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EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 100 books. Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).
Major Critical Texts and Manuscript Abbreviations of the Old Testament
AC: Aleppo Codex AT: Aramaic Targum(s)
B.C.E.: Before Common Era
BHS: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph. Stuttgart, 1984. B 19A: Codex Leningrad c.: Circa, about, approximately LXX: The Greek Septuagint (Greek Jewish OT Scriptures in general and specifically used during of Jesus and the apostles) OG: Original Greek (Oldest recoverable form of the Greek OT (280-150 B.C.E.) SOPHERIM: Copyists of the Hebrew OT text from the time of Era to the time of Jesus. CT: Consonantal Text is the OT Hebrew manuscripts that became fixed in form between the first and second centuries C.E., even though manuscripts with variant readings continued to circulate for some time. Alterations of the previous period by the Sopherim were no longer made. Very similar to the MT. MT: The Masoretic Text encompasses the Hebrew OT manuscripts from the second half of the first millennium C.E. QT: Qumran Texts (Dead Sea Scrolls) SP: Samaritan Pentateuch SYR: Syriac Peshitta VG: Latin Vulgate
Genesis 1:26 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
26 And God went on to say, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
The Masoretic Hebrew text is the foundational text for all modern English translations of the Hebrew Scripture: the Codex Leningrad B 19A (of the National Library of Russia), as presented in R. Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica (BHK), seventh, eighth and ninth editions (1951-55). An update of this work known as Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), 1977 edition. Codex Leningrad B 19A is the earliest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures (c. 1008 C.E.), which serves as a primary source for the recovery of details in the missing parts of the Aleppo Codex. The Aleppo Codex is an important Hebrew Masoretic manuscript from about 930 C.E. Codex Leningrad and the Aleppo Codex are the two most important Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts. These two Hebrew texts are the most significant manuscripts of the Old Testament to be discovered so far and as far as usefulness and significance, they could be compared to the counterpart Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus of the New Testament. The Targums or the Vulgate have their own fair share of textual variants, but the Syriac Old Testament Peshitta has even more textual variants like the one we find above in Genesis 1:26. Thus, clearly, undoubtedly, the original reading was “and over all the earth.”
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