remember that the individual writings and groups of writings were completed and passed into circulation at different times. Therefore Würthwein states the purpose of textual criticism with proper reserve: “It attempts to ferret out all the errors and alterations (variants) that have occurred, and to achieve on the basis of scholarly principles a Hebrew text providing a solid foundation on which higher criticism, exegesis, etc., can build.”22 This definition is interesting in that the text to be reconstructed