TEXT, VERSIONS, LANGUAGES OF OT TEXT, VERSIONS, LANGUAGES OF OT

But again .there 19 no difficulty in seeing beneath the nonsense of the Greek the true sense and the actual reading of the Hebrew. The ignorance of the translatora is as useful to the textual critic as their knowledge.

21. Euphemistic translations. — But there are many variations in sense which point to no real textual variants, though both Hebrew and Greek in themselves yield a good sense.

The last clause of the 19th Psalm in the AV, ' O Lord, my strength and my redeemer,'reads admirably; but though the translators give us no clue to the fact, it is not a trans-lation of the Hebrew, it is a translation of the LXX. The Hebrew reads 'My rock and my redeemer' (so RV). In this case the LXX rendering is due not to ignorance, but to religious scruple: their rendering is a euphemism. So in On 52* the Greek version substitutes 'Enoch was well- pleasing to God' (hence He 11') for the anthropomorphic walked with God' of the Hebrew text; in these cases, if we had not also the Hebrew text we could not discover the original from the LXX with certainty, or, perhaps, even be sure that the translators were paraphrasing and not translating.

22. Relative values of Greek version and Hebrew text. — These illustrations may suffice to show both that much care is required in using the LXX for the recovery of the Hebrew underlying it, and also that it is wide of the mark to depreciate the textual value of the version by emphasizing the ignorance of the translators. Before either the fullest or the securest use of the version can be made, an immense amount of work remains to be done; but the impoirtance of doing this work is clear, for even the most cautious deductions have already proved that the text underlying the LXX and the present Hebrew text differ widely, and that in many instances the LXX text is superior. The relative values differ in the case of different books; and to avoid mis-understanding it should be added that in no case would a simple translation of the LXX bring us as near to the sense of the original document as a translation from the Hebrew text; nor would it be possible, unless the Hebrew text had survived, to detect by means of the LXX the correct text and the sense of the original. Issues are sometimes contused, and the distinctive char-acteristics and virtues of our two chief witnesses to the text of the OT obscured, in discussions as to the relative values of the LXX and the Massoretic text. Perhaps the most important general point to remember is that neither the one nor the other would be nearly as valu-able by itself as it is when used in combination with the other.

23. Examples of important readings preserved by the Greek Version only. — We may now pass to some illustra-tions of Important variations in which the LXX has clearly preserved an earlier text than the Hebrew. These are much less numerous in the Pentateuch than elsewhere; probably the Law, as the most important Scripture, received at an early period something ap-proaching to that great care in transmission which was later extended to the entire OT. It is the more remark-able, therefore, that in one section of the Pentateuch (Ex 35-39) we find striking differences in the arrange-ment of sections in the Hebrew and Greek texts. Other instances of different arrangement or of marked differ-ences in the extent of the material occur in the Books of Job and Jeremiah (see, further, Swete, Introd. to the OT in Greek, 221 ff.). This type of difference connects the textual with the higher criticism of these books, and cannot be pursued further here.

24. In some cases matter subsequently lost (through homoioteleuton or otherwise), and now absent from the Hebrew text, survives in the Greek.

A striking illustration of this occurs in 1 S 14**. The Hebrew text underlying the Greek veraion reads, ' Saul said unto Jahweh, the God of Israel [wherefore hast thou not answered thy servant to-day? If this iniquity be in me, or in Jonathan my son, O God of Israel, give Urim, but if this iniquity be in thy servant Israel], give Thummim.' The words in square brackets are absent from the Hebrew text, but certainly belonged to the original, and the origin

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of the error is clear: the scribe's eye accidentally passed from the first occurrence of 'Israel' to the third, and the intervening words were lost. With the loss of these the sense of the last two words 'give Thummim' became obscure, and the punctuators, followed by RV, gave them an indefensible interpretation.

26. In other cases the Greek version is nearer to the original by its relative brevity; the additional matter now present in the Hebrew text was subsequently interpolated.

As an instance of this we may cite 1 K &°- ^, which RV, following the Hebrew text, renders, 'And he covered the altar [with cedar. So Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold: and he drew chains of gold across] before the oracle; and he overlaid it with gold.' The bracketed words are absent from the Greek; it is probable that of these words 'with cedar' stood in the original text, but that the rest were absent. The Greek text has also for the first four words above (before the bracket) the (superior) reading, ' And he made an altar.'

26. At times, when either the sense or the text of both the Hebrew and the Greek is remote from the original, it is possible, from a comparison between the two, to recover the original.

An interesting example of this is furnished by Is 37^'- = 2K 19»'-. RV, followingthe Heb. text, renders, 'They were as the grass of the field, and as com (Is. *a field of com') blasted before it be grown up. But I know thy sitting down and thy going out and thy coming in.' The Hebrew text of the underlined words is LPNY QMH WSBTK; the Hebrew equivalent of *I know* stands much lower in the sentence, and though it may with difficulty be taken as in the RV, more naturally demands a different object. A reading of the Greek text preserved only in a Syriao version of it, but nevertheless probably the original reading of the Greek text, has, for thesame underlined words,' before thy rising up, and thy sitting down'; this presupposes the Hebrew LPNY QMK WSBTK, which differa from the present Hebrew text by one letter only. The Hebrew text here presupposed is probably original, but has been mis undeistoodby the translators. The first word,if vocalized as in the Hebrew text and by the Greek translators LPNY,

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means before, but if vocahzed LPNY it means before me.

Adopting the latter vocalization, we recover (at leastso far as the three words are concerned) the original sense, ' They wer« as grass of the field . . . and as com that is blasted. Before me is thine uprising and thy down sitting (cf . Ps 1392); and thy going out and thy coming in I know.' So great is the difference in sense that the corruption of a single letter may make in a text which contained only consonants, and no marks of punctuation whatever. The true reading of the Hebrew in this case was first divined by Wellhausen; it remained for Mr. Burkitt to point out that it was the reading of the Greek translators.

27. The Hebrew text before the date of the Greek version. — If the Hebrew text suffered to a very considerable extent in the ways just illustrated, during the three or four centuries that intervened between the time when the LXX version was made and the time when the Hebrew text was stereotyped and the later Greek versions were made, by nothing short of a stupendous miracle could the text have been preserved free from errors of transmission, during the centuries that separate the original autographs from the date of the Greek version. This intervening period differs, of course, widely in length; between the age of Isaiah and the Greek translation of the Book of Isaiah lay some six centuries; between the age of Deborah (Jg 5) and the translation of Judges little short of a thousand years; between the age of David (2 S !"»■) and the translation of Samuel 800 or 900 years. On the other hand, between the compilation of the Hexateuch, or the first composition of books such as Ecclesiastes or Daniel, and the transla-tions in the several cases, not more than a couple of centuries elapsed.

28. Means of detecting early corruption of Hebrew text. — Though the general fact that the present Hebrew text contains corruptions that date from these earlier centuries cannot reasonably be questioned, the detection of the actual cases of early corruption Is