Subject: Septuagint apparatus

From: Mark and Beth LaRocca-Pitts <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 12:17:44 EST

First I want to thank those who answered my question on pronouns at
Qumran. I have since acquired Qimron & Kutscher and many other questions
have been answered.

I know have two other questions: 1) For the LXX of Isaiah I am using the
one edited by Joseph Ziegler (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967).
In his alphabet like apparatus for the LXX (not the Hexapla-apparat) he
uses a symbol, that for the life of, I cannot find anywhere in his
introduction. The symbol is a small circle with a dot in its center. (It
sometimes appears without the dot also.) It first appears with Isa 1:4
and on almost every page after. What does this symbol mean?

2) Could someone please recommend a good reference &/or grammer for the
Peshitta version of the Syriac OT, esp. using the Estangela script (Is
that redundant?). I am using the version published by Brill (1987).

Thank you in advance,
Mark.
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 16:56:48 -0500

>and on almost every page after. What does this symbol mean?

_________________________

In the apparatus of Ziegler's LXX Isaiah edition the circle with a dot in
its center is the equivalent of an exclamation mark, to mark important or
rare/unusual attestations; see p.112 in the Einleitung if you're using the
1967 edition.

Regarding the pronoun suffixes at Qumran, they are exactly that--AT Qumran.
But not QUMRAN morphology. Tov's "Qumran practice" of orth., morph.,
scribal practices, etc. is nuanced, but the simplified understanding (and
short quotes) is misleading.  The forms are found AT Qumran, but they're
not UNIQUE to Qumran; rather, reflective of general Jewish practice in the
late Second Temple Period (See Kutscher, *A History of the Hebrew
Language,* 1982, p.95).  A number of those longer suffixes can be found
(unusually) in the MT.  

Though there is evidence that a few biblical mss were copied at Qumran
(4QSam-c, for instance, was copied by the same hand as 1QS), I find little
evidence that the majority were copied there. Rather, I suspect they were
general Jewish mss simply brought by "Those entering the New Covenant" at
Qumran from wherever they came from (Jerusalem and beyond). 

Hope some of this helps.

Gene Ulrich