Today, I'm finalizing my ETS/SBL paper reviewing Biblia Hebraica Quinta Job (2024) and its use and citation of the Greek versions. For the most part, the editor, Robert Althann, conservatively follows Ziegler's Göttingen Iob (noting the few places where prior scholarship already corrected Ziegler). But in one place that I found, he decided to go his own way and suggested that Ziegler's reconstructed text is actually the variant, and the text in the apparatus should be considered the Old Greek.
The text in just about every Greek manuscript and daughter version reads στένων πεπόρευμαι ἄνευ φιμοῦ, ἕστηκα δὲ ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ κεκραγώς “groaning without restraint I walked about, and I stood in the assembly crying out.” The Hebrew reads “I go about darkened, but not by the sun (בְּלֹא חַמָּה); I stand in the assembly and cry for help.” Rashi and the Targum confirm the reading of MT. On the other hand, Vulgate, Peshitta, and Symmachus (ἀθυμῶν) read חַמָּה “the sun” as חֵמָה “without heat, anger.”
In short, Althann proposes that the original translation had ἄνευ θυμοῦ “without anger” but was corrupted to ἄνευ φιμοῦ. The only evidence for this reading is the insignificant catena manuscript (Ra 523), Iulian's commentary, and the Complutensian Polyglot (!). As I was reviewing the Polyglot, I couldn't help but notice that the Vulgate's (sine furore) “without anger” was also the text of the newly prepared interlinear Latin translation of the Greek, which must have been corrected to read ἄνευ θυμοῦ “without anger.” Given the evidence, it seems the editor of the Comp Pol corrected the Greek of the Seventy towards the Latin of the Vulgate.
It turns out, Ziegler had already concluded similarly about the Comp. Pol. here and in Job 38:30 in his Einleitung (p. 57), “In his revision according to M, the editor consulted the Vulgate in several places.” Although the Greek manuscripts for parts of the Comp. Pol. are unknown, in the case of Job at least, we know that Cardinal Ximenes used the manuscript Rahlfs 248 loaned to him by the Vatican which had ἄνευ φιμοῦ.
Thus, the editors of the Comp. Pol. did not simply print the text of their manuscript. They made corrections towards the Hebrew, probably via the Latin Vulgate as well as the many marginal readings of the Three Jewish revisers in Rahlfs 248. Althann's suggestion, based on Schleusner's own proposal, is probably to be rejected in light of this evidence. But I'm always happy to entertain and investigate new proposals like these, especially ones based on a plausible and known Hebrew source as
BHQ attempted to do in this case.
UPDATEBHQ followed Critique textuelle de l'Ancien Testament (vol. 5, p. 289) for this suggested correction to Ziegler's Iob. But CTAT does not engage Ziegler's Einleitung on the Complutensian Polyglot either.
