The End of the Alpha Text of Esther: Translation and Narrative Technique in MT 8:1-17, LXX 8:1-17, and AT 7:14-41.

• Author: Crawford, Sidnie White
• Position: Reviews of Books

The End of the Alpha Text of Esther: Translation and Narrative Technique in MT 8:1-17, LXX 8:1-17, and AT 7:14-41. By KRISTIN DE TROYER. SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies Series, vol. 48. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2000. Pp. x + 273. $59.95.

This volume is an English translation of de Troyer's Dutch work Het einde van de Alpha tekst van Ester (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), which in turn was the publication of her doctoral dissertation. De Troyer's book is a welcome addition to the large number of commentaries and studies of the book of Esther that have appeared in recent years. As a careful and detailed study of one small section of the three versions of Esther (the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Alpha Text [AT]), it will chiefly be of interest to Esther scholars. But consideration of de Troyer's method for comparing the three versions will also be worthwhile for Septuagint scholars generally.

De Troyer begins with an exhaustive and detailed overview of past scholarship on the versions of the book of Esther, beginning in the seventeenth century and extending to the year 2000. She is thus to be congratulated for updating so thoroughly the Dutch version of her book. She then proceeds to the question of method (pp. 71-87), followed by four chapters in which she analyzes, in turn, MT Esther 8:1-17, LXX Esther 8:1-17, AT Esther 7:14-41 (all parallel to each other), and Addition E (found only in the LXX and AT). After a concluding chapter, she includes a helpful synopsis of the three texts in parallel columns, followed by a voluminous bibliography and other end matters.

De Troyer is mainly interested in the relation of the Alpha Text to the other two extant versions of Esther. As she asks on pp. 71-72, "Is the AT to be understood and explained on the basis of the LXX or the MT or a different Hebrew text?" Her study is written in response to the prevailing theory among Esther scholars, represented by Michael Fox, The Redaction of the Books of Esther: On Reading Composite Texts (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991); David J. A. Clines, The Esther Scroll: The Story of the Story (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984); and, to a certain extent, Karen Jobes, The Alpha-Text of Esther: Its Character and Relationship to the Masoretic Text (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), namely that the AT was translated from a different Hebrew Vorlage than the MT (the "proto-AT"); this text was later revised in light of the LXX to its present state. Thus Fox, for...