John’s Bible Version in John 19:37?

See the update to this post below.
I continue my series of highlighting places where a NT author cites the Old Testament but does not use the Old Greek/Septuagint (see 2 Cor 11:3; 1 Cor 15:54). In addition, I would propose that the NT author in these cases probably does not give his own ad hoc rendering of the Hebrew, since there was a perfectly good revision of the older Greek translation at his disposal. My assumption, therefore, is that the NT author simply used and modified an already existing Greek translation of which he and his audience were aware. Here, I list the Hebrew, OG, and the readings of the Three for the part of Zechariah 12:10 that John quotes in 19:37 including some context:

Hebrew: וְהִבִּ֥יטוּ אֵלַ֖י אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁר־דָּקָ֑רוּ וְסָפְד֣וּ עָלָ֗יו
“and they will look to me whom they pierced and they shall mourn for him.”

Greek: καὶ ἐπιβλέψονται πρός με ἀνθ᾽ ὧν κατωρχήσαντο καὶ κόψονται ἐπ᾽ αὐτόν
“and they will look to me because they danced triumphantly, and they will mourn over him.”

John 19:37: καὶ πάλιν ἑτέρα γραφὴ λέγει· ὄψονται εἰς ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν 
“and again another scripture says, ‘They look at whom they pierced‘.”

Aquila: α’ σύν ᾧ ἐξεκέντησαν καὶ κόψονται αὐτόν
“[they will look to me(?)] whom they pierced, and will mourn for him.”

Theodotion: θ’ ...πρός με ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν καὶ κόψονται αὐτόν
“[they will look] to me whom they pierced, and they will mourn for him.”

Symmachus: σ’ ἔμπροσθεν ἐπεξεκέντησαν καὶ κόψονται αὐτόν
“[they will look to me(?)] before/in whose presence they pierced, and they will mourn for him.”

The OG’s κατορχεῖσθαι “to dance triumphantly” is a hapax legomenon in the Greek Old Testament’s corpus and probably resulted from reading a form of the verb רקד “to leap about, dance” Piel, which metathesized ד and ר due either to ד/ר confusion or exegesis.

The readings of the Three were originally incorporated into Origen’s Hexapla but come down to us via Ra 86 (image from DigiVatLib). John clearly depends on Theodotion’s version for his quotation of Zechariah 12:10, not the Old Greek. However, John has also modified it slightly by using a different preposition than Theodotion (but see the Syrohexapla for the Th fragment which could be retroverted as εἰς which would mean that Th’s version equal’s John’s form of the quotation in this respect). In any case, John has certainly not read with the Old Greek in this place but rather the revision of it.

The apostles (at least Paul, John, and Matthew) were aware of not only the older Greek version but also other forms of the Greek scriptures, for they cite and quote them too. What factors led to their choice? The Hebrew source? The texts at their disposal in any given situation? We don’t know. But what seems clear is that these Jewish followers of Jesus had not declared an exclusive preference for the older Greek version. At one point, they are quoting from the ‘LXX’ and at another point they are quoting from one of its revisions. We would do well to bear this phenomenon in mind as we continue to read the NT’s use of the OT and also how these matters develop in the second century and beyond.

---

UPDATE 12/8/2018

I’ve now had the chance to look at Syrohexapla (Syh fol. 112r) for the Theodotion reading in Zach 12:10 (ܒܗܘ), and no doubt, the translator rendered an equivalent for a Greek preposition before the relative pronoun ὅν. The beth is often used for εἰς in this tradition thus Ziegler’s εἰς in the second apparatus is probably correct.

In my mind, then, John removes πρός με (contextual to be sure) and modifies the verb from ἐπιβλέψονται to ὄψονται. But εἰς ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν seems to be the original reading of Theodotion and that would give three words of correspondence. Even Ra 86 agrees with John on the choice of the relative pronoun for two words of correspondence.

When compared with Aq, Sym, and OG, we see that not all come to the same rendering of the Hebrew which makes agreements between Th and John all the more interesting. Lastly, for the key word “pierce,” John had several lexical options in Greek but landed on Theodotion’s equivalent. It could be coincidence. But presuming that version is already around, I don’t think we need to argue along those lines in this case.