Karen H. Jobes. The Alpha-Text of Esther: Its Character and Relationship to
the Masoretic Text. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series, no.
153. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. ISBN: 0-7885-0202-6 (cloth);
0-7885-0203-4 (paper). Pp. xv+256+appendices and indices (unpaginated,
approx. 250 pp.). US $44.95/$29.95.
1. This volume represents Jobes' dissertation completed under the
supervision of MoisŽs Silva at Westminister Theological Seminary in
Philadelphia. It is a thorough investigation of the Alpha-Text (AT) of
Esther as it compares to both the Masoretic Text (MT) and the so-called
Septuagint (LXX) version.
2. In the first chapter Jobes employs the syntactical criteria developed by
Raymond Martin to analyze both the AT and LXX (Martin 1974). Jobes provides
a brief definition of the seventeen criteria and includes the results of her
investigation for each chapter and the six additions in an appendix. For AT
(minus the additions): 9 criteria indicate translation; 2 composition; 6 are
inconclusive. For LXX (minus the additions): 9 criteria favor translation; 5
composition; 3 are inconclusive. The results indicate that both are
translations. Jobes also argues that it is unlikely that AT would retain so
many features indicating its character as a translation if it also were a
recension of the LXX. However, since Jobes later argues that Martin's
criteria for distinguishing translation from composition Greek must be
employed with caution, there would seem to be little basis to make such a
judgment. Jobes also concludes that the six additions are not long enough to
provide enough data to assess their origin, though addition E appears to be
composed in Greek.
3. In addition to her analysis of the syntactical criteria in the AT and
LXX, Jobes offers valuable criticism of Martin's syntactical criteria. The
criteria themselves are based on the different frequencies of occurrence of
particular syntactic features (e.g., the frequency of de/) in
books that are known to be translations as opposed to those that are known
to be original compositions in Greek. However, the frequencies of occurrence
provided by Martin derive solely from the control texts that he has
selected. Since the syntactical features selected by Martin appear with
different frequencies among all texts, whether translations or compositions,
the values he has chosen to represent the range of usage of a syntactical
feature in a translation versus a composition are arbitrary. It is
questionable whether the criteria can distinguish between composition and
translation Greek or just different styles of Greek. Jobes offers two
additional criticisms of Martin's methodology. First, she demonstrates that
a large number of occurrences are required for some features because the
difference between composition Greek and translation Greek is very small.
Second, Jobes notes that it is difficult to employ Martin's methodology
because there are no means to assess which of the criteria are the most
important for distinguishing between composition and translation Greek.
4. Jobes is not content merely to point out the weaknesses of Martin's work.
For each of the last two criticisms she offers constructive solutions. For
the former she provides an equation to determine the minimum number of
occurrences of a criterion needed to assure that it can be applied to the
text in question. Second, in order to compare the results of each criterion
directly, Jobes employs descriptive statistics to normalize the ratios.
However, even with these welcome improvements Jobes maintains that Martin's
criteria should be used only with caution.
5. The second chapter is devoted to determining the similarities between AT
and MT. Jobes appropriately notes that one must distinguish between formal
agreement and semantic agreement, so she proposes assigning values on a
scale of 1-5 to describe how closely the texts agree: 1 indicates that the
Greek is basically the same as the Hebrew and 5 indicates it is completely
different. The depth of Jobes's analysis is assured by the fact that she
applies this scale of values to five separate criteria. She borrows her
categories from Tov's criteria of formal equivalence (Tov 1981: 54-60) and
examines lexical consistency, equivalence of morphemes, word order,
correspondence and linguistic adequacy. In order to facilitate this process
Jobes divides the texts of AT, MT, and LXX into small syntactic units
(2814), and she includes the parallel texts in an appendix. As an example of
her rating system Jobes states on p. 60:
For instance, in unit 1:11e [i.e., Est 1:11], the Hebrew reads
b.:keter and is translated by the AT with e)n tw=|
diadh/mati. The Greek AT unit includes the definite article
tw=| where there is no article in the Hebrew unit, but
otherwise the Greek unit is equivalent. . . . This comparison was
assigned 1's in the categories of consistency, equivalence, word
order and linguistic adequacy. The category of correspondence . .
. was assigned a value of 2 because the Greek has a definite
article where none is found in the Hebrew.
The use of a 2 to distinguish differences on the formal level is reasonable;
however, Jobes never offers examples to illustrate what distinguishes
ratings 3 through 5.
6. Jobes concludes that the overall agreement between AT and MT is low (28%
semantic agreement; 18% formal agreement), but this is due primarily to the
pluses and minuses in the AT. When one considers only the units that have
corresponding Hebrew and Greek (590 of 1803 or 33%), then the extent of
agreement is much higher (84% semantic agreement; 54% formal agreement).
These statistics compare favorably with the LXX (88% semantic agreement; 64%
formal agreement). Jobes includes tables and graphs that provide a
chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the agreement between AT and MT for each of
the five criteria as well as the overall totals.
7. The statistics provided in this chapter represent an enormous amount of
work and are extremely valuable for research into the texts of AT, LXX, and
MT. However, there are some details that detract from her presentation.
First, the appendix in which she provides the alignment of the texts is
welcome indeed, but she does not give the values she assigned to each of her
criteria for the syntactic units. This would have been very helpful in
understanding how she computed her statistics and for evaluating her
argument that in only 90 of the 590 cases where the Hebrew and Greek texts
correspond could one argue for a variant Vorlage (p. 73). Second, the
statistics for lexical consistency were based on an analysis of twenty verbs
and sixteen nouns that occur in the Hebrew. Though the LXX does exhibit a
trend to be more lexically diverse than AT for these words, the sample is
small and limited for the most part to common words. An analysis of rarer
words might have offered different results. Furthermore, she does not
provide references even for the words that she does analyze (pp. 86-94).
8. The third chapter examines the differences between AT and MT. Jobes
catalogues the various types of minuses, pluses, substitutions, and textual
differences that occur in AT, and she also provides a listing of references
for each type of difference. She then proceeds to tackle the question of the
redactional history of the book. Her discussion focuses on chapters 8-10.
Clines (1984) and Fox (1991) have argued that AT has no connection with MT
for chapters 8-10, but Jobes argues on the basis of similarities of content
and textual agreements that AT "translated a Hebrew text very similar to the
MT in chapters 8-10 but was subsequently revised almost beyond recognition"
(p. 134). The material omitted from AT exhibits a translation technique,
found also in ch. 2, in which AT minimizes Esther's role and shows less
interest in the origin and celebration of Purim (see pp. 131-137).
9. Chapter four compares AT to LXX. Jobes again provides tables and graphs
to depict the correspondence between AT and LXX and agrees with other
researchers that AT is not a recension of LXX. Her detailed analysis (pp.
162-193) of the six additions shows a considerable degree of difference
between AT and LXX (semantic agreement ranges from 47-76%; formal agreement
from 33-51%). Jobes concludes that AT preserves the older form of additions
A, B, C, E and F, but there was extensive secondary redaction to both AT and
the later LXX.
10. In chapter five Jobes interacts more directly with the research of Tov
(1982), Clines (1984), and Fox (1991). Contra Tov, who argues that AT is a
recension of LXX that was corrected toward a Hebrew midrashic rewriting of
Esther, Jobes concludes that the agreements between AT and LXX are
relatively few. She argues that there are many more places where one would
expect to find agreement where none exists. Therefore, it is more likely
that the agreements represent later corruption during textual transmission.
Tov also argues--based partially on Martin's conclusion that additions A, C,
D, and F are translations of Semitic sources--that the text of the canonical
sections and the additions of AT are one unit. However, Jobes' more thorough
analysis of the syntax in chapter 1 concludes that the composition of these
additions cannot be determined, while B and E were probably written in
Greek.
11. Clines argues that AT was a translation of a Vorlage different from MT
that ended at 8:17, while Fox contends that the original ending of the
Vorlage was Est 7:38. Jobes' research cited in paragraph 8 refutes these
conclusions.
12. Following a chapter that summarizes her conclusions is an excursus in
which Jobes compares AT to the Old Greek of Daniel. The reasons for this
comparison range from the frivolous (the Chigi manuscript happens to
preserve the minority texts of Esther and Daniel; both texts have additions)
to superficial similarities (Daniel 4-6 omits material from MT). I was also
disappointed by the fact that Jobes would venture to make this comparison
without acknowledging the fact that Walde has already argued that the
translators of 1 Esdras and Daniel OG were the same (Walde 1913). Regardless
of the reasons, Jobes attempts to sketch out some shared features of the two
versions. She begins with the conclusion of Wenthe that OG Daniel exhibits
greater lexical diversity than Th (Wenthe 1991). Of the twenty-four words
examined by Wenthe, nine are found in Esther, and both AT and LXX Esther are
more lexically diverse than OG Daniel. In fact, "A comparison of the
translation equivalents in OG Daniel to those in the Greek versions of
Esther shows no apparent pattern in common" (p. 239). In other words, this
analysis produces no evidence of a relationship between AT and OG Daniel.
Jobes continues this line of investigation by accepting Wenthe's assumption
that OG Daniel was produced by one translator (I do not concur; cf. McLay
1996: 214-216) and his analysis of the translation pattern of
mal:k.Ut and melek:. Since these terms are often
translated differently in chs. 4-6, Wenthe argues that the Vorlage was not
the same as MT. Jobes finds similar results for chapters 8-10 of AT, but she
does recognize that this is not evidence of any connection between AT and OG
Daniel. So, this line of argument essentially leads nowhere (pp. 239-242).
She then investigates fifteen other possible connections between AT and OG
Daniel. There are two that are noteworthy: doch\n mega/lhn
appears in both the proem of chapter 5 in OG Daniel and in Est 1:9 AT; both
employ po/lis to translate b.iyrfh.
13. In this same excursus Jobes also notes 5 differences between AT and OG
Daniel. In one case she cites information provided by S. Jeansonne
(Jeansonne 1988:118) about the argument of F. F. Bruce, who states that OG
Daniel indulges in a theological rendering in 9:6 (p. 247). This is curious
because Jeansonne actually argues against the point that Bruce attempted to
make! On the whole, I found this excursus lacking the depth of analysis that
characterizes the remainder of the book. It could well have been omitted.
14. One further criticism may be noted: I would have preferred detailed
interaction with, as well as references to, the secondary literature in
footnotes. Notwithstanding the relatively minor criticisms, I hope that this
review has brought to light the importance of this volume for anyone working
in the book of Esther, as well as its interest for those working in the
Septuagint.
© TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 1996.
Bibliography
Clines, David J. A. 1984. The Esther Scroll: the Story of the Story.
Sheffield: JSOT.
Fox, Michael V. 1991. The Redaction of the Books of Esther. Society of
Biblical Literature Monograph Series, no. 40. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
S. Pace Jeansonne. The Old Greek Translation of Daniel 7-12. Catholic
Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series, no. 19. Washington: Catholic Biblical
Association.
Martin, Raymond A. 1974. Syntactical Evidences of Semitic Sources in Greek
Documents. Septuagint and Cognate Studies, no. 3. Missoula, MT: Scholars
Press.
McLay, Tim 1996. The OG and Th Versions of Daniel. Society of Biblical
Literature Septuagint and Cognate Studies, no. 43. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Tov, Emanuel 1981. The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical
Research. Jerusalem Biblical Studies, no. 3. Jerusalem: Simor.
Tov, Emanuel 1982. "The 'Lucianic' Text of the Canonical and the Apocryphal
Sections of Esther: A Rewritten Biblical Book." Textus 10: 1-25.
Walde, Bernhard 1913. Die EsdrasbŸcher der Septuaginta: Ihr gegenseitiges
VerhŠltnis untersucht. Biblische Studien, vol. 18, pt. 4. Freiburg im
Breisgau: Herder.
Wenthe, D. O. 1991. "The Old Greek Translation of Daniel 1-6." Ph.D. diss.,
University of Notre Dame.
Tim McLay
Halifax, NS, Canada