We have a copy of the Hebrew Bible. Also included is a small English Key attached to the front of the book. Please note that the book is written backward so it starts at the back and reads forward. Also the books are not written in the same order as we know it from our Bible. "Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) is known to be the definitive edition of the Hebrew Bible. It is widely regarded as a reliable edition of the Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures and is the most widely used original-language edition among scholars.
It is a revision of the third edition of the Biblia Hebraica edited by Rudolf Kittel, the first Bible to be based on the Leningrad Codex. The Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete Hebrew Bible still preserved. It originally appeared in installments, from 1968 to 1976, with the first one-volume edition in 1977; it has since been reprinted many times. The text is a nearly exact copy of the Masoretic Text as recorded in the Leningrad Codex. The Masoretic notes are completely revised.
Included is a foreword in German, English, French, Spanish and Latin as well as an English and German key to the Latin words, abbreviations and other symbols in the critical apparatus."

To do an impossible job badly is no great shame. But you do have to wish it had been done better.

This is not the "last word" on a text of the Hebrew Bible. Kittel's edition ("BHK") is now largely supplanted by the Stuttgart edition ("BHS"). But that isn't perfect either, so there can be a use for both.

This is not a book for the faint of heart, of course. You need Hebrew, plus Aramaic for the sections in that language, and Greek and Latin and Syriac and German also help. And once you have all that -- you need a plan.

The reason for that is that this book has two parts: The Hebrew text and the critical apparatus. That is, the information on the readings of various manuscripts and early translations of the Hebrew. The purpose of this apparatus is to allow the user to try to figure out what was the original text.

This is where the defects of BHK emerge. Some of the defects relate to its age: It doesn't fully reflect the Dead Sea Scrolls and other recent discoveries. This is understandable. Less understandable is the imperfect citation of the Greek version (LXX), since this is the most important single alternative to the text found in the late ("M" or "MT") manuscripts of the Hebrew. The Greek is not cited often enough, or in enough detail. It isn't easy to figure out which Hebrew manuscripts are being cited, either. And the apparatus gives very little indication of which variants are important, or likely to be original.

Don't misunderstand this. This is an important book, and every Hebrew scholar should have both BHK and BHS. But to use it well requires a vast amount of work -- and, frankly, a lot of information that could have been included within these covers but was not. ( )

The standard edition of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament used by scholars (and most responsible translators -- but check the introduction of you Bible to be certain) in Hebrew (with portions of visually indistinguishable Aramaic). It includes significant textual variants from early manuscripts in Hebrew (and early Greek translations), the traditional vowel points added during the Medieval era, cantillation marks, the textual notations of medieval Jewish scholars on word frequency and details of the text, and reads from right to left. (Indeed there are so many signs and notations that the book is usually sold with a pamphlet explaining all of them and the book [Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia] is an invaluable companion to understanding all of them.) However, the interested student of Classical Hebrew may simply read the clear font, punctuation, vowel points, and cantillation marks -- and easily screen out the rest.

Note: This book uses the traditional Jewish order of the books (Torah, Prophets, Writings), there is no English (outside of the Introduction, which is also in Latin, German and French -- the standard languages of academic Biblical scholarship), and if you want the Old Testament used by Christians you will need to supplement this book with [Septuaginta] (the Hebrew Bible in its ancient Greek translation), or an edition of the Latin, Coptic, Syriac &c translation used by each Christian group. The [Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew English Lexicon] is a necessary companion for reading this book, as is a sound grammar of Biblical Hebrew, and [[Benjamin Davidson]]'s [Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon] will point you to the correct entry in Brown-Driver-Briggs if you get stumped, puzzled, or tired (or find yourself thinking in the wrong Semitic language) -- it is in alphabetical rather than 3-letter root order and it points from forms back to original dictionary-entry versions of words.

Stutgarttgartensia is an invaluable book for serious readers of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

Note: for readings from the Biblical books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, see [The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible] or the forthcoming (German) Texts from the Dead Sea: Biblical Manuscripts.

-Kushana ( )

The standard text, unsurpassed. ( )

This Hebrew OT has pride of place among many translations. ( )