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Psalm 83 MT/LXX differences


Susan

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I’m trying to understand the relationship between the MT and LXX Psalm 83:7a. Starting from verse 6:

 
6. μακάριος ἀνήρ, οὗ ἐστιν ἡ ἀντίλημψις αὐτοῦ παρὰ σοῦ, κύριε·  ἀναβάσεις ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ διέθετο 7. ἐν τῇ κοιλάδι τοῦ κλαυθμῶνος εἰς τόπον, ὃν ἔθετο·
 
אַשְׁרֵ֣י אָ֭דָם עֽוֹז־ל֥וֹ בָ֑ךְ מְ֝סִלּ֗וֹת בִּלְבָבָֽם׃

 עֹבְרֵ֤י ׀ בְּעֵ֣מֶק הַ֭בָּכָא מַעְיָ֣ן יְשִׁית֑וּהוּ 

 
 
That last part (BHS 84:7a | ESV 84:6a | Rahlfs 83:7a | NETS 83:7a):
 
> מַעְיָ֣ן יְשִׁית֑וּהוּ
they make it a place of springs
 
> εἰς τόπον, ὃν ἔθετο
to a place which he appointed.
 
Interestingly, the NET renders it, “he provides a spring for them” and explains in the footnote:
 
> The MT reads “a spring they make it,” but this makes little sense. Many medieval Hebrew MSS, as well as the LXX, understand God to be the subject and the valley to be the object, “he [God] makes it [the valley] [into] a spring.”
 
​That’s not exactly what the LXX says..... 
 
I guess they just mean that the subject/object relationship is taken from the LXX (and, I suppose, the singular number for both, contra the plural MT verb).
 
Does it make sense for the LXX to inform an emendation of the MT here? (I know very little about text criticism.) I don’t follow how the NET note is suggesting the LXX was helpful in arriving at their translation. I get that the MT is difficult, but I’m not sure what Hebrew they are positing (“medieval Hebrew MSS” would be informative) or how that relates to the LXX.
 
Thanks!
Edited by Susan
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Hey Susan,

 

  Not my field I'm afraid, so take the following with the requisite bag of salt.

 

  I believe the direct answer to your question is yes, it does make sense for the LXX to inform an emendation of the MT. I believe the theory is that the LXX attests a Hebrew text no longer available to us, or if it is present anywhere we cannot point at it and say "this is it". Some LXX translations at odds with the MT text therefore could be attributed to variant Hebrew readings.

 

  Now, for that little paragraph I will need several pages of footnotes and qualifiers. I don't believe for example, that the LXX itself was translated from a single Hebrew document nor in one go. Thus my use of the term "Hebrew text" above in "attests a Hebrew text" needs to be understood to mean a body of texts.

 

Thx

D

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Thanks, Daniel. On that topic, I’ve just started reading “The text-critical use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research” by E. Tov, just released in its third edition. Seems fascinating to me. Perhaps I’ll have something more intelligent to say after I finish it. 

 

In the meantime, I’m just having trouble figuring out how this particular LXX text (unless there’s a textual issue in the LXX that I’m not aware of), informs this particular emendation of the Hebrew, since the LXX doesn’t actually say what the NET is proposing the Hebrew “really” says/said (i.e. something that could be translated “he [God] makes it [the valley] [into] a spring.”).  If that makes any sense. 

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Thanks, Daniel. On that topic, I’ve just started reading “The text-critical use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research” by E. Tov, just released in its third edition. Seems fascinating to me. Perhaps I’ll have something more intelligent to say after I finish it.

Sounds like a good Module Request that one.

 

Thx

D

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In the meantime, I’m just having trouble figuring out how this particular LXX text (unless there’s a textual issue in the LXX that I’m not aware of), informs this particular emendation of the Hebrew, since the LXX doesn’t actually say what the NET is proposing the Hebrew “really” says/said (i.e. something that could be translated “he [God] makes it [the valley] [into] a spring.”).  If that makes any sense. 

 

I wanted to check the case again before responding to you here. The full quote from the NET Note 12 is (repeated here for convenience) :

 

12    tc The MT reads “a spring they make it,” but this makes little sense. Many medieval Hebrew MSS, as well as the LXX, understand God to be the subject and the valley to be the object, “he [God] makes it [the valley] [into] a spring.”

 

Perhaps one might read this to indicate that the decision was driven by the medieval Hebrew MSS and that the LXX is merely more supporting evidence. If one was to take the LXX as primary that would appear odd given the "a spring" translation. So yes I see your point and I'm afraid I cannot do any better at this point.

 

Thx

D

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I'm not understanding the NET note either.

 

The WBC commentary does have a text note here:

 

 

7.b Lit, “they make it a spring.” REB has, “the LORD fills it with springs,” a free translation of what is assumed to be the meaning. NJV provides another approach: “regarding it as a place of springs, as if the early rain had covered it with blessing.”

 

Not sure if that helps....

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Does anybody know what “medieval manuscripts” they might be referring to? I think that would require a different “consonantal" text (dropping the waw of the shureq; not really consonantal, I realize) to make the verb singular.

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I guess they just mean that the subject/object relationship is taken from the LXX (and, I suppose, the singular number for both, contra the plural MT verb).

 

Just looked at this again--yes, I think this is exactly what the NET note must mean.
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Does anybody know what “medieval manuscripts” they might be referring to? I think that would require a different “consonantal" text (dropping the waw of the shureq; not really consonantal, I realize) to make the verb singular.

 

In the course where I first learned about Hebrew text criticism, I don't remember going any more in-depth than just learning it was a large group of manuscripts. I'll try to check my notes soon.

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OK, never mind that question as far as I’m concerned. See E. Tov TCHB p. 33ff (page numbers from second edition). I was thinking earlier medieval and hence was confused, but I gather we’re talking about ninth century onward, proto-Masoretic and Masoretic texts.  (Tov seems skeptical about the value of differences among these mss; see pp 37-39.) It would be interesting to know what mss these are that support the variant, from when, and what they say. This is getting pretty off-topic for the Greek-in-a-year forum, though.  :wacko:

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This is getting pretty off-topic for the Greek-in-a-year forum, though.  :wacko:

 

There are some who would say you can hardly understand the LXX without reference to the Hebrew text! :)

 

Good find on that Tov section--I'm looking back through my notes and that section in Tov offers as much as I can find or remember learning about "the MSS."

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There are some who would say you can hardly understand the LXX without reference to the Hebrew text! :)

 

To dwell on that for a moment ..... I think it’s Pietersma who likes to say that the  LXX is permitted to be “unintelligible” without consideration of its Vorlage. (Lest those of us more comfortable in Koine be tempted to neglect our Hebrew!)

 

Not only is it colloquial rather than literary, regularly literal and often hackneyed rather than dynamic and flowing, but there are a great many items that are unintelligible, including most of its transliterations.

 

 

(An observation he explains by the ‘interlinear’ paradigm - explained succinctly in the linked paper: “It hardly makes sense to blame the translators for incompetence in Greek, when their mode was dictated by social convention.”)  My impression is that Tov just thinks they were (at least sometimes) incompetent:

 

 

Translators were often ignorant of the meaning of the words in their Vorlage and this ignorance led to several conjectural renderings.  In a world without lexica, this situation should not cause much surprise. Only very rarely the translators were sophisticated enough to leave words untranslated. 

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When he says, "...the Greek text qua text has a dimension of unintelligibility" (i.e., if understood apart from Hebrew), I find it helpful to distinguish between intelligibility on the part of the translators vs. intelligibility on the part of readers. It's hard to argue with: "...the text as we have it cannot stand on its own feet." But for some readers who did not know Hebrew (or who did not have access to the source text), the text does, in fact, stand on its own feet. Whether it should or not is another question, but it's analogous to someone who doesn't read original languages being able to access the Bible only now in their own native tongue.

 

And surely the translators would have translated with such a scenario in mind?

So I like the "two-pronged approach" he describes, where the second prong is, "Second, because, in spite of its precise relationship to its parent text, the Greek text is nevertheless a new entity, one should treat it, as much as is warranted, as a unitary whole." I'm not sure, however, that the interlinear paradigm--even if it intends to--really always does this.

 

Do we know enough about the translators to be able to verify Tov's claim? It makes good sense to me, but it seems like Pietersma doesn't necessarily want to resort to that explanation.

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It’s certainly not always unintelligible, but, for instance, in this question I raised I’m still wondering if the answer is simply that the translator reproduced in Greek the gender of the Hebrew pronoun without accounting for the fact that the antecedent is actually a different gender in Greek. I’m not certain that’s what’s going on there, but there are probably many examples like that. If that is the case, I see that as an example of the Greek being “unintelligible.” It doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be understood from reading it in Greek alone, but there are occasions when it can’t be understood without reference to the Hebrew (whether theorized or real).

 

As for Tov.... I’m taking his word for it.  ^_^ I assume that impression came about in part as he reconstructed the entire (hypothetical) Hebrew Bible from the LXX text. (Did he really do that all himself?! Seems like a huge undertaking.)  I’ve just started the part of that book  where he discusses that process.  I’ll let you know if I learn anything of interest.

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