The Earliest Text of the Hebrew Bible: The Relationship between the Masoretic Text and theHebrew Base of the Septuagint Reconsidered by Adrian SchenkerReview by: Peter J. GentryJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 125, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 2005), pp. 295-297Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064345 .

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Reviews of Books 295

troops against Merodach-Baladan (no. 22). Reports from Borsippa (no. 63) and Tublias (nos. 150-52)

also ask for military reinforcements; the "temple-enterers" of Nemed-Laguda also ask that their city's

privileges be restored, and a temple official from Dilbat asks for a job in the new administration (no. 86).

Among the letters from Sargon himself is the well-known command that his correspondent write in

Akkadian and not in Aramaic (no. 2).

Assigning letters to the reign of Sennacherib follows the same method described above, in this case

made more difficult by the fact that there are no known letters naming Sennacherib as addressee. More

over, Dietrich points out that Sargon's scribes continued under Sennacherib and therefore the letters are

not formally different. Nevertheless, he is able to define two groups of letters that offer a basis for dis

tinguishing letters addressed to Sennacherib from those addressed to Sargon: 1) letters that refer to the

father-son relationship, and 2) letters that refer to an event known to have occurred during Sennach

erib's reign. These texts provide the linguistic and prosopographic markers that enable him to identify

sixty-five letters as belonging to the correspondence of Sennacherib. (Fifteen fragments might belong to either king.)

A group of six letters from Bel-ibni (nos. 52-57) is a source of some controversy, and it is easy to

see why. Dietrich argues that they are, indeed, from Sennacherib's viceroy of that name who held office

in Babylon from 703 to 700. Others (J. A. Brinkman is cited) assign these letters to some other Bel-ibni.

Three of the letters (nos. 52-54) are virtually identical appeals to the king, the chief eunuch, and another

royal official; they protest the sender's innocence of any libelous claims made against him and express

his fervent desire to serve the king. The other three letters from Bel-ibni (nos. 55-57) are reports on the

whereabouts of Merodach-Baladan. One of them (no. 55) states that the land is well and the guard is

strong and that Merodach-Baladan is in Babylon; if that is so, can the vice-regal Bel-ibni also be in

Babylon? Nos. 56 and 57 also mention Merodach-Baladan, once in connection with the town of Bab

bitqi, the site of a battle between Merodach-Baladan and Sargon in 710. Since the Chaldean was in

Babylon in both 710 and 703 and the letters are too broken to clarify which time is referred to, it is

difficult to ascertain whether it is Bel-ibni the viceroy who is writing. Dietrich has dated a group of letters from commanders in the Gambulu region to 704, at the be

ginning of Sennacherib's reign. These letters (nos. 106, 107, 109, 112, 113, 115-19) contain the phrase "news about the Yakinite: he is in Babylon" (t?mu sa m?r iakini ina B?bili su). Dietrich considers that

these reports refer to the renewed political activity of Merodach-Baladan after the death of Sargon in

705 and that they reflect alarm on the part of the commanders.

In fact, Merodach-Baladan, though offstage, is a major presence in this volume of letters. Dietrich

identifies the sender of no. 158, one Marduk-apla-iddina, as Merodach-Baladan, writing before Sargon had launched his campaign in 710 in order to defend his archers against accusations of sacrilege, i.e.,

of having shot arrows at the temple wall at the time of his accession in 722. This identification is also

disputed; the letter has also been dated much later.

The English translation is a little uneven in places, but that is a minor consideration in this volume

in which Dietrich's painstaking detective work has offered a new way to categorize these letters.

Kathryn F. Kravitz

Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Earliest Text of the Hebrew Bible: The Relationship between the Masoretic Text and the Hebrew

Base of the Septuagint Reconsidered. Edited by Adrian Schenker. Septuagint and Cognate

Studies, vol. 52. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. Pp. xi + 153. $29.95 (paper).

This slender volume is a collection of seven essays by an international panel of leading scholars

in the fields of Septuagint / Textual Criticism: four are in English, two in French, and one in German.

The essays represent papers delivered at a panel organized by Professor Schenker on the topic for the

Eleventh Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies held August

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296 Journal of the American Oriental Society 125.2 (2005)

3-4, 2001 in Basel. Each essay is prefaced by a helpful abstract; indices are provided for authors and

passages cited.

A general essay by E. Tov surveys large-scale differences among the Septuagint (LXX), Masoretic

Text (MT), Syriac (S), Targums (T), and Latin Vulgate (V). Setting aside the differences between text

and versions due to lack of correspondence between source and target languages, errors in textual

transmission of a version, or variation that is purely translational, one must consider the real textual

variants that remain. Usually these are considered on a case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, a group of

textual variants may conform to an overall pattern, particularly large-scale differences such as major

pluses or minuses (depending on what is considered original) or arrangement of the material. If one

can observe a Tendenz in these large-scale differences, one may posit a history of different literary

editions in the transmission of a particular canonical book. Tov does not prejudice any particular

textual/versional source in the comparison. He argues that the LXX is the single most important source

for redactionally different material relevant to the literary analysis of the Bible, including all differences

exhibited by the Dead Sea Scrolls together. This is due to the idiosyncratic nature of the Hebrew manu

scripts used for the LXX translations, not shared by the manuscripts used in circles which embraced

MT, and the relatively early date (275-150 b.ce.) of the translation (p. 143). Moreover, Tov has reser

vations regarding the possibility of a Maccabean dating for details in MT (p. 144). While a brief survey

of large-scale differences must be limited in scope, it is surprising that on the difficult question of Jere

miah in the LXX he presents as the reigning theory only the view of his dissertation published in 1976

and does not footnote other research since that time. Some of that research disagrees with his own work.

This general overview would have been more helpfully placed at the beginning of the volume, to orient

the reader to the work as a whole, rather than at the end as a kind of conclusion.

Natalio Fern?ndez Marcos closely scrutinizes Greek and Hebrew texts of Judges. He concludes that

the Qumran fragments recently published, particularly 4QJudga, do not justify the view?as the editor

and others claim?that this text is an ancient piece of pre-Deuteronomistic redaction. Fern?ndez Marcos

shows that the hypothesis of a shorter text for Judges based upon 4QJudga is not supported by any other

witness; that the Old Greek of Judges is not typologically shorter than MT; and that consequently, there

is no sufficient textual evidence to postulate different editions or literary strata for the book of Judges.

His approach is cautious and judicious, and his thorough research is a model for scholars.

Adrian Schenker's essay is also a closely reasoned piece, investigating the relationship between

1 Kings 20 MT and 3 Reigns 21 LXX. Schenker argues that the protagonists of the liberation of

Samaria are not "the young warriors of the commanders of the provinces and the 7000 Israelites"

according to MT but rather a group of "young dancers" and only sixty warriors as found in the Sep

tuagint. He seeks to show that the parent text of the LXX is the original version and was revised in the

Hasmonean period to avoid the mention of naked dancing men. Analogous elimination of dancing men

is discovered in 2 Sam. 6 and 1 Kings 1:20. Although Schenker's work is careful and thorough, his

reasoning on the side of literary criticism is more persuasive than some of the arguments advanced on

the textual side. The problem is vexing indeed, since the Greek textual transmission of Kings is so com

plicated and no critical edition exists as yet. Between the Kaiys and Lucianic recensions, it is some

times impossible to recover the Old Greek. Schenker admits in cases that what is implicit in MT is

made explicit in the LXX. This could be a good sign that the LXX is secondary. He also too quickly

identifies Codex Vaticanus as witness to the original LXX. Nonetheless, he raises important issues that

need to be addressed.

Dietrich Bonier deals with the literary and textual relationship between two recensions of Ezra rep

resented by Ezra-Nehemiah in MT (= 2 Esdras LXX) and 1 Esdras in LXX. He claims that the parent

text behind 1 Esdras has priority and that this was later reworked to include the Nehemiah story in

chapters 1-7 and 9-13 of MT Neh. An entire series of small differences in text are seen not as indi

vidual scribal errors in the textual transmission but as belonging to an intentional revision of the Ezra

story to make it compatible with the following Nehemiah account. While B?hler seeks to show that

the collection of variants form part of a coherent series and betray a systematic enterprise, this brief

essay does not explore sufficiently possible explanations that could be proposed if the reverse theory

were true.

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Reviews of Books 297

Pierre-Maurice Bogaert follows E. Tov in the belief that LXX Jeremiah is based upon a Hebrew

parent which represents an earlier edition of the book than the reworked version offered by MT. This

essay develops ideas presented in carefully detailed research published in two earlier essays. Bogaert focuses here in particular on MT 38:28-39:15, 27:16-22, and 52. For the first and third passages, he

compares the Old Latin, LXX and MT, only the latter two are extant for the second. While the text of

the LXX is shorter than in MT, the text of the Old Latin is shorter still. He argues that the parent text

behind the Old Latin is most original and is expanded gradually, first in the LXX and then further in the MT version. The evidence is laid out in columns in a way which makes it easy for the reader to analyze,

and the commentary explores more fully than some not only how the evidence might support Bogaert's thesis but how it might explain the reverse hypothesis. This strengthens his excellent argumentation.

Nonetheless, the text of Jeremiah remains a major problem and is still awaiting definitive study. The essays of both Johan Lust and Olivier Munnich seek to advance our knowledge of early literary

history and textual transmission of Ezekiel and Daniel, respectively, based upon evidence from the 2nd/

3rd-century Papyrus 967. Lust's essay belongs to a series of articles and studies. Here he focuses on

12:26-28, 32:25-26, and 36:23b-38, all major "minuses" in p967 in relation to MT. He seeks to show

that the sections in MT not in the Septuagint Ezekiel are composed of materials found elsewhere in the

book and reveal a consistent Tendenz to downplay apocalyptic and eschatological features by historiciz

ing them. He then demonstrates that the same "minuses" and "transpositions" can be found in 7:1-11,

a section not extant in p967. By combining the evidence from p967 with literary analysis, Lust con

cludes that the parent text behind the LXX is an earlier edition of Ezekiel which has been modified in

the later edition of MT to downplay eschatological elements. While earlier assessments of p967 had

attributed the "minuses" to parablepsis, Lust refuted this in a 1981 publication which he briefly re

capitulates here. He notes a recent article in which D. I. Block prefers the parableptic interpretation and promises a response in a forthcoming Festschrift for Delobel. While Lust's essay presents a co

hesive argument, it does not sufficiently explore hypotheses that might demonstrate the reverse of his

own and this weakens the presentation. Munnich's essay is one of the longest and contains some very detailed and thorough work. He

assesses Papyrus 967 as well as the Hebrew/Aramaic fragments of Daniel from Qumran and focuses

on the relation between the LXX, Theodotion Version, and MT of Chapters 4 and 5. When the differ

ences between the witnesses are set forth, he argues that one can observe a pattern and Tendenz where

an earlier edition has been slightly modified by additions and rearrangement to enhance the figure of

Daniel. The LXX version to which p967 provides significant new attestation represents the earliest

version, the parent text of Theodotion's version a second stage, and MT the third and final stage in

this process of literary reshaping of the text. Munnich provides cogent evidence to identify the "seams"

where editorial material has been added (e.g., 4:2 and 7) and explores to a greater degree than some

of the other contributors the value of alternative hypotheses. While literary criticism is more subjective than textual criticism, Munnich offers very careful and cogent work that will require the same to be

fairly evaluated.

The importance of this volume is inversely proportional to its size. While readers will find some

essays more convincing than others, all are of high quality and represent a new level of combining lit

erary and textual criticism to identify canonical, literary, and textual transmission history in the period 300 b.ce. to 100 c.e. These Probeschriften should provoke doctoral students to identify and undertake

the Benedictine tasks necessary in each book to provide definitive answers to our most vexing questions in the early history of the bible. The Septuagint certainly remains the most important early witness and

the trickiest to assess and evaluate. We are all indebted to Professor Schenker and his collaborators

for a volume that brings these issues into clearer focus. Although some typographical errors were dis

covered by this reviewer, in general they are few and the volume is well produced, considering the

difficulties inherent in presenting the evidence from the ancient versions.

Peter J. Gentry

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

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