The Kings-Isaiah and Kings-Jeremiah Recensions

In the two self-contained parts of his study, Person offers a new effort at reconstructing the Urtext of the two major synoptic texts from the book of Kings, with the aim of providing a critique of current redaction-critical study of the Deuteronomistic History (DH). To this end, he compares the significant textual recensions involved, which in the case of 2 Kgs 18:13-20:19 are the Hebrew and Greek texts of Kings, the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Isaiah parallel, and the corresponding portions of the Isaiah scroll from Qumran. In the case of 2 Kgs 24:18-25:30, besides the Kings texts he covers the Hebrew and Greek editions of Jer 52. In both parts of his book Person follows the same procedure. First, the witnesses are displayed in parallel columns, with the Greek translations retroverted into Hebrew, followed by notes on the retroversions. Second, the textual and literary relationships among the witnesses are determined. Third, an annotated reconstruction of the putative Urtext of all the recensions extant is undertaken. In the fourth step, Person states his view of the text-critical implications for the redactional history of the text under discussion. The results of both parts resemble each other closely and are summarized in the final conclusions of the book. Person believes that in either text studied, inter-versional comparison can pinpoint additions in Kings that are both late and Deuteronomistic in character. From this it follows that "there were at least two redactional stages behind MT-Kings, one that produced the Urtexts and one that produced MT-Kings" (p. 114). For Person, this observation delivers a deadly blow to all recent theories on the development of the DH, since "they all fail methodologically because they ignore text critical evidence and are unable to distinguish between redactional layers that are evident from the text critical controls" (p. 115).