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I've been busy the last few weeks—and not just with the cabins. As most of you know, we get our house and utilities paid by working as cabin caretakers/maintenance. But we still have to eat (and the garden doesn't supply everything we eat! At least not yet...) and pay other bills. In order to do that, I do copyediting and proofreading for various publishers. One of the publishers I work for is the Society of Biblical Literature. I've done several books for them, but this summer I started working on a project that I am really enjoying and hope to for a long time to come: The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition. Right now I'm working on Proverbs. I was reading through the introduction when I ran across this little gem:

It should be stressed that those who prefer a Masoretic reading or an entire Masoretic edition are in effect participating in this construction of meaning, albeit passively, by aligning themselves with one text state, a medieval one.

That's right, not to decide is actually to decide. And you've probably chosen a version that is further from the original than an eclectic text. Think about that for a while before deeming the HBCE a useless exercise.

Just an
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