Subject: Gothic OT Vorlage

From: ANDREW SMITH <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 05:57:53 -0500 (EST)

For a while, it was a hot topic, whether Wulfia had used the Greek or the
Latin NT as his Vorlage when preparing his Gothic NT. That debate seems to
have been settled - that he used the Greek, but was under the influence of
having read the Latin.

My question is: what did he use as an OT Vorlage? Here he had at least
three major options: Hebrew, LXX, or Latin. (It would be highly unlikely
that he would use a Targum). Has any work been done on this?

The Gothic scriptures have the value that, as early versions, they record
the state of the text at a time from which we don't always have texts in
the original language.

Andrew C. Smith

---

From: Vincent Broman <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 Jan 1997 16:38:58 -0000

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

[email-masked] asked:
> ...whether Wulfia had used the Greek or the
> Latin NT as his Vorlage when preparing his Gothic NT.
> ...what did he use as an OT Vorlage?

Streitberg in "Die Gotische Bibel" discusses the Vorlage of the OT
in detail.  It is clear that Wulfilas translated the NT from Greek and
Nehemiah from the LXX.  After some detailed analysis aided by a cleaning of the
Nehemiah MS, scholars conclude that he used a Lucianic MS of the LXX,
which is not surprising considering Wulfilas' roots in Constantinople.

The Latin influences in the Gothic version are, according to Streitberg
(and I think Friedrichsen too), due to copying of the version's MSS in
a Latin environment.  All the Gothic language materials aside from
Argenteus are connected to Latin documents, as palimpsests, bilinguals,
or as marginalia.  (the skeireins, too?).  And of course, by the
sixth century the Goths had moved to Italy.  Streitberg's reconstructed
Greek Vorlage reflects this theory in that he tries to remove the
Latin intrusions into the text that he detects, to make the text conform
better to the version's known Byzantine relatives.

Vincent Broman         Email: [email-masked],[email-masked]     =   o     
2224 33d St.             Phone: +1 619 284 3775                    =  _ /- _   
San Diego, CA  92104-5605  Starship: 32d42m22s N 117d14m13s W     =  (_)> (_)  
___ PGP protected mail preferred.  For public key finger [email-masked] ___

---

From: ANDREW SMITH <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 12:42:42 -0500 (EST)

On 28 Jan 1997, Vincent Broman wrote:

> All the Gothic language materials aside from
> or as marginalia.  (the skeireins, too?).

*********************

I thought the Skeireins had a Greek Vorlage. Didn't William Bennett, a
Gothic expert, argue for a Greek Vorlage for the Skeireins?