Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ)

The Biblia Hebraica Quinta is a manual edition (editio minor), in the Biblia Hebraica tradition, produced for serious students of the Hebrew Bible. It aims to provide them with a clear presentation of the surviving evidence of the text’s transmission that is relevant for translation and exegesis.

Diplomatic presentation of text and Masorah (magna and parva) of the manuscript EBP. I B 19a, in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg, commonly known as the Leningrad Codex, cited from new color photographs made by the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center of Claremont, California. As the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, it serves as the base text against which other witnesses are collated.
Lay-out of poetic texts according to the Masoretic accentuation.
At the foot of the page there is a single critical apparatus in which all cited textual witnesses and variants are summarized. An entry is made when a pre-Tiberian witness possibly (but not necessarily and not even necessarily in the editor's opinion) indicates a Hebrew text that differs from the Tiberian text.
All available pre-Tiberian witnesses for each textual case are noted. The apparatus thus contains much new material.
At least two other Tiberian codices are collated for each book. For Megilloth, these are the Aleppo Codex where it survives (otherwise Ms. EBP. II B 34) and Cambridge Add. Ms. 1753.
Qumran and the Judean Desert fragments are collated fully.
In presenting cases, frequent indications are given by the editors of the factors they judge to have been influential in the generation of variants. Thus the users are able to judge the different readings more easily.
Care has been taken to make the apparatus as comprehensible as possible. Therefore English (instead of Latin) is now the language of apparatus and commentary.
A general introduction in English, German and Spanish presents this new edition, describes the characteristics of the base text and Masorah, the particular use of the individual resources, the relation of BHQ to BHS and previous editions. Moreover, this general introduction outlines the principles of collation and citation of witnesses and contains a comprehensive list of sigla and abbreviations used in the edition.
An introduction to each book discusses the particular textual features of that book and characterizes its textual witnesses.

Current Editorial Committee
Adrian Schenker, Fribourg (president)
Innocent Himbaza, Fribourg
Arie van der Kooij, Leiden
David Marcus, New York
Craig Morrison, Rome
Gerard J. Norton, Dublin
Martin Rösel, Rostock
Rolf Schäfer, Stuttgart

Co-opted Co-editors
Siegfried Kreuzer, Wuppertal
Matthieu Richelle, Louvain la Neuve
Malka Strasberg-Edinger, New York

Copy Editor
Sarah Lind, Madison

Consultants
Aron Dotan, Tel Aviv (Masorah)
Soetjianto, Wyndmoor (programming)

Previous Committee Members
Yohanan A. P. Goldman, Fribourg
Carmel McCarthy, Dublin
Stephen Pisano, Rome
Jan de Waard, Strasbourg
Richard D. Weis, Lexington

Previous Copy Editors
Roger Omanson, Louisville
Harold Scanlin, Allentown

Previous Consultant
Alan Groves, Glenside (data management)