It is time to bring to an end these sets of detached observations. More or less all of them were intended as a help towards a clear and well founded conclusion. They were introduced (p. 103, sub ii) in support of the assumption that the aberrant text should be explained as the result of an effort to re-introduce those Lemmata that had been lost in the Vorlage of the inferior group. The two treatises which in my opinion almost force this explanation on the observer were presented first. The additional instances were all of the same kind, but, far from appearing in an accumulation comparable to that of the group agr.-plant., they are more widely scattered all over the Philonic corpus where a secondary evidence has survived. They reinforce the conclusions which we drew in considering the group agr.-plant.

THE SOURCES OF THE INFERIOR GROUP

Recension R

I think one result stands out clearly: the facts observed reflect a development. The aberrant text was not devised especially for use in a branch of the Philonic evidence, let alone shaped by the Interpolator himself. It represents one of our great recensions of the LXX, and in my opinion the parallel drawn from Ruth entitles us to say at least of the Octateuch (and Rg., cf. p. 103, n. 4). As was shown by Rahlfs, this recension has survived in a twofold shape. The one is the recension R and the other the recension C, which to a large extent adopted the readings of R, though rather inconsistently. Its main characteristics are a relative independence of Origen, whilst using methods analogous to his. The originator of R would draw from sources closer to than was in cases where Origen had acquiesced in the traditional text, and would leave the LXX untouched where Origen had introduced modifications. Even in passages which were changed by both O and R the changes would not always be identical, as they either based them on a different Hebrew text or chose different means of expressing an identical Hebrew text. The question whether R consulted the Hebrew or drew his results from the ‘Three’, among whom Aquila is predominant, can be safely left aside. I do not think that we should assume more than sporadic approaches to the Hebrew, if any at all.