Notes on the Greek Text of Numbers.

• Author: Levin, Saul
• Position: Reviews of Books

Notes on the Greek Text of Numbers. By JOHN WILLIAM WEVERS. SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies Series, vol. 46. Atlanta: SCHOLARS PRESS, 1998. Pp. xlviii + 643. $54.95.

The eminent J. W. Wevers has given us the ripest fruit of his unequaled scholarship. The greater part of his career has been devoted to the Pentateuch in Greek; and from the time that his critical edition of Genesis launched the series Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum (Gottingen, 1974), he was recognized as the supreme authority. If ever anyone comes along to improve upon Wevers' work, it will only be dune by digesting it fully.

For various reasons, neither his editions of the five books nor his separate notes on them were completed and published in the expected order; instead:

Genesis text 1974, notes 1993 Exodus text 1991, notes 1990 Leviticus text 1986, notes 1997 Numbers text 1982, notes 1998 Dueteronomy text 1977, notes 1995 Why he got around last of all to the notes on Numbers is hinted in the opening sentence of the present book: "The Greek translation of Numbers (herein designated as Num) is without a doubt by far the weakest volume in the Greek Pentateuch." It must have posed the hardest challenge to do justice to the "apparent incompetence" of the translator and, at the same time, to "an active mind engaged in the interpretation of sacred scripture...."

Wevers achieves his purpose by commenting in detail upon every verse, from 1:1 (on p. 1) to 36:13 (p. 607). (1) Happily, his introduction (pp. ix-xlii) guides the reader to the most typical or the most revealing examples of the translator's merits and demerits. Where the validity of the Greek rendering is at issue, Wevers exercises his own judgment but furnishes us with what we need to come to a different conclusion independently. On 32:4 I agree substantially with him:

According to MT [the Mas(s)oretic Hebrew text], Yahweh smote ([LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) the land represented by the towns of v. 3, before the assembly of Israel. Num did not translate [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], probably because this was an overly graphic way of describing Yahweh's direction of Israel's affairs, and substituted [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [he delivered, handed over], probably relying on 21:34, where the Lord [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] the Amorites to Israel. (p. 528, cf. p. xxxiii)

I would rank [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as an intentional paraphrase.

Very seldom do I find...