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Formation of Canonical Texts:The Question of the “Original” Text of the Old Testament
OT 5202 – Old Testament Text and InterpretationDr. August KonkelRick Wadholm Jr.Box 1182 November 22, 2010
The Question of the Original Text
The question of the “original” text of the books of the Old Testament is a question that cannot beanswered easily, nor should it be. It is a question that has a long history and one that requires amultifaceted answer. “The formulation of the original text is complicated by the assumption thatin some books the authoritative edition such as known from MT was preceded by earlier literaryeditions, each of which was accepted as authoritative by subsequent generations.”
Questions of communities of faith and authority in the light of various histories and localities are key toanswering the question of the “original” text. As such, there will be several brief case studiesoffered in order to better grapple with the question of the “original” text of at least several of the books of the Old Testament and thus perhaps to provide a slightly better perspective on the wider Old Testament as a whole.
These four case studies are each taken from a different portion of theOld Testament—the Torah (Deuteronomy 32), the Former Prophets (1 Samuel 1 and 11), theLatter Prophets (Jeremiah 25), and the Writings (Daniel 4)
—in order to better encompass someof the range of the Old Testament and to test the very boundaries of just how the original might be conceived in various settings.
Following the case studies will be a brief discussion of thetexts used as canon, followed by a personal appraisal of the original text of the Old Testament inlight of the foregoing case studies.
1Emanuel Tov,
Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), 177.2“All the textual witnesses—except for those that reflect an early literary stage of the book—developed from thefinal authoritative copy which it is the object of textual criticism to reconstruct, even if only in isolated details”,Ibid.3The origins of a text like Deuteronomy 32 are well beyond the range of this paper (as are even the other texts as“brief” as they are) and so even within the selected passages only a very small sampling of one or two issues can be analyzed and even then it must be only cursory (so the specific passages will actually only cover Deuteronomy 32:8; 1 Samuel 1:22; 11:1; Jeremiah 25:1-13; and Daniel 4:4, 6-10). Another issue that will isdiscussed throughout this paper in the footnotes is the use/non-use of the variants within the texts and footnotesof the following English translations as testimony to various faith communities and the tension of a commontext and the “original” text: ESV, NAB, NET, NIV (1984, 2011), NLT, NJB, and NRSV.4Also, the issue of generic genre covered by Deuteronomy 32 is poetic with portions of Jeremiah 25 and the semi- poetic Daniel 4. The two portions from First Samuel are narrative with most of Daniel 4 as well. WhileJeremiah 25 has been written as prophetic oracle. This offers a fairly wide spectrum of genres though certainlynot all and these are only broad categories not specifically delineated on purpose for the sake of the brevity of this paper and to simply engender some sense of the scope of the issues involved.
Deuteronomy 32
The Song of Moses offers an insight into what many believe to be one of the earliest literary pieces of the Old Testament. It also offers interesting tidbits in particular because of the finds of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their relation to the LXX in contrast to the text as it has been preservedin the MT as the “original” Song of Moses. There are actually far too many textual issues to dealwith in this extensive “song” and so only the following verse will be analyzed (vs.8):
םדָא ינֵבְ ודירִפְהַבְ םוג ןוילְעֶ לחֵנְהַבְ
֑ ֣ ֖ ֔ ֙ ֤
רַסְמִלְ םיִעַ תלֹֻגְ צֵיַ
֖ ֔ ֣ ֙
לֵֽרָשְ ינֵבְ
֥
“When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance / When He divided it among the sons of man / He set the boundaries of the peoples / According to the number
of the sons of Israel
.”
The point of particular interest in this passage are the very last two words in the Hebrew (which Ihave boldfaced in my translation). Most manuscripts of the LXX (=Aquila) read
ἀγγέλωνθεοῦ
“angels of God” (LXX
848 106c
read
υίϖν
θεοῦ
“sons of God”
) and a fragment from Qumran(4QDeut
j
) reads
ל ינבםיה
“sons of God.”
The issue at stake here seems to be the awkward juxtaposing of
םדָא
֑
(man) and
לֵֽרָשְ
(Israel) in the Masoretic text (followed by the SamaritanPentateuch, Targumim, Syriac and Vulgate) which would not actually make for the poetic formthat
לֵ
(God) (or another form of the divine name) would in place
לֵֽרָשְ
which only requiresthe deletion/addition of
רשי
.
It seems likely that theologically both the LXX and the MT havealtered the "original" text (albeit for slightly differing reasons—see footnote six) in order to try to
5My own translation.6According to a textual note in the NET Bible at Deuteronomy 32:8, “Sons of God is undoubtedly the originalreading; the MT and LXX have each interpreted it differently. MT assumes that the expression “sons of God”refers to Israel (cf. Hos. 1:10), while LXX has assumed that the phrase refers to the angelic heavenly assembly(Pss 29:1; 89:6; cf. as well Ps 82). The phrase is also attested in Ugaritic, where it refers to the high god El'sdivine assembly. According to the latter view, which is reflected in the translation, the Lord delegated jurisdiction over the nations to his angelic host (cf. Dan. 10:13–21), while reserving for himself Israel, over whom he rules directly. For a defense of the view taken here, see M. S. Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sonsof God,”
BSac
158 (2001): 52-74.”7Technically, it is proposed (and far more likely) that
םיל ינב
(as noted in the emendation suggested by BHS) or
ל ינבםיה
(as in 4QDeut
j
) and not
ל ינב
was the original reading as this would have fill out the poeticstructure of each portion of the quatrain the most effectively.
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