Subject: LXX and Nehemiah

From: ANDREW SMITH <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 14:28:39 -0500 (EST)

I am, more particularly, interested in the LXX text of Nehemiah (Nehemiah
being the largest surviving fragment of the Gothic Tanakh).

Would there be large variations in the LXX Vorlage of Nehemiah, from which
Wulfila worked? Or is the text of LXX Nehemiah free of major variations?

- Andrew C. Smith

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 14:11:11 -0700

>Wulfila worked? Or is the text of LXX Nehemiah free of major variations?

Without being an LXX expert, I can point out one major variation: Parts
of Nehemiah were translated twice!

I refer, of course, to 1 Esdras, which is primarily a translation of
Ezra, but which includes Neh. 7:73-8:12 (more or less) in Chapter 9.

Beyond that, I can only say that the Rahlfs apparatus for Ezra/Nehemiah
is unusually large, and contains an unusually high number of singular
readings of B. This seems to imply an "Old Greek" text found in B,
and a revised text in A etc. Chances are that the Gothic comes from
the A text. But that's based only on analogies from other books;
you would have to check the actual data to be certain.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

                            Robert B. Waltz
                         [email-masked]

Want more loudmouthed opinions about textual criticism?
Try my web page: http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn
(A very rough draft of part of the Encyclopedia of NT Textual Criticism)