Readings That Must Be Reconstructed

The sample marks preferred readings that differ from the Leningrad Codex in verses 3, 6 and 7. In verses 3 and 7 (a different case in verse 3 from the one just described), the preferred reading survives only in a translation, so the editor has to give it as a Hebrew form retroverted from the version.⁴⁷ This was one reason the committee gave for not printing an eclectic text. A retroverted form in the apparatus leaves the reader free to keep the reading of the Leningrad Codex. The same form printed in the text would take that choice away.⁴⁸

Five Editions Compared

The differences between BHQ, its predecessors and its two contemporaries are easiest to see side by side.⁴⁹

	BH3 (BHK)	BHS	BHQ	Hebrew University Bible	HBCE
Published	1929–37	1967–77	2004–	Isaiah 1995, Jeremiah 1997, Ezekiel 2004	Proverbs 2015–
Base text	Leningrad Codex	Leningrad Codex	Leningrad Codex, diplomatic	Aleppo Codex, diplomatic	Eclectic text approximating the archetype
Masorah	Masorah parva	Parva on the page, magna in a separate volume	Parva, magna and finalis as in the manuscript	Aleppo Masorah in full, magna above the text	Not printed
Apparatus	Latin; two registers, a third for Qumran from 1951	Latin; one apparatus	English; one apparatus with characterisations	Six registers; comments in English and modern Hebrew	English apparatus and commentary
Editor’s preference	Imperatives such as “read” and “delete”	Imperatives	Preferred readings marked in the apparatus	Not stated in principle	Built into the printed text

Read across the rows, the table shows two shifts. The first, from BH3 to BHQ, is from emendation proposed by modern editors to evidence reported from witnesses. The second, between the three current projects, is about where judgement belongs. The Hebrew University Bible reports the evidence on the Aleppo Codex in full. BHQ reports a selection of it against the Leningrad Codex and gives a verdict. The HBCE prints the verdict as its text. Weis argued that the field needs all three, because they serve different readers.⁵⁰

Publication, Book by Book

The Fascicles So Far

The first fascicle, numbered 18, appeared in 2004. It contained the General Introduction and the five Megilloth: Ruth (edited by Jan de Waard), the Song of Songs (Piet B. Dirksen), Qoheleth (Yohanan A. P. Goldman), Lamentations (Rolf Schäfer) and Esther (Magne Sæbø).⁵¹ Weis had expected it in 2002 and hoped the whole edition would be finished in 2010.⁵² By 2010 Baker could report four fascicles and a projected completion date of 2020.⁵³

The German Bible Society’s current table lists the following volumes as published:⁵⁴

• General Introduction and Megilloth (2004)
• Ezra and Nehemiah, ed. David Marcus (2006)
• Deuteronomy, ed. Carmel McCarthy (2007)
• Proverbs, ed. Jan de Waard (2008)
• The Twelve Prophets, ed. Anthony Gelston (2010)
• Judges, ed. Natalio Fernández Marcos (2011)
• Genesis, ed. Abraham Tal (2016)
• Leviticus, ed. Innocent Himbaza (2020)
• Job, ed. Robert Althann (2024)

That is nine of a planned twenty volumes. Numbers (Martin Rösel) and Ezekiel (Johan Lust, Siegfried Kreuzer and Matthieu Richelle) are listed as in preparation for 2026. Exodus, Joshua, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Psalms, Daniel and Chronicles are in preparation without a date.⁵⁵

Each fascicle carries more than the text. It contains an introduction to the textual witnesses of the book, notes on the Masorah with a translation of the Masorah magna, a commentary on the cases in the apparatus, and a bibliography. When the series is complete, this material is to be gathered into the separate commentary volume.⁵⁶

Numbering and the Megilloth Fascicle

The fascicles are numbered in the order of the Hebrew canon, not the order in which they appear: Genesis is 1, Leviticus 3, Deuteronomy 5, Judges 7, the Twelve Prophets 13, Job 16, Proverbs 17, the Megilloth 18 and Ezra–Nehemiah 20.⁵⁷ The series therefore began near its end. Fascicle 18 also served as the manual for the whole edition. Alongside the five Megilloth it carried the General Introduction, in English, German and Spanish, which describes the base text and its Masorah, explains how the witnesses are used, sets out the relationship of BHQ to BHS and earlier editions, and lists all the sigla and abbreviations.⁵⁸

The five small books show the range of evidence an editor may have. Fragments of every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther and Nehemiah have been found at Qumran, and Ezra–Nehemiah was counted as one book represented by a fragment of Ezra.⁵⁹ Ruth, the Song of Songs, Qoheleth and Lamentations therefore all have Qumran witnesses to collate. For Esther, Magne Sæbø had to work without any Judaean Desert evidence at all.

The Twelve Prophets

Anthony Gelston’s fascicle 13 (2010) covers Hosea to Malachi in about 320 pages.⁶⁰ The Twelve were treated in antiquity as a single book written on a single scroll, as the Minor Prophets scroll from Wadi Murabbaʿat (MurXII) shows.⁶¹ The Judaean Desert evidence for these books is unusually rich. MurXII was copied before the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–135 CE and belongs to the proto-Masoretic family.⁶² The Greek Minor Prophets scroll from Naḥal Ḥever (8ḤevXIIgr), found in 1952 and published by Tov, preserves an early Jewish revision of the Greek translation that Dominique Barthélemy named kaige.⁶³ The edition’s rule that all Qumran and Judaean Desert fragments are collated in full therefore matters more here than in most books.

The Editors

From the start the project set out to be international and interconfessional. Baker contrasts its team with the European Protestant editors of the earlier editions.⁶⁴ The list of book editors bears this out. It includes scholars based in Tel Aviv, Beersheba and Jerusalem, Dublin and Durham, Fribourg, Rome and Madrid, Helsinki, Leiden and Leuven, and Washington, New York and Lexington.⁶⁵

For most of the project’s life the editorial committee was led by Adrian Schenker, a Dominican born in Zurich in 1939 and professor of Old Testament at Fribourg from 1982. The Society’s table gives his presidency as 1998–2025, while its citation for the Canstein Medal speaks of his leading the editorial committee “since 1991” and editing BHS “since 1997”. Schenker handed over the leadership in February 2026, and Martin Rösel of Rostock is now listed as president.⁶⁶ In June 2026 the Society awarded Schenker its Canstein Medal at its general assembly in Wiesbaden. Its general secretary, Christoph Rösel, praised 35 years of work carried out “with scholarly precision, great faithfulness and at the same time with complete matter-of-factness and modesty”. Emanuel Tov, in his tribute, singled out Schenker’s leading role in creating “a central working tool for textual research, the Biblia Hebraica Quinta”.⁶⁷

How to Read a Page of BHQ

A reader opening a fascicle finds the Hebrew of the Leningrad Codex in the centre of the page, with chapter and verse numbers added and poetry set out line by line. The lineation follows the Masoretic accents and, where helpful, the syntax.⁶⁸ Small Masoretic notes run down the side margins. Beneath the text come the longer notes of the Masorah magna, each headed by a verse reference supplied by the editors. At the foot is the apparatus.⁶⁹

Weis stresses that this layout changes how the book should be used. The printed text is not offered as the best text. It is a fixed point against which the evidence is arranged. A reader who wants the editor’s recommended text has to build it by combining the base text with the preferred readings marked in the apparatus. A reader who disagrees has the evidence and the editor’s reasons on the same page. Earlier editions told their users what to read. BHQ asks them to weigh an argument.⁷⁰

Not everyone finds the result easy. Baker would have liked translations of the versional readings and markers in the text pointing to the apparatus, and doubted that most of the intended readers would ever use a full printed Masorah.⁷¹ Tov, reviewing the first fascicle, judged that BHQ was “much richer in data, more mature, judicious and cautious” than its predecessors, but that the more complex notation made it less user-friendly.⁷² Both points can be true. For the Masoretic scribes, whose notes BHQ prints in full and translates, a text was always something to be read together with its apparatus.

Notes

1. Latin title as given on the fascicles; see Viktor Golinets’s review of fascicle 18 (2004), Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 2007, catalogued at edoc, University of Basel, doi:10.5451/unibas-ep10864. ↩
2. Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 2nd rev. edn (Minneapolis: Fortress; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2001), p. 375, which dates the first edition to 1905; David L. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible? Review of Biblia Hebraica Quinta, Hebrew University Bible, Oxford Hebrew Bible, and Other Modern Editions”, Tyndale Bulletin 61.2 (2010), at pp. 209–10, which gives 1906. The dates differ because the work was issued over both years. ↩
3. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 210; Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 375. ↩
4. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 375. ↩
5. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 210; Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 375. ↩
6. Tov, Textual Criticism, pp. 375–76. ↩
7. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 375. ↩
8. Richard D. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta and the Making of Critical Editions of the Hebrew Bible”, TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 7 (2002), paras 22–23 and n. 12, online at rosetta.reltech.org. ↩
9. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 215. Vowels added here for readability. ↩
10. Biblia Hebraica Quinta, fasc. 18, General Introduction and Megilloth (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004), p. VIII, as quoted in Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 211. ↩
11. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 4–5. ↩
12. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)” (project page, consulted 17 October 2026). ↩
13. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”. ↩
14. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 212, summarising the General Introduction. ↩
15. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 33–37. ↩
16. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, pp. 212–13, quoting the General Introduction, p. X. ↩
17. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 3; Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”. ↩
18. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 214. ↩
19. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 214; Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 3. ↩
20. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”. ↩
21. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”; Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 216. ↩
22. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 8. ↩
23. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 3. ↩
24. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 18; Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 215. ↩
25. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 31. ↩
26. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 21. ↩
27. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”. ↩
28. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 215. ↩
29. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 216; Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 16. ↩
30. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 216. ↩
31. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 11. ↩
32. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 15, 26–30, 32, citing the sample apparatus for Jeremiah 23:1–9. ↩
33. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 29–31. ↩
34. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 30, citing D. Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament, vol. 1 (Fribourg and Göttingen, 1982), pp. XVII–XX. ↩
35. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 32. ↩
36. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 12–14, 41–42. On the renaming of the Oxford Hebrew Bible as The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition and its first volume (Michael V. Fox, Proverbs, 2015), see Society of Biblical Literature, “The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition” (series page, consulted 19 October 2026). ↩
37. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, pp. 214–15 and n. 9. ↩
38. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 214. ↩
39. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “‘Eine herausragende wissenschaftliche Persönlichkeit’”, press release, 11 June 2026. ↩
40. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 1 and appendix (figs 3–4). ↩
41. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 19 and n. 9, citing BH3, p. 746. ↩
42. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 19 and n. 10, comparing BHS, 2nd edn (1983), p. 826. ↩
43. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 20, citing C. Rabin, S. Talmon and E. Tov, The Book of Jeremiah (Hebrew University Bible; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997), pp. 117–19. ↩
44. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 8. ↩
45. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 16, 24. ↩
46. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 12, quoting Rabin, Talmon and Tov, Jeremiah, p. 118, and M. H. Goshen-Gottstein, The Book of Isaiah: Sample Edition with Introduction (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1965), p. 7. ↩
47. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 11, 35. ↩
48. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 35. ↩
49. Compiled from Tov, Textual Criticism, pp. 374–76; Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, pp. 209–24; Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 3, 12–16 and n. 3; Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”; Society of Biblical Literature, “The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition”. ↩
50. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 38. ↩
51. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”; Gerald A. Klingbeil, review of BHQ fasc. 18, Journal of Asia Adventist Seminary 10.2 (2007), pp. 216–17. ↩
52. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, n. 5. ↩
53. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, p. 211. ↩
54. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”, table of fascicles and editors. ↩
55. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”; the Society’s press release of 11 June 2026 also gives nine published volumes. ↩
56. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, pp. 216–17; Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”. ↩
57. Accordance Bible Software, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta: Fascicle 13 (The Twelve Minor Prophets)” (product page listing the published fascicles by number, consulted 19 October 2026). ↩
58. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”. The DBG page and the publisher’s descriptions name English, German and Spanish; Klingbeil’s review gives a different set of languages. ↩
59. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 103. ↩
60. Bibliographic record for Biblia Hebraica Quinta 13, The Twelve Minor Prophets, ed. Anthony Gelston (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2010), ISBN 978-3-438-05273-5, on Google Books. ↩
61. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 104. ↩
62. Tov, Textual Criticism, pp. 33, 190 n. 47. ↩
63. Tov, Textual Criticism, p. 145, citing E. Tov, The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Naḥal Ḥever (8ḤevXIIgr) (DJD VIII; Oxford, 1990). ↩
64. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, pp. 211–12. ↩
65. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”, table of fascicles and editors. ↩
66. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”, list of the editorial committee; Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, press release, 11 June 2026. ↩
67. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, press release, 11 June 2026 (quotations translated from the German); see also the Society’s page on the Canstein Medal. ↩
68. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)”; Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, para. 6. ↩
69. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 3, 6. ↩
70. Weis, “Biblia Hebraica Quinta”, paras 14, 17, 42. ↩
71. Baker, “Which Hebrew Bible?”, pp. 214, 216. ↩
72. Emanuel Tov, “The Biblia Hebraica Quinta: An Important Step Forward”, Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 31.1 (2005), quoted from the article’s published summary. ↩