Wevers, John William. Notes on the Greek Text of Leviticus. Society of
Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Studies, no. 44. Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1997. ISBN: 0-7885-0324-3. Pp. xxxix + 519. US $49.95
(cloth).
1. This volume is more a work on the technique of the scribe who translated
the LXX Leviticus than a text-critical treatise. As the author puts it, "I
have written these Notes to help serious students of the Pentateuch who want
to use the LXX text with some confidence, but who are themselves neither
specialists in LXX studies nor in Hellenistic Greek" (p. xxvi). He goes on
to say that "The Notes deal principally with the work of the translator,
i.e. they are concerned with how the translator, the original LXX,
interpreted the text" (p. xxvii). In this endeavor, the notes succeed
admirably. It is also hard to overstate one of his main premises about the
Greek translator, and about the LXX translation in general:
One should not automatically presuppose a different parent text
when differences between the Greek and the Hebrew obtain; rather
one should first seek for and pursue other explanations. It is
only through such details that a picture of the attitudes, the
theological prejudices, as well as of the cultural environment of
these Jewish translators can emerge [p. xxxii].
Sound advice indeed.
2. The question of how the LXX translators did their work, and how "literal"
their translations were, is an ongoing topic in LXX studies. Wevers' book is
designed to contribute to this topic by going verse by verse, line by line
and sometimes word by word through the Greek text of Leviticus (as
represented in the Göttingen Septuagint) to examine how and why the
translator interpreted the Hebrew text before him. A few examples, taken
from Lev 16 regarding the Day of Atonement, will serve to illustrate his
method.
3. Regarding expansions by the translator, Wevers says:
16:1 Understandably the Lord only speaks to Moses, since he is
told to speak in turn to Aaron. The time of speaking is given as
"after the two sons of Aaron died e)n tw|= prosa/gein
au)tou\s pu=r a)llo/trion before the Lord kai\
e)teleu/thsan." Though the final clause is paratactic, it
obviously must show result; after all, the text had already said
that they had died. MT differs in prepositional structure. It
simply has bqrbtM "when they approached."... The
translator found their mere approach an incomplete and unclear
statement, and gave the full explanation.
4. Regarding unusual renderings of even more unusual Hebrew expressions (at
16:8), Wevers notes:
The designations for the two kids concern their disposition. The
Hebrew word (z)zl has been variously interpreted, but
is most commonly thought to be a proper name, paralleled by, but
over against, yhwh. It is then taken to be the name of
a desert demon. The translator in my opinion did not know what it
meant, but from the ritual it was clear that this kid was sent
away into the desert; see v. 10. And so he contextualized it by a
neologism, an adjectival apopompaiw "the one sent off."
5. Wevers' sensitivity to shades of meaning that were likely in the
translator's mind is one of the real strengths of the book (at 16:13):
...the (nN "cloud" is here not translated by the usual
nefe/lh (75 times in OT), but by a)tmi/s.
This equivalence only occurs elsewhere at Ezek 8:11, where it is
used of seventy elders, each with a censer in his hand, standing
before the idols depicted on the wall, and h( a)tmi\s tou=
qumia/matos a)ne/bainen. I suspect that the translator
intentionally used the Lev phrase to stress the idolatrous
parallel to the day of atonement ritual. An a)tmi/s is
hardly a cloud; it is at best a mist or a vapour, and it might
cover the propitiatory, but hardly hide it from the priestly view.
The LXX translator knew (nN to be a nefe/lh,
since he had used it in v. 2, where the "cloud" was the context in
which the Lord revealed himself. But here the context is not one
of divine self-revelation, but one of atonement through the
atonement ritual. It is then not a nefe/lh of incense,
but an a)tmi/s. This vaporous mist will cover the
propitiatory....
6. A good example of a place where we need not presuppose a different parent
Hebrew text is 16:15:
The first clause in LXX has amplified MT by adding e)/nanti
kuri/ou, and hex has placed it under the obelus to indicate
its absence in MT. Only at 4:4 is the priestly slaughter said to
occur "before the Lord." The phrase is, however, exceedingly
common throughout Lev, and need not presuppose an actual parent
text with lpny yhwh. That priestly slaughter of the sin
offering was done in the Lord's presence is implicit; the gloss
simply makes it explicit.
7. A collection of "Notes" will necessarily be less than a full treatment of
many matters; however, at times I found Wevers' comments a little too brief,
occasionally just brief enough to be confusing. For example, the comment at
1:2 begins:
Moses is ordered to speak to the Israelites and say to them. This
pattern of "speak to ... and say to them" occurs ten times in the
book. On occasion (five times) le/gwn is substituted
for the second clause, but the two are, however, never combined.
The two what? Another example appears at 2:8:
MT begins with a second person verb, whb)t, but in v.b
changes to third person whqrybh ... hgy#h.
LXX levels to third person, using prosoi/sei "present,"
an equation which occurs 12 times in the book; it is used more
commonly for hqryb. Actually whb)t may well
be a paleographically inspired error due to its being followed by
)t. A 4Q text reading whby) is probably
original. F Byz correct to second person, prosoiseis.
More explanation is necessary here to clarify these comments.
8. The nature of the translator's (Wevers refers to him throughout as "Lev")
work is sometimes under- or overstated, as well. On p. ix he says:
As a translation, Lev is more of an isolate type of translation
than a contextual one. A purely "isolate" translation would simply
be a word for word set of equivalences for Hebrew lexemes in the
Greek with little regard for the context in which such were used.
Terms such as "isolate" and "contextual" are not used in an
absolute sense; rather one can say that, compared to Gen and Exod,
Lev is much more isolate than contextual in character.
This is well and good, and reasonably informative; however, on p. xiv he
then says, "That the Alexandrian did not woodenly translate his text
word-for-word without regard for the context is fully clear; he approached
his text in rational fashion quite aware of the context in which a passage
stood." It seems that both statements might be a bit too general; as it
stands they appear contradictory.
9. Textual matters are dealt with in a fairly cursory manner:
The Notes do not detail reasons for choosing the readings of Lev
in favor of variant readings, except where I now consider the Lev
reading as secondary. Such arguments concerning the originality of
the text are fully discussed in my THGL Chapter 4 (The Critical
Text [Lev]), and such matters are all referred to in footnotes
where the relevant page of THGL is given [p. xxxi].
THGL refers to his Text History of the Greek Leviticus (Göttingen, 1986),
which is his full treatise on textual matters. For this reason, readers of
TC may find that they need to read that volume alongside this one. This
volume does, though, include a short appendix of passages where he disagrees
with the printed edition of the Göttingen Septuagint (which he edited).
10. This book is a useful and significant exegetical tool. It abounds with
pertinent information such as this: "In ch. 11 the word myM is
sometimes rendered by the singular and sometimes by the plural. The
translator is, however, making an important distinction. Whenever the word
refers to water as the home of aquatic life he uses the plural
u(/data; otherwise the singular u(/dwr occurs
throughout" (p. xii). Its value as a primary text-critical tool is limited,
but textual criticism is a broad field. The understanding we may gain
through Wevers' efforts to discern Lev's methodology brings us a step closer
to the Hebrew text underlying the LXX, and hence a step closer to an
accurate reconstruction of the history of the biblical text in all its
various forms.
© TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 1997.
David L. Washburn
Prescott, AZ, USA