The Alpha-Text of Esther: Its Character and Relationship to the Masoretic Text, by Karen H. Jobes. SBLDS 153. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. Pp. 524. $29.95 (paper). This dissertation, completed under the supervision of Moises Silva at Westminster Theological Seminary, is a thorough investigation of the Alpha-Text (AT) of Esther as it compares to both the Masoretic Text (MT) and the so-called Septuagint (LXX) version. In the first chapter, jobes employs the syntactical criteria developed by Raymond Martin (1974) to analyze the AT and the LXX. The results indicate that both are translations. jobes argues that it would be unlikely that the AT would retain so many features indicating its translational character if it also were a recension of the LXX With regard to the six additions (A-F), jobes concludes that they are not long enough to provide sufficient data to assess their origin, though addition E appears to be composition Greek. In addition to her analysis, jobes offers valuable criticisms of Martin's criteria that should be noted by Septuagint specialists. She does offer constructive solutions to the problems she identifies, but even with these welcome improvements, jobes warns that Martin's criteria should be employed with caution. Chapters 2 to 4, which constitute the heart of the research, investigate the textual relationships between the MT, the AT, and the LXX. In order to facilitate this process, jobes divides the texts of the AT, the MT, and the LXX into 2,814 syntactic units. A parallel alignment of the texts is included as an appendix. For her analysis, jobes appropriately notes that one must distinguish between formal agreement and semantic agreement and proposes assigning values on a scale of 1 to 5 to describe how closely the texts agree. She applies this scale of values to five separate criteria, which she borrows from E. Tov's criteria of formal equivalence (see The Text-Critical Use ofthe Septuagint in Biblical Research). Tables and graphs provide chapter-by-chapter breakdowns of the agreements for each of the five criteria as well as the overall totals. Chapter 2 examines the similarities between the AT and the MT. jobes concludes that the overall agreement between the AT and the MT is low, but this is due primarily to the pluses and minuses in the AT. When one considers only the units that have corresponding Hebrew and Greek, the extent of agreement is much higher. Chapter 3 examines the differences between the AT and the MT. jobes catalogues the various types of minuses, pluses, substitutions, and textual differences that occur in the AT along with a listing of references for each type of difference. Chapter 4 compares the AT to the LXX and jobes agrees with other researchers that the AT is not a recension of the LXX jobes concludes that the AT preserves the older form of additions A, B, C, E, and F, but there was extensive redaction to both. In chapter 5 Jobes interacts more directly with the research of Tov (1982), Clines (1984), and Fox (1991). Contra Tov, who argues that the AT is a recension of the LXX that was corrected toward a Hebrew midrashic rewriting of Esther, jobes concludes that the agreements between the AT and the LXX are relatively few and due to corruption during textual transmission. She also disputes Tov's claim that additions A, C, D, and F are translations of Semitic sources and that the text of the canonical sections and the additions of the AT are one unit. Whereas Clines and Fox argue that the AT was a translation of a Vorlage different from the MT that ended at 8:17 (Clines) and AT 7:38 (Fox), jobes maintains on the basis of similarities of content and textual agreements that the AT "translated a Hebrew text very similar to the MT in chapters 8-10 but was subsequently revised almost beyond recognition" (p. …