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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Re: 22nd Psalm & 40th Psalm

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Re: 22nd Psalm & 40th Psalm
  • Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 14:35:44 -0800

On 01/12/2003 14:17, Yigal Levin wrote:

As long as you ask, I found two differnt interpretations among "classical"
Jewish commentators, all of course based on the MT k)ry "like a lion": most
understand "like a lion [they bite] my hand and feet". Rashi even adds a
reference to Isaiah 38:13. On the other hand, Abraham Ibn-Ezra understands
the k)ryto be a part of the previous phrase: "a company of evildoers
encircles me LIKE A LION; my hands and feet [are bound so I can neither
fight nor escape]".

Thank you. But I was more interested in treatments of the textual evidence from Nahal Hever and from LXX and other ancient versions, which seems to give strong evidence that MT is corrupt here.

My wife Sharon, by the way suggested that we look into "kartu" instead of
"karu", from KRT, "to cut off" - "they cut off my hands and feet". Any
reactions?

This is another possible reconstruction. But if so this text must have been damaged very early, before LXX was translated as well as before Nahal Hever. The advantage of reconstructing an original KR'W is that it requires no emendation as the LXX Vorlage, for the translators could have understood this as from KRH "dig", and only a simple transposition makes it into the Nahal Hever text K'RW.

But then it would be even simpler to posit an original K'RW and a verb K'R whose meaning is entirely lost; everything else is then explicable and there is no need to hypothesise any accidental textual change apart from the W -> Y for which there is evidence. By Occam's razor, one unknown entity is simpler than two or three.

By the way, where does the NRSV "my hands and feet have shiveled" come from?

The translators' imaginations, perhaps?

Yigal




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Peter Kirk
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peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
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