I'm preparing a five minute presentation on Zephaniah 2 for this Saturday and set down to work on it yesterday.

I borrowed Adele Berlin's volume from the library and read the Introduction last night. The section "Some Thoughts on the Masoretic Text, the Ancient Versions, and Textual Criticism" is worth referencing especially because my knowledge of the text tradition is so poor, pg. 24:

The MT is privileged not only because it is the only fully preserved Hebrew text, but because it is the textus receptus, the accepted text of the Jewish and Protestant communities. Even the Roman Catholic Church, in which the Latin Vulgate continues to be the official "authentic" edition of the Bible, has come to accept the MT as the basis of study for the protocanonical books of the Old Testament.

So even among Catholics, the MT has canonical status. (The LXX is the accepted text of the Eastern Orthodox Church.)

Textual critics have often assumed that the original Hebrew text of the Bible is retrievable or reconstructible, and they have set the reconstruction of the original text as their goal. But despite the considerable erudition brought to bear by textual critics, their reconstructions of the original Hebrew text remain hypothetical - educated guesses - and must remain so until actual written evidence of earlier stages of the Hebrew Bible is discovered.

For example, in a previous generation, there was a widespread tendency to emend hitqosesu, "gather together" in Zeph 2:1 - most commonly to hitbosesu, "be ashamed of yourselves," or to hitqaddesu, "sanctify yourselves" (as in BHK). More recent commentaries have been less eager to emend, and have sought to interpret the given form (notice that BHS does not propose an emendation). This, and numerous examples of the same type throughout the Bible, suggests that textual criticism is not built on quite so sure a foundation as one might have supposed. It also suggests that regardless of claims about the priority that textual criticism should take over exegesis, the two procedures are not so easily disengageable. Emendations reflect the exegesis of the emender; emendation is the process of rewriting the text to make it say what the exegete thinks it meant to say or should have said.

[F]ewer emendations are made nowadays, largely, I think, as a reaction to the excesses of previous times in which a scholar's reputation was often enhanced by the cleverness of his emendations. In a reversal of the past trend, today's scholars see greater merit in finding an explanation for the words that are present than in substituting others of similar spelling.

There's more I'd like to cite especially on page 27 where she rejects efforts for a critical edition. If Kings and Chronicles haven't yet been used to "correct" the other, why use the MT and Versions in this way?

So, my expectation is that the revised OT of the NAB will have fewer emendations than the previous edition. And this project as well.

Zephaniah - Anchor Bible