[B-Greek] LXX Source Texts

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Sat Apr 10 20:18:28 EDT 2004


Far be it from me, to discourage any one from reading Emanuel Tov's  
very fine book, mentioned by Arie, but the question that is being asked 
requires little more than simple logic.  As long as, in any given book, 
the  consonantal Hebrew text of MT supports the LXX more than fifty 
percent of the time, one's working hypothesis ought to be that the 
consonantal text of MT is the parent text of LXX—until proven 
otherwise.  In point of fact , I doubt that any text within the LXX 
corpus comes anywhere near 49% variance from the consonantal text of 
MT. As a hands-on experiment, you might read Gen 1-5 in MT and LXX, 
side by side, and make a rough calculation of the percentage of textual 
difference between them.
Needless to say, the percentage of variance may differ from translation 
unit to translation unit.
Also needless to say, in order to be able to distinguish between 
textual variants and translational variants one needs to study the 
translation technique of individual translators.
Al
On Apr 10, 2004, at 10:40 AM, Philip Engmann wrote:

> In the analysis of the accuracy or the 'goodness' of the translated LXX
> texts[1] and consequently the analysis of the 'goodness' of LXX
> translation techniques, it is helpful to have not only the target 
> texts,
> i.e. the LXX texts, but also the source texts, i.e. the Hebrew
> consonantal texts from which the LXX texts were translated; but these
> parent LXX Hebrew consonantal texts seem to be largely unavailable.
>
> Whilst the Dead Sea scrolls have revealed that the MT source texts
> differed in some places from the LXX source texts, is it fair to assume
> that the MT consonantal text reflects the LXX unless otherwise proven?
> And can this assumption stand up to critical scholarly scrutiny? Is
> there any clear scholarly evidence for such an assumption?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Philip Engmann (phil-eng at ighmail.com)
>
>
>   _____
>
> [1] i.e. from the Hebrew consonantal texts to the Greek LXX texts
> ---
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>
—
Albert Pietersma
Professor of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto
Home: 21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm




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