GREEK VERSIONS OF OT

ofAlexandriaj though their results are by no means uniform. This field of mquiry is not worked out yet.

13. With these materials the critic has to approach the problem of the restoration of the text of the LXX. Ideally, what Is desirable is that it should be possible to point out the three main editions, those of Origen, Lucian, and Hesychius, and thence to go back to the text which Ues behind them all, that of the pre-Origenian LXX. Some progress has been made in this direction. Some MSS are generally recognized as being predomi-nantly Lucianic; some readings are certainly known to be Hexaplar; but we are still far from an agreement on all points. Especially is this the case with the edition of Hesychius. Some scholars have identified it (notably in the Prophets) with the text of A, which, however, seems certainly to have been modified by the influence of Origen. More recently the tendency has been to find it in B; but here it is still open to question whether B is not mainly both pre-Hesychlan and pre-Origenian. It would be unjustifiable to pretend at present that certainty has been arrived at on these points. And vrith regard to the great bulk of MSS, it is clear that their texts are of a mixed character. In the Psalms it would appear that the edition of Lucian was, in the main, adopted at Constantinople, and so became the common text of the Church; but in regard to the other books, the common text, which appears in the bulk of the later MSS, cannot be identified with any of the three primary editions. The influence of the Hebrew, especi-ally after the example of Origen, was constantly a dis-turbing factor; and it is certain that criticism has still much to do before it can give us even an approximately sound text of the LXX.

14. And when that is done, the question of the re-lation of the LXX to the Hebrew still remains. No other version differs so widely from its presumed original as the LXX does from the Massoretic Hebrew; but it is by no means easy to say how far this is due to the mis-takes and liberties of the translators, and how far to the fact that the text before them differed from the Massoretic. That the latter was the case to some not inconsiderable extent is certain. Readings in which the LXX is supported against the Massoretic by the Samaritan version must almost certainly represent a divergent Hebrew original; but unfortunately the Samaritan exists only for the Pentateuch, in which the variants are least. Elsewhere we have generally to depend on internal evidence; and the more the LXX is studied in detail, the less wilUng, as a rule, is the student to maintain its authority against the Hebrew, and the less certain that its variants really represent differences in the original text. The palpable mistakes made by the translators, the inadequacy of their knowl-edge of Hebrew, the freedom with which some of them treated their original, — all these go far to explain a large margin of divergence; and to these must be added divergences arising, not from a different Hebrew text, but from supplying different vowel points to a text which originally had none. All these factors have to be taken into account before we can safely say that the Hebrew which lay before the LXX translators must have been different from the Massoretic text; and each passage must be judged on its own merits. An in-structive lesson may be learnt from the recent discovery of the original Hebrew of Sirach, which has revealed a quite unsuspected amount of blundering, and even wilful alteration, on the part of the Greek translator. The testimony of the LXX must therefore be received with extreme caution; and although there is no reason to doubt that it contains much good grain, yet it is also certain that much skill and labour have still to be exer-cised in order to separate the grain from the chaff. In passing, it may be said that there appears to be no sound basis for the charge, often brought by early Christian writers, that the Jews made large alterations in the Heb. text for doctrinal and controversial reasons.

GREEK VERSIONS OF OT

n. AquUa (Aq.).— 16. Of the rival Greek versions which, as mentioned in § 7, came into being in the 2nd cent., the first was that of Aquila, a Gentile of Sinope, in Pontus, who was converted first to Christianity and then to Judaism. He is said to have been a pupil of Rabbi Akiba, and to have flourished in the reign of Hadrian (a.d. 1 17-138) . His translation of the OT was made in the interests of Jewish orthodoxy. The text which subsequently received the name of Massoretic had practically been fixed by the Jevrish scholars at the end of the 1st cent., and Aquila followed it with slavish fidelity. All thought for the genius and usage of the Greek language was thrown aside, and the Greek was forced to follow the idiosyncrasies of the Hebrew in defiance of sense and grammar. Aq. would consequently be an excellent witness to the Hebrew text of the 2nd cent., if only it existed intact; but we possess only small fragments of it. These consist for the most part (until recently, wholly) of fragments of Origen's third column preserved in the margins of Hexaplar MSS (such as Q); but they have been supplemented by modern discoveries. The Milan palimpsest of the Hexapla (see § 8) contains the text of Aq. for 11 Psalms; but though discovered by Mercati in 1896, only a small specimen of it has yet been pubUshed. The Cambridge fragment published by Dr. Taylor gives the text of Ps 22!»-2s. In 1897 Mr. F. C. Burkitt discovered three palimpsest leaves of a MS of Aq. (5th-6th cent.) among a large quantity of tattered MSS brought, like the last-mentiongd fragment, from Cairo; and these, which contain 3 K 20'-" and 4 K 23"-", were published in 1897. Further fragments, from the same source and of the same date, published by Dr. C. Taylor (1900), contain Ps 90"-92'» 96'-97i2 98« 102i«-103"; and in 1900 Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt published Gn 1'-' in the versions of the LXX and Aq. from a papyrus of the 4th cent, in the collection of Lord Amherst. These discoveries confirm our previous knowledge of the characteristics of Aq.; and it is note-worthy that in the Cambridge MSS of Aq. the Divine Tetragrammaton is written in the old Hebrew characters.

III. Theodotion (Theod.). — 16. The origin of this version must be ascribed to a desire (similar to that which actuated Origen) on the part of the Christians to have a Greek version of the OT which should correspond better than the LXX with the current Hebrew text, and yet not be so closely identified with their Jewish opponents and so dlsregardf ul of the genius of the Greek language as Aquila. Theodotion, though sometimes de-scribed as a Jewish proselyte, appears rather to have been an Ebionitic Christian, who Uved at Ephesus about the middle of the 2nd cent.; and his version found favour with the Christians, much as Aq. did with the Jews. This version follows in the main the authorized Hebrew, but is much more free than Aq., and agrees more with the LXX. Hence when Origen, In the execution of his plan for bringing the LXX into accord with the Hebrew, had to supply omissions in the LXX, he had recourse to Theod. for the purpose. Further, the LXX version of Dan. being regarded as unsatisfactory, the version of Theod. was taken into use instead, and so effectually that the LXX of this book has survived in but one single MS. It is probable, however, that Theod. was not wholly original in this book, for there are strong traces of Theodotionlc readings in the NT (Hebrews and Apocalypse), Hermas, Clement, and Justin; whence it seems necessary to conclude that Theod. based his version on one which had been pre-viously in existence side by side with the LXX.

17. Besides this complete book and the extracts from the Hexapla and the Milan palimpsest (the Theodotion column in the Cambridge MS is lost), there is some reason to believe that still more of Theod. has survived than was formerly supposed. It is well known that the book which appears in our Apocrypha as 1 Esdras, and in the Greek Bible as 'Eo-Spas A', is simply a different recension of the canonical book of Ezra (with

319