The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

by Michael D. Coogan

Marc Z. Brettler: The Pentateuch; The Historical Books; The Poetical and Wisdom Books, The Canons of the Bible [with Pheme Perkins]; The Hebrew Bible's Interpretation of Itself; Jewish Interpretation in the Premodern Era Michael D. Coogan: Textual Criticism [with Pheme Perkins]; Translations of the Bible into English [with Pheme Perkins]; The Interpretation of the Bible: From the Nineteenth to the Mid‐twentieth Centuries; The Geography of the Bible; The Ancient Near East; Time [with Pheme Perkins] Carol A. Newsom: The Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books; Christian Interpretation in the Premodern Era; Contemporary Methods in Biblical Study; The Persian and Hellenistic Periods Pheme Perkins: The Gospels; Letters/Epistles in the New Testament; The Canons of the Bible [with Marc Z. Brettler]; Textual Criticism [with Michael D. Coogan]; Translation of the Bible into English [with Michael D. Coogan]; The New Testament Interprets the Jewish Scriptures; The Roman Period; Time [with Michael D. Coogan]

To summarize in a single sentence: the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an authorized revision of the Revised Standard Version, published in 1952, which was a revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which, in turn, embodied earlier revisions of the King James Version, published in 1611.

Yet the King James Version has serious defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of biblical studies and the discovery of many biblical manuscripts more ancient than those on which the King James Version was based made it apparent that these defects were so many as to call for revision. The task was begun, by authority of the Church of England, in 1870.

The Revised Standard Version Bible Committee is a continuing body, comprising about thirty members, both men and women. Ecumenical in representation, it includes scholars affiliated with various Protestant denominations, as well as several Roman Catholic members, an Eastern Orthodox member, and a Jewish member who serves in the Old Testament section. For a period of time the Committee included several members from Canada and from England.

For the Old Testament the Committee has made use of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977; ed. sec. emendata, 1983). This is an edition of the Hebrew and Aramaic text as current early in the Christian era and fixed by Jewish scholars (the “Masoretes”) of the sixth to the ninth centuries. The vowel signs, which were added by the Masoretes, are accepted in the main, but where a more probable and convincing reading can be obtained by assuming different vowels, this has been done. No notes are given in such cases, because the vowel points are less ancient and reliable than the consonants. When an alternative reading given by the Masoretes is translated in a footnote, this is identified by the words “Another reading is.”

Where it was deemed appropriate to do so, information is supplied in footnotes from subsidiary Jewish traditions concerning other textual readings (the Tiqqune Sopherim, “emendations of the scribes”). These are identified in the footnotes as “Ancient Heb tradition.”

As for the style of English adopted for the present revision, among the mandates given to the Committee in 1980 by the Division of Education and Ministry of the National Council of Churches of Christ (which now holds the copyright of the RSV Bible) was the directive to continue in the tradition of the King James Bible, but to introduce such changes as are warranted on the basis of accuracy, clarity, euphony, and current English usage.

For the Committee, bruce m. metzger

Makes it even better!

Although Moses is the central human character of much of the Pentateuch, he is not introduced until ch 2 of Exodus, the second book.

The Hebrew terms torah, torat moshe (“the Torah of Moses”), torat YHWH (“the Torah of the Lord”), and torat haʾelohim (“the Torah of God”), already in use in late biblical literature to describe what is later called the Pentateuch p.1(e.g., 2 Chr 23.18; Ezra 7.6,10; Neh 8.1,18; Dan 9.11), offer a better clue to the nature and unity of these books.

Yet “law” is not the only possible translation of torah, and the Pentateuch is not a book of law. Torah also means “instruction” or “teaching,” as in Prov 1.8: “Hear, my child, your father’s istruction, and do not reject your mother’s teaching (torah).” Teaching

The term torat moshe and its variants, in several late biblical books such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, refers to the Pentateuch more or less as it now exists, but it is not found in the Pentateuch.

This view is explicitly contradicted by the Torah’s narrative, as was sometimes (though rarely) recognized in the Middle Ages. Thus, Abraham ibn Ezra, a scholar active in the twelfth century ce, noted that Gen 12.6 states in reference to Abraham that “at that time the Canaanites were in the land.” The words “at that time” suggest that for the author, the Canaanites were no longer in the land; in other words, it appears that this snippet was written after the time of Moses,

Slowly, with the rise of rationalism, particularly as associated with figures such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza (1632–1677), the view that the Torah was a unified whole, written by Moses, began to be questioned. (For additional information on this development, see the essays on “The Interpretation of the Bible,” pp. 2254–2280.)

Documentary Hypothesis in the nineteenth century, according to which the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) is composed of four main sources or documents that were edited or redacted together: J, E, P, and D.

Compilation and Redaction of the Pentateuch It is unknown how these various sources and legal collections, which now comprise the Torah, came together to form a single book.

In the ancient Near East, most literary compositions, including Genesis, were anonymous. Only during the Greco‐Roman period do we start to see statements in early Jewish texts that Moses wrote Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. By this time Judaism had been influenced by Greek culture, where author attributions were important and the writings attributed to Homer enjoyed the highest prestige.

Most scholars agree that the texts now found in Genesis began to be written down sometime after the establishment of the monarchy in Israel in the tenth century bce or later.

The history of interpretation of Genesis begins with its gradual composition over centuries. Early monarchic scribes reinterpreted oral traditions in writing the first preexilic compositions behind Genesis. Later exilic scribes expanded and joined together earlier compositions in the process of addressing an audience of Judeans exiled in Babylon. Priests (exilic or postexilic) wrote their own versions of the beginnings of Israel, “P.” Later postexilic writers consolidated the non‐Priestly and Priestly writings into a common Torah

Finally, recent years have seen a proliferation of other approaches to Genesis, particularly literary studies of Genesis in its final form, without recourse to its compositional history, and feminist rereadings of many narratives in Genesis. For example, some feminist scholars have questioned whether the typical reading of the Garden of Eden story, which is highly critical of women, is correct.

1 In the beginning when God createda the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from Godb swept over the face of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

10God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.”

the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have producedc a man with the help of the Lord.”

25When Methuselah had lived one hundred eighty‐seven years, he became the father of Lamech. 26Methuselah lived after the birth of Lamech seven hundred eighty‐two years, and had other sons and daughters. 27Thus

Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

6Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of

The Deuteronomist (Dtr) edited various traditions into a single, running historical account. In 1 Samuel some scholars have posited hypothetical source documents behind 4.1–7.1 (the “Ark Narrative,” possibly continued in 2 Sam 6), chs 8–15 (the “Saul Cycle”), and chs 16–31 (the “Story of David’s Rise”).

Perhaps the major issue for the interpretation of the book of Samuel (both 1 and 2) is the relationship of its account to history. There are at least three reasons for doubting that the book is a narrative of history.

12Do not invite death by the error of your life, or bring on destruction by the works of your hands; 13because God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. 14For he created all things so that they might exist; the generative forcesb of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them, and the dominionc of Hades is not on earth.

“Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy when a life comes to its end, and no one has been known to return from Hades. 2For we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been, for the breath in our nostrils is smoke,

5For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow, and there is no return from our death, because it is sealed up and no one turns back. 6“Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that exist, and make use of the creation to the full as in youth.