@ 2023-08-20: THE LETTERIS EDITION 01
I've been trying to find the Letteris Edition of the Hebrew Bible in print. In the process, I've learned that even the Bible Society (UK) no longer prints it or carries it but has replaced it with the (manifestly inferior) Snaith Edition. (I own a copy.)
One can still get copies of LE from old book sellers, and thankfully it is found readily online (e.g., as PDF from Internet Archive). But most Hebrew Masoretic Text scholars I know of argue from the authority of the old scribe, Aharon ben Moshe ben Asher (fl. 930 CE). But ben Asher didn't understand the original meaning of the musical accents (טעמים). That is why any edition that follows his lead in Psalms especially is so often painful for me to read. He and later scribes and editors too often "corrected" the accents to make them *artificially more "self-consistent" as a form of punctuation. What makes it even more mind-bending for me is that different scribes and editors have had different ideas as to how that "should" be done.
I have the Stone Edition, the IDF Edition, the Hebrew University Bible, the Second Rabbinic Bible, Ginsburg, Baer, Snaith, Michaelis, and BHS among others. All are more or less inferior to Letteris, although Baer and Michaelis (and often, Ginsburg) are reasonably close. By what miracle did Letteris do such an outstanding job of editing, above all in the Psalms and the Ten Commandments, where "getting the accents right" is so critical?
(יוחנן רכב)
Some links:
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