Symmachus and the Text of Job 24:25b

In preparation of my critical edition of the Hexaplaric fragments of Job 22-42 for the Hexapla Project, I am noticing again some of the gems among the texts of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion that Origen once assembled in full parallel columns but now come down to us mainly in fragmentary, marginal notes in Christian MSS. The text of Job 24:25b is such a text. Here are the relevant readings:

Hebrew Text: וְיָשֵׂם לְאַל מִלָּתִי׃

And (who) will make my word as not/nothing?

Theodotion (not Old Greek): καὶ θήσει εἰς οὐδὲν τὰ ῥήματά μου

and (who) will set my words as nothing?

Symmachus: καὶ τάξει τῷ θεῷ λόγον ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ

and (who) will deliver a speech to God on my behalf?

Unfortunately, we do not have the text of Symmachus for 25a, but it was probably close to the Old Greek and Hebrew, which is a question on the lips of Job asking, “Who is the one who says that I speak lies?” The Theodotion version (in lieu of the Old Greek) continues the question: “and who will set my words as nothing?” The wording of this line matches the Hebrew closely, except Theodotion must have read מלתי as a plural, not the singular of the later MT. According to this reading, Job appears to be asking who of his three friends will contradict him or show his word to be nothing or of no validity.

The Symmachus version reveals a different reading of the same consonantal text of MT. Symmachus read אל as אֵל “God,” not as later MT’s אַל “no, not.” Furthermore, Symmachus interpreted the final word in the Hebrew “my word” as a word on Job’s behalf (speech on behalf of me), not as a simple possessive pronominal suffix as the Hebrew would be normally construed and as Theodotion read it plainly. Symmachus has read the text differently. He appears to have understood Job’s question not as directed to his three friends but to someone else who could deliver a speech to God on his behalf.

At first blush, this seems like an odd reading. But when we remember that in the so-called witness passages (Job 9:32-35, Job 16:18-22, and Job 19:20-27) that Job has already perceived something of the role of the heavenly court introduced in chs. 1-2 and that his advocate is in heaven (“if not he, then who is it”), perhaps Symmachus read the text of Job 24:25b in light of this understanding. In the midst of the third speech cycle and at the end of Job’s speech, plausibly, Symmachus has read the Hebrew text as Job once again making an appeal to his heavenly advocate who can make his case to God. Of course, all of this reasoning probably indicates that this reading is secondary to the one in MT and Theodotion, but it is still interesting to consider from an exegetical point of view.

One more interesting piece of context comes from reception history. This reading of Symmachus is only preserved beside Job 24:25b in the margin of a relative few Christian manuscripts of the Job catenae, sometimes without an attribution to him. That means Christian scribes continued to find this reading of some exegetical value for this text. We can’t know for sure because I can’t find an explicit comment from a church father that uses this wording exactly (I haven’t attempted an exhaustive search), but perhaps it’s worth speculating that early Christian interpreters found a Christological reference in Symmachus’s version of Job 24:25b, for in it they found Job asking a question to a heavenly advocate who could make an appeal to God on his behalf.

List of Conjectures Accepted in Nestle Editions

Nestle 13th edition (1927)

Reading through a recently acquired Nestle 13th ed. I was surprised to find that the NA28 is not the first in this venerable edition’s line to use the diamond symbol. The current edition uses them, of course, to mark places where the editors couldn’t decide on the initial text.

In the 13th edition (and for some time beyond) it marks places where Erwin Nestle (son of Eberhard) thought that the majority principle used by his father had not led to the original text. In those cases, he marked his preferred reading with a diamond, explaining its use thus: “Some of these [places of textual difficulty], which must be considered original, are distinguished with the prefixed symbol ◆ in the apparatus, as Rom 5.1” (p. 12*).

A number of these diamond readings also happen to be conjectures and thanks to help from Jan Krans, I can present here a list of all the conjectures accepted by various Nestle editions. You can click on the link in parentheses to see more detail at the Amsterdam Database.

1. Matt 2:6 (link)
2. Matt 6:16 (link)
3. Matt 12:33 (link); according to us not a true conjecture
4. Matt 15:5 (link); actually only the omission of a iota subscript; 
5. Mark 7:11 (link; = cj15781)
6. Acts 7:38 (link)
7. Acts 16:12 (link)
8. Rom 13:3 (link; actually attested)
9. 1 Cor 2:4 (link)
10. 1 Cor 6:5 (link)
11. 1 Cor 14:38 (link)
12. 1 Cor 16:22 (link; just an editorial alternative)
13. 2 Cor 3:3 (link; actually attested)
14. 2 Cor 7:8 (link; also attested)
15. 2 Cor 8:12 (link; just an editorial alternative)
16. 1 Tim 4:3 (link)
17. 1 Tim 5:13 (link)
18. Rev 2:13 (link)

One of the reasons for noting this is because its easy to think that the conjectures printed at Acts 16.12 in NA27/28, 2 Pet 3.10 in NA28, and now Acts 13.33 in the ECM show a trend toward greater willingness to print a conjecture. But actually, these changes should be seen as a return to an earlier Nestle tendency and not an innovation or move away from it. In fact, based on the list here, the Nestle(-Aland) editions have grown more reticent to print conjectures since 1927 not less.

Maurice Robinson and Chris Keith on 284 and the PA

Over at the Jesus Blog, Chris Keith has posted comments from Maurice Robinson on 284 and the PA. More importantly, Chris Keith has christened him the the “Silver-Haired Assassin,” a perfectly fitting title in my view. Henceforth, I require all blog commentators to address Dr. Robinson by this title! Now, go read the Assassin’s blog post.

Here is the link to the page in 284 under discussion.

Plan to Review and Revise the New Revised Standard Version

News from the SBL annual report this week is that SBL is planning to oversee a review and revision of the NRSV translation. What really surprised me about this was how prominent textual criticism is in the explanation. From the report:

SBL to Provide a Review and Update to the New Revised Standard Version

At the 2017 SBL-AAR Annual Meeting, the National Council of Churches (NCC) announced an update of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), an English translation of the Bible owned and licensed by the NCC. This update will be managed by the Society for Biblical Literature, following a partnership approved by Council earlier in 2017. Scholars have produced a considerable amount of work in text criticism since 1989, the year the NRSV was published. The last three decades have provided significant new discoveries, including new manuscript witnesses, developments in textcritical methodology, and philological insights. A thirty-year review is not only necessary in the light of this scholarly work but will result in an English translation that is based, without exception, on the most up-to-date textual analysis. The update will focus on three areas:

• Text-Critical and Philological Advances: The primary focus of the thirty-year review is on new text-critical and philological considerations that affect the English translation. The philological review will draw upon the fruits of historical-critical scholarship that affect expressions in English. For the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, text-critical developments in the last thirty years have been especially significant. The publication of the Judean Desert biblical texts and fragments has revealed a number of readings that differ from the medieval Hebrew traditions in the Masoretic Text, which was the basis of the NRSV.
• Textual Notes: SBL’s initial review of the NRSV suggested that the current text-critical footnotes are neither complete nor consistent. There are cases when the translation silently adds words not conspicuously in the sources or does not indicate when a reading is not following the sources. To address this deficiency, reviewers will be asked to identify text-critical issues that should have been documented in the notes but were not.
• Style and Rendering: The translation philosophy of the NRSV will be maintained, including its overarching commitment to being “‘as literal as possible’ in adhering to the ancient texts and only ‘as free as necessary’ to make the meaning clear in graceful, understandable English.” That being said, when a reviewer judges a particular translation awkward, inaccurate, or difficult for general readers to understand, the reviewer may suggest a more elegant rendering.

The SBL editorial board includes Sidnie White Crawford (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Ronald Hendel (University of California-Berkeley), Michael W. Holmes (Bethel University), Robert S. Kawashima (University of Florida), Jennifer W. Knust (Boston University), Judith H. Newman (University of Toronto), and Eugene Ulrich (University of Notre Dame). In addition to the editorial board, more than fifty scholars will contribute to the review, which will be conducted over the next three years.

Participants will draw upon new tools developed after the NRSV was published, including The SBL Greek New Testament, edited by Michael W. Holmes (2010); SBL Press’s The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition, edited by Ronald Hendel (2015–); and the German Bible Society’s Biblia Hebraica Quinta (2004–), The Greek New Testament, Fifth Revised Edition (2014), and twenty-eighth edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece, as well as volumes from GBS’s Editio Critica Minor [sic] produced by the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung and based on recent New Testament methodological developments reflected in the INTF’s Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (see Tommy Wasserman and Peter J. Gurry, A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method [SBL Press, 2017]).

Non-enclitic indefinite τίς again

In THGNT the editors have accepted non-enclitic indefinite τίς in a number of instances. I’ve mentioned this type of indefinite here and its appearance in GNT has generated discussions here and here.

One case where we vary accentuation is Matthew 21:3:

καὶ ἐάν τις ὑμῖν εἴπῃ τί

In our edition τις is always enclitic after ἐάν, not that we ever observed that pattern until we’d finished editing. We also notice that the accented form is clause final, which might be a reason for greater prodosic prominence.

Now for some manuscripts. I start with 478 (C10). This is nice because it shows us the use of the grave for the indefinite. This is less common than the acute for the indefinite, but it shows that when Erasmus, Stephanus and others printed grave indefinites in their editions, they weren’t just making things up.

Vaticanus (03) is hard to read but I reckon the acute is faintly there for the second indefinite.

G (011) is beautifully clear with the second acute.

So is K (017).

115 has no acute.

560 does for the second.

As does 788, with a correction on εαν.

And 1424, with what I would count as an error on εαν.

What I would conclude from this (which is a pattern we typically found in editing) is that the accents in the more carefully accented manuscripts were reasonably consistent with each other as to which instances of indefinite τίς they accented. Therefore either they inherited a common accenting tradition or they had a common feel about the language and did it independently. Either way, that gives us access to an earlier form of the language. The fact that consistency on these matters can be found in manuscripts already in the 9th century points me to an earlier period.

The accentor of Vaticanus in particular is learned and, I believe, gives us a window into debates which simply do not survive in the epitomes of grammarians. Compare Herodian with B’s accentor’s treatment of the different cases of ιχθυς, οσφυς and οφρυς.

Origen’s knowledge of (multiple) manuscripts of Mark

It is often noted that Mark’s Gospel is not well represented among our early manuscripts of the Greek New Testament or in citations and comments in the Early Fathers (see e.g. Head, 2012).

So I was interested in reading through Origen’s Contra Celsum (as one does - actually for a reading group here in Oxford) to come to the discussion of Celsus’ accusation that the followers of Jesus were all wicked tax-collectors and sailors (Book 1, #62). Origen explains that of the twelve only Matthew was a tax collector. He then says (reading Chadwick’s ET): ‘I grant that the Leves who also followed Jesus was a tax-collector; but he was not of the number of the apostles, except according to one of the copies of the gospel according to Mark.’

I thought it was interesting to see that by the time he wrote Contra Celsum (late in his life according to Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. VI.36.2, post AD 245) Origen could note such a divergence in the manuscripts at Mark 3.18, and could know this variant reading which we know as existing only in Codex Bezae among Greek witnesses (Lebbaion is read in place of Thaddion in Codex Bezae and a good number of Old Latin witnesses). [With Donaldson’s main point, but against her question as to whether this might relate to Mark 2.14, I think this must relate to the passage which numbers the twelve apostles, i.e. Mark 3.18 (as also Koetschau’s notes in the GCS edition)]

When I got back to the office, I thought I should check the Greek text (generally this is a good policy - and ideally before opening one’s mouth in an Oxford seminar):

Ἔστω δὲ καὶ ὁ Λευὴς τελώνης ἀκολουθήσας τῷ Ἰησοῦ· ἀλλ᾿ οὔτι γε τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τῶν ἀποστόλων αὐτοῦ ἦν εἰ μὴ κατά τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων τοῦ κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγελίου.

Now it seems that Chadwick’s translation is quite faulty in its definiteness (‘according to one of the copies ...’) and we should think that Origen’s comment is that a reading which includes Levi within the number of the twelve is found ‘in some of the copies’. Even more interesting.

Bibliography

• A.M. Donaldson, Explicit References to New Testament Variant Readings among Greek and Latin Church Fathers (PhD; Notre Dame, 2009)
• P.M. Head,‘The Early Text of Mark’ in The Early Text of the New Testament (eds. Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger; Oxford: OUP, 2012), 108–120. 
• B.M. Metzger, ‘Explicit References in the Works of Origen to Variant Readings in New Testament Manuscripts’ in J.N. Birdsall and R.W. Thomson (eds.), Biblical and Patristic Essays in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey (Freiburg: Herder, 1967), 78–95. Reprinted in B.M. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian, New Testament Tools and Studies 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 88–103. [I couldn’t find my copy of this, but Donaldson notes that Metzger mentions this passage.]