The Earliest Text of the Hebrew Bible: The Relationship between the Masoretic Text and the Hebrew Base of the Septuagint Reconsidered.

• Author: Gentry, Peter J.
• Position: Book review

The Earliest Text of the Hebrew Bible: The Relationship between the Masoretic Text and the Hebrew Base of the Septuagint Reconsidered. Edited by ADRIAN SCHENKER. Septuagint and Cognate Studies, vol. 52. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2003. Pp. xi + 153. $29.95 (paper).

This slender volume is a collection of seven essays by an international panel of leading scholars in the fields of Septuagint / Textual Criticism: four are in English, two in French, and one in German. The essays represent papers delivered at a panel organized by Professor Schenker on the topic for the Eleventh Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies held August 3-4, 2001 in Basel. Each essay is prefaced by a helpful abstract; indices are provided for authors and passages cited.

A general essay by E. Tov surveys large-scale differences among the Septuagint (LXX), Masoretic Text (MT), Syriac (S), Targums (T), and Latin Vulgate (V). Setting aside the differences between text and versions due to lack of correspondence between source and target languages, errors in textual transmission of a version, or variation that is purely translational, one must consider the real textual variants that remain. Usually these are considered on a case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, a group of textual variants may conform to an overall pattern, particularly large-scale differences such as major pluses or minuses (depending on what is considered original) or arrangement of the material. If one can observe a Tendenz in these large-scale differences, one may posit a history of different literary editions in the transmission of a particular canonical book. Tov does not prejudice any particular textual/versional source in the comparison. He argues that the LXX is the single most important source for redactionally different material relevant to the literary analysis of the Bible, including all differences exhibited by the Dead Sea Scrolls together. This is due to the idiosyncratic nature of the Hebrew manuscripts used for the LXX translations, not shared by the manuscripts used in circles which embraced MT, and the relatively early date (275-150 B.C.E.) of the translation (p. 143). Moreover, Tov has reservations regarding the possibility of a Maccabean dating for details in MT (p. 144). While a brief survey of large-scale differences must be limited in scope, it is surprising that on the difficult question of Jeremiah in the LXX he presents as the reigning...