Mk 1:3 & par. EN THi ERHMWi MT/LXX
Randall Buth
ButhFam at compuserve.com
Wed Sep 4 02:39:44 EDT 2002
shalom Clay, re: Mk 1:3 & par. EN THi ERHMWi MT/LXX
>
>LUKE 3:4 FWNH BOWNTOS
>EN THi ERHMWi: hETOIMASATE
>THN hODON KURIOU, EUQEIAS
>POIEITE TAS TRIBOUS AUTOU:
>
>IS. 40:3 FWNH BOWNTOS
>EN THi ERHMWi hETOIMASATE THN hODON KURIOU
>EUQEIAS POIEITE TAS TRIBOUS TOU QEOU hHMWN
>
>One of you Hebrew scholars want to give some help with this one?
>Where do we join EN THi ERHMWi? With FWNH BOWNTOS or with what follows?
>
>Joan E. Taylor* and James R. Edwards** disagree on the evidence. Edwards
>states (p.27) "In both the MT and the LXX 'in the desert' designates the
>place where God will prepare the way for his people . . . Mark, however,
>aligns 'in the desert' with the herald . . . "
>
>Taylor claims that the NT and LXX agree on this and disagree with the MT.
>She suggests (tentatively?) that the MT joins "in the desert" with what
>follows. This agrees with A. Motyer's and E.J. Young's reading of Isa.
4:3.
>The first word, kol, is taken as an exclamation and bmbdr is read as an
>adverbial limiting the following verbal clause. Young makes a second
comment
>that the MT could be read the way we find it in the synoptic gospels. What
>about this? Can it be read both ways in the MT?
>
>I find Edwards' point hard to fathom. Where is the contrast between the
GNT
>and LXX? If you subtract the editorial punctuation of the GNT and you
have:
>FWNH BOWNTOS EN THi ERHMWi hETOIMASATE THN hODON KURIOU.
>
>Taylor's treatment sounds better but I cannot be sure without some
>enlightenment about the clause structure in the MT.
>Thanks,
>Clay
At a fundamental level the Hebrew text is poetic:
poetic parallelism would place 'in the wilderness' with the first
verb "clear a path"
since a parallel wilderness phrase 'in the arava'
unambiguously goes with the second verb 'make straight'.
The Massoretes correctly read this in this way, as is evidenced by the
double zaqef accent on both "call" and "in the wilderness". In such
cases the first disjunctive accent divides the material off and has
'higher ranking'.
So the official MT reading is also
"a voice calls, 'clear a path in the wilderness...' ".
The Greek can be taken as a reader may want to take it.
In addition, whether in Greek or Hebrew, a person (ancient or modern)
may want to make a midrashic play on the text and repunctuate in ways
other than Isaiah 40 intended. Which is how I read our gospel
texts here.
ERRWSO
Randall Buth
Jerusalem
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