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The Göttingen Investigation and Edition of the Septuagint

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2011

P. L. Hedley
Affiliation:
Great Meols, Cheshire, England

Extract

A New era in Septuagint studies began in the autumn of 1891. In November of that year Hort drew up a scheme for the larger Cambridge edition: a few days later Lagarde, just before the operation from which he died on December 22, showed to his young pupil Alfred Rahlfs the works on which he was engaged, and explained his plans for their completion and publication. In these two schemes three scholars have found an arduous and self-sacrificing life-work. When A. E. Brooke and Norman McLean undertook the preparation of the Cambridge edition in 1895, they hoped that the Octateuch might be completed in five years: the final part of this first volume did not appear until 1917. But strenuous and untiring as their toil was through long years, it is now bearing rapid fruit. It is astonishing that the intricate editions of Samuel and Kings should have been published within the four years 1927–30, and Chronicles at the beginning of 1932.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1933

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References

1 In 1901 he had published an edition of the fragmentary Berlin manuscript of the Sa'idic Psalter.

2 Price, RM. 1.40 for each sixteen pages (Band X, RM. 32.20); or, if the whole work is subscribed for, RM. 1 for each sixteen pages (Band X, RM. 23).

3 The printing is accurate. I have noticed Ps. ix. 22 n. θλιφει, x. 5 text εανταν; p. 13, Ms 2004, a letter has intruded from a wrong fount; p. 14, codex 2017, 1. 2, read 652 (not 651); and a letter has dropped out of the page headings on pp. 134, 181, 202, 213, 250, 254, 340. The abbreviation for the Sexta (cxxxviii. 4) is not listed on p. 9.

4 Of these, only four Mas and two fragments contain any portion of the Odes; with the addition of a few readings from LaR, Ga, Didascalia, and Constitutiones apostolorum, Rahlfs has produced an edition of the Odes that is useful, but hardly adequate.

5 In xxix. 7 U has ειπα, not ειπον.

6 Rahlfs now makes no mention of Hesychius. He was not so discreet in 1907.

7 Aquila represents the root by the stem διαψενδ-. The verb is rendered by διαψεύδεσθαι in Num. xxiii. 19, Job xli. 1, Ez. xiii. 19, Hab. ii. 3; the noun by διαψενσμα in Ps. lxi. 5, cxv. 2 ( = Heb. cxvi. 11: teste Thdrt). I have noticed the following apparent exceptions in Field. Job. xxxiv. 6 α′ σ′ θ′ (uel α′ σ′) ψευσμα, which cannot be from α′; and Proverbs xxiii. 3 α′ θ′ αρτος ψενσματων (read σ′ θ′ comparing Job xxxiv. 6, Ps. lxi. 5). In Gen. xxxviii. 5 the proper name was (according to Jerome) treated by Aquila as a verb, ut mentiretur, whence Field restores εψενσατο: read διεψενσατο. In Mic. i. 14 α′ οικονς ψενδονς (seu ψενσματος) is Field's retranslation of the Syriac, which has bedagalutha ( = διαψενσμα Ps. lxi. 5, cxv. 2): rather διαψενσεως, a form found in Stob. ii. 7, 11. In Jer. xv. 18 α′ σ′ ως νδωρ εκλειπον cannot be from Aquila. Ψενδος is Aquila's rendering of ; hence he cannot have translated Is. xxviii. 15 by ψενδος, as Field supposes, nor Ez. xxii. 28 by ψενδος, as Hatch and Redpath quote from Pitra's Spicilegium Solesmense iii. In Ps. cxix. 2 α′ σ′ απο χειλονς ψενδοῦς the accentuation should be ψεύδονς for α′ at least, see Ps. xxx. 19, Prov. x. 18.

8 It is tempting to correct xciii. 8 ποτὲ φρονήσατε into πότε φρονήσετε ( = M.T.). The imperative at the beginning of the verse would both aid the corruption and prevent subsequent correction. (It is impossible to take the manuscript text as future; -α is found in the imperfect very occasionally before saec. ii A.D., but not in the future.)