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

the original, but have arisen from accident or particular theories of exegesis. Further, where no division of the existing consonants yields any sense, or but an im-probable sense, it must be considered whether the sub-stitution of similar consonants will. Whether the text thus obtained has any or much probability of being the original will depend on many considerations.

39. Illustralions of such errors. — We shall conclude with some illustrations of the variations m text or sense that arise when the foregoing considerations are allowed due weight. It is not to be understood that in all cases the variations from the traditional interpretation (1-3) or text (4) are certainly the true interpretation or text, but they all have a claim to be seriously regarded.

(1) In some cases simply a fresh punctuation of the sentences without any alteration of the consonants what-ever gives an important variation In sense. A good instance is Is 1>2-14; even in the present text the denunciation of ritual worship is severe; probably it was once more severe. Thus, without any change in the text, we may render —

"When ye come to see my face. Who hath required this at your hand? No more shall ye trample my courts. The bringing of oblations is a vain thing; Incense is an abomination to me; New moon and sabbath, the calling of assembly, I can-not away with. Iniquity and the solemn meeting, your new moons and

your appointed feasts my soul nateth.'

For NWN iniquity^ the Greek version has ZWM fastis) .

We probably have in the history of this passage a series

of attempts to soften down the severity and absoluteness

of the prophetic denunciation of the externalities of religion.

(2) In the Hebrew Bible the word for man NYS is dis-tinguished from the word for fire *<B by the insertion of the vowel letter Y; but in the Moabite stone, the Siloam inscription (written in Jerusalem in the age, as is commonly supposed, of Isaiah), and in Phcenician inscriptions, it is regularly written without the Y, and is thus indistinguishable from the word for ' fire.' Where either of these words occurs, therefore, we must decide b^ the context only which was intended. In Is 9" did Isaiah mean, 'and the people are as the food (so literally, not 'fuel,' RV) of fire,' or as the food of man'? By the change of a single letter in the word rendered ' food,' we obtain for the whole phrase ' hke those that devour men,' i.e. like cannibals — a reading suggested by Duhm, and, for reasons which cannot here be discussed, worthy of consideration. An^ven clearer instance of con-fusion of the two words N(Y)Sand NSis Ezk 8^: for 'fire' (first occurrence in RV) read 'a man.'

(3) Mutilation of the sense of the original is sometimes occasioned by incorrect division of words in the present Hebrew text. In some cases the Revisers, who generally preferred to retain the obviously incorrect sense in the text, give the correct sense In the margin: see, e.g., Gn 49'°, Ps 25" 425, Hos 6^, Jer 23^ (RV second marginal note on the ver.) ; at other times they give only a rendering of the present Hebrew, and, to ease off a certain roughness or actual maccuracy in the mutilated original, they sometimes trans-late with more or less disregard of Hebrew grammar or idiom. In Ps 73' a mere re-division of words gives a reading more original than the present text: 'For they have no torments: sound and plump is their body.' , A stnking variant appears as soon as the second and third words of Is 10« are re-divided (KRJT HT instead of KR» THT): the first clause of the ver. then reads, 'Beltis oroucheth, Osiris is dismayed,' and this is adopted by inany as the sense intended by Isaiah. This is not certain, though the Hebrew as at present divided scarcely admits of translation, and the renderings of RV are illegitimate. Another variant of soine importance appears when we divide the words in Is 8« differently (™. «H.Z K VMNW XL instead of t<R7,K yMNW «L): the verse closes not with a proper name in the vocative, but with a statement— 'The outstretching of his wings shall fill the breadth of the land, for God is with us' (cf v^")

(4) Parallelism or the contextof ten gives gieat probability to conjectural readings that differ from the Hebrew text by a letter or two, even though the change is not (clearly) supported by the Greek version. For example, in DtSS^, the word MRBBT is probably an error for MMRBT (M having accidentally been written once instead of twice, and B twice instead of once); then the hne reads from Menbah Kadesh,' which is a good parallel to Paran.

40. The English versions and the Hebrew text. — The

earliest of English versions proper (Wyclif's) was made from the Vulgate. Between the time of Wyclif and of the numerous English versions of the 16th cent, (see English Versions) the study of Hebrew, which, since the age of Jerome, had practically vanished from the Christian Church, was re-introduced. The AV, in which the series of Reformation translations culminated, is a primary version of the Hebrew text with occasional unacknowledged substitution of the sense of the LXX for that of the Hebrew (see for an example § 21 and below). It was only natural that at first translation from the original language should seem the last word in Biblical translation; but several scholars of the 17th cent, already appreciated the value of the versions and the faultiness otthe Hebrew text, and perceived that any translation that attempted to approximate to the sense of the original writers was doomed to fall un-necessarily far short of its aim if It slavishly followed the existing Hebrew text. Unfortunately the apprecia-tion of these facts had not become general even towards the end of the 19th cent., with the result that the Re-visers of the OT felt themselves justified In practically renouncing the use of the versions (not to speak of critical conjecture), so far as the text of their translation is concerned. Some of the evidence of the versions is given by them, yet very unsystematlcally. In the margins. The Revisers have explained their standpoint in their preface: 'As the state of knowledge on the subject Is not at present such as to justify any attempt at an entire reconstruction of the text on the authority of the versions, the Revisers have thought it most prudent, to adopt the Massoretic Text as the basis of their work, and to depart from it, as the authorized Translators had done, only in exceptional cases. ... In some few instances of extreme difficulty a reading has been adopted on the authority of the Ancient Versions, and the departure from the Massoretic Text recorded in the margin.' In spite of this determination to be prudent, the Revisers have in one Instance admitted an exceedingly questionable conjecture: in 1 S 13' they insert — in italics and between square brackets, it is true — the word 'thirty'; yet this word, though found In a few Greek MSS (not, however, in the earlier text of the LXX, rather unfortunately described by the Revisers as 'the unre vised LXX'), is really due to a pure guess; as a reading the word 'thirty' possesses exactly the same value as would any other number not obviously unsuitable. In addition to this peculiarly unhappy excursion into what is, if not technically yet in reality, conjectural emendation of the most hazardous character the Revisers make few acknowledged departures from the Hebrew text even when it is most obviously corrupt. Instances will, however, be found in Ruth 4<, 1 S 6'* 27'°, 2 S 18', Ps 8' 59', Mlc 4"; in some of these cases the AV had prevously (without acknowledgment) abandoned, the Hebrew text; in all, the Revisers were well advised in doing so. But the more general effect of the attitude adopted by the Revisers to the question of the Hebrew text may be Illustrated by their treatment of the passages cited in their preface as cases in which the AV aban-doned the Hebrew text.

In 2 S 16'2, AV has ' It may be the Lord will look on mine affliction,' which may represent the original text, the last word of the originalHebrew in that case having beenB JJN Y Y ; but the present Hebrew text has ByWNY, which means ' on my iniquity,' and the Hebrew (as also the RV) margin has BVYNY on my eye (interpreted as meaning 'on my tears'; so AVm). Here the RV relegates the rendering ' on my affliction ' to the margin, and gives in the text the scarcely defensible rendering of the Hebrew text 'on the wrong done unto me.' In 2 Ch 3' the Hebrew text, at some time after the date of the Greek version , has been reduced to nonsense by the accidental imsplacement of a word. AV follows the LXX. and is intelligible; RV in rendering the crucial words half folIowstheHebrewtext,and,shrinkingfrom the full effect of this, half mistranslates, yet with the total result of being nearly as unintelligible as the Hebrew ('in

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