Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

vertent errors and intentional corrections or supplements, began to affect

the Greek texts from the earliest copies that scribes attempted to produce,

just as happened with the Hebrew. Some variants entered the text through

cross-fertilization from variant Hebrew formulations. Theological changes

also occasionally occurred during the transmission process, clearly exem-

plified in passages such as LXX Ps. 13:3, with a long insertion quoted from

Rom. 3:3-10, and other patently Christian additions in the transmitted

texts, for example, at Pss. 50:9 and 95:10. Variants at the transmission level

multiplied voluminously over the centuries and are seen now flooding the

critical apparatus of the Göttingen Septuagint editions.

A fourth level visible in LXX manuscripts took the texts in a different

direction. While variants multiplied and spread in the LXX transmission,

certain Jewish scholars labored to unify the developing LXX text, revising

it toward conformity with what they presumed was the “original” Hebrew

text, which for them happened to be the collection of texts now in the MT,

the only collection then known. This recensional process — seen primarily

in the work of Aquila, Symmachus, and (proto-)Theodotion, and culmi-

nating in Origen’s Hexapla — instead of unifying the ongoing Greek

manuscript tradition, rather infiltrated and complicated it. To use the LXX

critically, it is important to work with the first and second levels, sifting

out influence from the third and fourth levels.

In addition to serving as a valuable window into ancient Hebrew text

forms, the LXX also provides luminous witness to the understanding of

the Scriptures in late antiquity. The Greek texts also developed a life of

their own, soon no longer moored to the precise meaning of the Hebrew

originals, becoming the Scriptures of both Christian and Greek-speaking

Jewish communities. The Old Latin and the “daughter versions” (e.g., the

Armenian, the Bohairic, etc.) were translated from the LXX and serve indi-

rectly as witnesses to possible alternate Hebrew texts, but all the remaining

versions witness uniformly to the MT collection.

Surprising Texts from the Late Second Temple Period

Starting in the latter half of the third centuryb.c.e., light begins to shine

on the textual landscape, thanks to the discovery of more than two hun-

dred scriptural manuscripts in caves near Qumran and at other sites along

the western side of the Dead Sea. The scriptural scrolls provide a wide-

ranging parade of textual surprises that deserve close review.

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eugene ulrich

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:03:57 PM