52*. “The Literary History of the Book of Jeremiah in the Light of Its Textual History,” Revised version: Emanuel Tov, The Greek and Hebrew Bible (1999), 363–84. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Textual criticism deals not only with small differences between sources, but also with large ones. One of the key areas in which this type of evidence has become known is in the book of Jeremiah, in which abundant textual data beyond MT are available in the LXX and some in Hebrew sources. Therefore, they are a welcome source for the scholarly inquiry of the book. Some scholars believe that these data illuminate not only the textual transmission of the book, but also its literary development, as they provide a glimpse into the activity that took place during the last stage of the literary growth of the book. The differences between MT, on the one hand, and the LXX and Qumran texts, on the other, seemingly represent solid facts, but scholars espouse different views on their interpretation. The LXX of Jeremiah is shorter than the corresponding MT text by onesixth or one-seventh, and thus potentially has a bearing on the exegesis of that book. In addition, the LXX reflects a different internal sequence of the OAN (Oracles against the Nations), and of their placement in the book. Further, within chapters 10 and 23, the LXX presents a different sequence. The LXX is a translation, and the translator may have shortened his parent text and changed the sequence of translation units, in which case the LXX has no bearing on a deviating Hebrew Vorlage. While these issues were disputed over the last two centuries, they are rarely debated in the twenty-first century because of evidence supporting the trustworthiness of the LXX: the translation style of the Greek Jeremiah is relatively literal, 1 and therefore large-scale shortening or shifting
In Hebrew Scripture, no book among the Law and the Prophets displays as many internal textual differences as the book of the prophet Jeremiah, differences which continue to intrigue scholars and which remain in the center of scholarly interest, now also because of the newly found Qumran evidence bearing on the same issue. These textual differerences concern details in ancient and medieval manuscripts, yet their importance pertains also to very basic questions relating to the Biblical book. They bear on our understanding of the growth and development of the book now known as the book of Jeremiah, but which once had a different shape, and which then, too, was circulated as 'the book of Jeremiah.' The history of this book was extremely complicated, as evidenced by ancient witnesses, but probably other biblical books grew in a similarly complex way, even if such evidence is lacking for those books. 1 In short, we know of two principal witnesses of the book of Jeremiah: (1) the so-called received Hebrew text known as the Masoretic Text, or MT for short, and (2) the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, or LXX for short. MT is 20 percent longer than LXX. And the arrangement of the text and chapters is somewhat different in the two versions. It is the MT which is known to all, and which stands in the center of our investigation of the book of Jeremiah; indeed, it is this version which is represented, with minor differences, in all modern translations, in English ever since the King James version of the seventeenth century. But the other version, the LXX, is also available in European languages, as that Greek version has been rendered into several modern languages. The most commonly used English version is that of Lee. 2 This situation is a boon to text critics. It provides us with a unique opportunity to explore how a biblical text developed over time as we can now compare in detail the MT and the LXX. Much caution, however, is required in this comparison, as the Hebrew MT ought not to be compared to the LXX in its Greek dress, since the translator's exegesis is less relevant to the topic under investigation, but to the Hebrew text from which the Greek version presumably was rendered. It is this underlying text which carries the interest of the scholarly community, as the Greek translation in Alexandria in the 2d-3d centuries B.C.E. was clearly based on a Hebrew text differing from the Hebrew texts known to us. However, the reconstruction of this underlying text (called the Vorlage or parent text) cannot be reconstructed easily. For the exegetical layer of the translator's exegesis cannot be peeled off easily from the Greek translation, and much experience and intuition is required for this task. Nevertheless, in the case of Jeremiah we can claim some success, since the translation was made with relative fidelity, so that the employment of fixed Hebrew-Greek equivalents can help us in determining the Hebrew parent text of the LXX of Jeremiah. Many details will remain obscure, but in general lines
Although the Vorlage of the LXX cannot be reconstructed as a whole, many of its details can be reconstructed /1/, and hence much can be learned about this Hebrew text. The nature of this tex' differs from book to book, in part due to coincidence and in part because the translations were made at different times, and possibl2 also in different places, reflecting different stages of the development of the Hebrew Bible.
Jeremiah 32 in Its Hebrew and Greek Recensions 1
1999
It is widely accepted that the Masoretic Text and Septuagint Version of Jeremiah reflect different Vorlagen, but no final consensus has been reached on the relationship between them. This thesis enters the debate by undertaking a close study of the text of chapter 32, with two questions constantly in mind. Firstly, can a given variant be traced back to the LXX Vorlage (henceforth LXXV), or it is to be seen as a creation of the translator? Secondly, where a variant is judged to arise from LXXV, can a decision be made as to whether it is prior or secondary to the reading of MT?