Do We Need A New Bible? 167 straightforward and can illustrate the principle adequately. In one class of verbs, the feminine singular participle and the third person feminine singular perfect of the simple stem are written identically; the only difference is that the former has the accent on the final syllable and the latter has it on the penultimate syllable. There are several passages, however (Gen 18,21; 46,27; Isa 51,10; Job 2,11; Ruth 1,22; 2,6; 4,3), where a form accented as a perfect by the Masoretes follows the definite article, a construction not known in Classical Hebrew. These seem to be examples of conformity to later linguistic practice by the Masoretes, but since they are attested only by the accents they will not show up in the text of the new edition. b) Problems Concerning Textual Archetypes From these examples of problems for the new edition arising from the mixed linguistic nature of the proposed base-text I turn secondly to a problem inherent in the nature of seeking for an archetype of the text of the Hebrew Bible. In some cases the evidence indicates that this is at least a reasonable aspiration; however much the textual witnesses may vary one from another, they remain indicative of a single line of textual tradition which in theory could be worked out. In a number of other cases, however, this appears not to be the case, and this raises unusually interesting questions. The most famous example concerns the book of Jeremiah. Here, as has long been known, the Greek translation in the Septuagint is approaching 20% shorter than the Hebrew text, and in addition some of the chapters occur in a different order. While in the past it could in theory (though against the usual state of affairs) be argued that the shorter text was the result of the work of the translator (25), some very small fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls now demonstrate adequately that the translation was based on a Hebrew original (26). That being so, we have to conclude that there were two versions or editions of Jeremiah in circulation in the pre-Christian centuries. as revealed by the statistically large number of defectively spelt forms of the imperfect hiph‘il, (ii) the revocalization of qal passive forms as niph‘als and (iii) the addition of the definite article in a number of unexpected situations. (25) So, for instance, K.H. GRAF, Der Prophet Jeremia erklärt (Leipzig 1862) xl-lvii. (26) J.G. JANZEN, Studies in the Text of Jeremiah (HSM 6; Cambridge MA 1973); E. TOV, in E. ULRICH et al., Qumran Cave 4, X: The Prophets (DJD 15; Oxford 1997) 171-176 and 203-205. It should be noted that proto-Masoretic fragments of Jeremiah were also preserved at Qumran.