The Armenian 1 Samuel (original) (raw)
The books of Samuel-Kings share the same textual history. However, the critical apparatuses of both books in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia differ considerably. The edition of Kings by A. Jepsen (1974) often qualifies a Greek reading as the "Greek original text" (G*) and expresses a critical judgment on the Hebrew text with indications such as legendum cum, delendum, probabiliter delendum, dittography, gloss, "homtel," haplography, omission, transponendum post, probabiliter inserendum, etc. On the contrary, Samuel's edition prepared by P.A.H. de Boer (1976) abstains from expressing any critical judgment on the readings of the Hebrew or Greek text. The critical apparatus of A. Jepsen represents a sector of biblical criticism willing to correct the Masoretic Text (MT) with the support of the versions, especially of Septuagint (LXX), although without the exaggerated recourse to LXX-based conjectures previously practiced by Duhm, Ehrlich and Cheyne. The critical apparatus of P.A.H. de Boer is representing the movement of "return to the Masoretic text" (zurück zum masoretischen Texte), 1 which implied the refusal to correct MT on the basis of readings of the versions. According to P.A.H. de Boer, "any suggestion from the Ancient Versions to emend the Hebrew text that treats them as variants to the Hebrew text and not as translations
Textual Corruptions, or Linguistic Phenomena? The Cases in 2 Samuel (MT)
Vetus Testamentum, 2014
The MT of the Books of Samuel has usually been taken as textually corrupt due to scribal errors. However, many often advocated textual emendations can be seen as unnecessary when one understands the linguistic nature of the unusual forms. Some of the cases in 2 Samuel may be explained as phonetic spellings, such as omission of aleph (e.g. 20:5, 9), assimilations (e.g. 5:13a; 13:16; 18:3, 12), metathesis (20:14; 22:46), and sandhi (22:40; 23:9, 20, 21). Another example is aposiopesis in direct speech (13:16; also 1 Sam 1:22). Furthermore, new understandings of linguistic phenomena such as the “vertical grammar” of poetic parallelism (Ps 18:11; cf. 2 Sam 22:12) and discourse grammar, especially the sequence of the verbal forms in Hebrew narrative prose (e.g. 2 Sam 4:5-7) can aid analysis.
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.
2018
This dissertation is a text-critical study of the Hebrew text of 1 Sam 1 – 2 Sam 9 in the Hebrew Bible. The entire Hebrew text of Samuel is known today only in its Masoretic text form, which is itself the result of a standardization process that began around the onset of the Common Era. Before this standardization process, the Hebrew text was evidently fluid, and several different textual editions of the Book of Samuel would have existed. This is evidenced by the manuscripts of Samuel found at Qumran (2nd – 1st c. BCE) and the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint (translated 2nd c. BCE). The purpose of this dissertation is to study how these three main witnesses—the Masoretic text, the Qumran manuscripts and the Hebrew source text of the Septuagint—differ from and are related to one another. Such a study entails an investigation of what kinds of changes took place in each textual tradition and what were the possible motivations behind the changes. These results are ...
This study focuses on the philosophy behind the approaches of ancient translators towards Hebrew/Aramaic Scripture. The background of these approaches can be researched more easily now than two generations ago, as the recently discovered Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek manuscripts from the Judean Desert provide us with new insights into individual scribes and translators from antiquity. 1 The major focus in this discussion is upon the general approaches of translators, which are usually expressed in terms of "freedom" and "literalism" in the case of translators and "carefulness" and "carelessness" when referring to scribes, while realizing that these terms are very general.