203*. “Three Strange Books of the LXX: 1 Kings, Esther, and Daniel Compared with Similar Rewritten Compositions from Qumran and Elsewhere,” Revised version: Emanuel Tov, Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran (2008), 283–305. (original) (raw)
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XIV Congress of the IOSCS Helsinki 2010, 2013
One of the usual objections raised at the confection of an eclectic edition of the Hebrew Bible is the problem derived of the main non-Masoretic source (barring Qumran testimonies, usually in a fragmentary state), that is, the Septuagint, being a translation of a Hebrew original. This gives room for different types of objections, mostly centered around the scholars’ capacity of rendering an accurate retroversion of the Greek into its Hebrew Vorlage and the determination of what Greek variants constitute witnesses of a different underlying Hebrew or are rather the creation of the ancient translators themselves. To this one has to add the concrete choices of typogra- phy and orthography taken in the eclectic text itself. All these issues and objections are in a good measure familiar to any textual criticism enterprise, biblical or not. Relevant as it is to engage in a discussion on the philosophy of a critical edition and the nature of the text we are producing or re-creating, this paper will focus on larger textual units (whole clauses or paragraphs) that constitute meaningful differences of redac- tion between the MT and Septuagint texts of 2 Kings. If these cases can be shown to hint at two different editions of the Hebrew book (as the two-column presentation in the OHB proposes), then we have a very particular set of materials to contribute to the discussion on Vorlage issues. After presenting particular cases, I hope to contribute to an assessment of the advantages of making the text of ancient redactions available in a Bible edition versus the elusiveness of Hebrew retroversion.
Kings ii 12-xxi 43," in Oudtestamentische Studiën (ed. P. A.H. de Boer; OTS 8; Leiden: Brill, 1950): 300-322. Wevers identifi ed various tendencies in relatively small details in the LXX, but he did not suggest often that a different Hebrew text lay at the base of the LXX. Nor did he realize that the LXX refl ects a completely different composition. 4 J.A. Montgomery, "The Supplement at End [sic] of 3 Kingdoms 2 (I Reg. 2)," ZAW 50 (1932): 124-29; G. Krautwurst, Studien zu den Septuagintazusätzen in 1 (3.) Könige 2 und ihren Paralleltexten (Ph.D. diss., Mainz, 1977); E. Tov, "The LXX Additions (Miscellanies) in 1 Kings 2," Textus 11 (1984): 89-118; repr. in The Greek and Hebrew Bible: Collected Essays on the Septuagint (VTSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 549-70. For Gooding's monograph on this chapter, see n. 6.
In several Scripture books, the Masoretic Text (MT) displays a substantial number of major differences when compared with the LXX and, to a lesser degree, with several Qumran scrolls and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP). The other ancient versions were translated from Hebrew texts close to MT. The present analysis is limited to variations bearing on literary analysis, usually found in groups of variants. A difference involving one or two words, and sometimes an isolated case of a single verse, is considered a small difference, while a discrepancy involving a whole section or chapter indicates a substantial difference, often relevant to literary criticism. However, a group of seemingly unrelated small differences might also display a common pattern, pointing to a more extensive phenomenon. This pertains to many small theological changes in the MT of Samuel, short renderings in the LXX translation of Ezekiel, etc. Who created these various types of differences between ancient texts? In very broad terms, authors and editors who were involved in the composition of the texts, inserted changes that we characterize today as large differences often bearing on literary criticism. At a later stage, scribes who copied the completed compositions inserted many smaller changes and also made mistakes while copying. However, the distinction between these two levels is unclear at both ends, since early copyists considered themselves petty collaborators in the creation process of Scripture, while authors and editors were also copyists. While readings found in ancient Hebrew manuscripts provide stable evidence, there are many problems on the slippery road of evaluating the ancient versions, especially the LXX. One of these is that what appears to one scholar to be a safely reconstructed Hebrew variant text is for another one a specimen of a translator's tendentious rendering. Literary analysis of the Hebrew Bible is only interested in evidence of the first type, since it sheds light on the background of the different Hebrew texts that were once circulating. The translator's tendentious changes are also interesting, but at a different level, that of Scripture exegesis. Since a specific rendering either represents a greatly deviating Hebrew text or it displays the translator's exegesis, one wonders how are we to differentiate between the two. For almost every variation in the LXX, one finds opposite views expressed, and there are only very few objective criteria for evaluating these variations. Probably the best criteria relate to external Hebrew evidence supporting the
1 Background Traditionally, text-critical analysis of Hebrew Scripture started with mt and sp, and since 1947 it also covers the Judean Desert texts. The picture must be completed by also consulting the ancient translations, even though the Hebrew texts behind those translations must be reconstructed first, and this procedure often involves an almost impossible enterprise. It is an accepted view that the Hebrew parent text of the lxx needs to be taken into consideration in the textual praxis, but we hear little about the other versions, t s v,1 because v and t almost always agree with mt. They are less significant for textual analysis, but remain important for understanding the biblical exegesis in antiquity. Specialists find more variants in s, but they often state that s, also, differs very little from mt. In this study, we will make some general remarks on these three versions, in an attempt to place them in their right position in the textual praxis. These three versions ought to be recorded in the critical editions of the Hebrew Bible, but in my view their status in the textual descriptions is in need of some refinement.2 We wish to reiterate that v and t, as well as kaige-Th, Aquila, and Symmachus are virtually identical to mt, and to a great extent this also pertains to s. At the beginning of the critical inquiry into Hebrew Scripture and its translations , scholars described the wealth of available evidence for the early text of the Bible as sources for an analysis. However, they did not necessarily have the critical insight to realize the different types of contribution made by these sources to our understanding of the ancient Hebrew text. A good example is the 1 The following abbreviations are used: t = Targum(im), s(yriac) = Peshitta, v = Vulgate. The earliest written evidence for these versions is available for the fragments of the Targumim from Qumran. 2 In this analysis, we exclude the Arabic translation of Saadia (882-942 ce) and the secondary translations made from the lxx: Latin (the Vetus Latina), Syriac (the Syro-Palestinian trans
The Text of the Hebrew Bible. From the Rabbis to the Masoretes, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013
The variants of Hebrew medieval manuscripts and the readings of the Aramaic, Syriac and Vulgate versions belong to the textual tradition of the MT. None of the distinctive characteristics of the Septuagint correspond to the medieval manuscripts or to those three versions. 2 But in the books of Kings, the medieval Hebrew manuscripts (Ms/Mss) and the Targum (T), Peshitt˙a (S) and Vulgate (V) attest readings which agree with both the Greek Kaige text as extant in the B text and with the Old Greek as preserved by the pre-Lucianic text. 3 1 The research for this paper was done under the auspices of Research Project "Edición electrónica políglota-sinóptica de 1-2 Reyes," funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Investigación, Ciencia e Innovación. We thank Prof. Juan JosØ Alarcón, member of the research team that carried out this project, for his careful revision of the Aramaic and Syriac variants quoted in this paper. 2 The Greek version falls on the side of the textual pluralism featured in Qumran versus the tendency to textual fixation already manifest in the other Dead Sea caves, see E. Tov, "The Nature of the Large-Scale Differences between the LXX and MT S T V, Compared with Similar Evidence in Other Sources," in A. Schenker (ed.), The Earliest Text of the Hebrew Bible: The Relationship between the Masoretic Text and the Hebrew Base of the Septuagint Reconsidered (Atlanta/Leiden: Society of Biblical Literature/Brill, 2003), 121-144; id., "The Text of the Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek Bible Used in the Ancient Synagogues," in id., Hebrew Bible, Greek Bible, and Qumran. Colleted Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 171-188; id., "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Textual History of the Masoretic Text," in N. Dµvid, A. Lange, K. De Troyer and S. Tzoref (eds.), The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 41-53. 3 The terms and sigla used in the paper are the following: MT = the Masoretic Text; G or OG = the original Greek of the Septuagint; LXX B or B = the text of the group of manuscripts B 121 509 and in general the majority text; LXX A = the text of the group of LXX manuscripts A 247; LXX L = the text of the group of manuscripts 19 82 93 108 127; AL = the common text of the groups of manuscripts A and L; Hex = the Hexaplaric text; OL = the Old Latin version or text; SyroH = the Syrohexaplaric text; Arm = the Armenian version or the Armenian text; Aeth = the Ethiopic version of the Ethiopic text; T = the Targum or Aramaic version or text; S = the Syriac Peshitṫa version or text; V = the Latin Vulgata version or text; Vrs = the Aramaic, Syriac and Vulgate versions together or some of them; R: Rossi mss; K: Kennicott mss. The rest of the signs follow Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia conventions.