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  • From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Psalm 14 'smoothed' to Romans 3 in Greek OT
  • Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 18:10:04 -0500

schmuel wrote:


http://fontes.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/psalm_14.htm

The Old Testament and the Ancient Near East -
Ralph W. Klein BHS notes a long insertion here
in LXX, which began in Romans 3:13-18, was then
added to LXX, and even found its way into two
medieval Hebrew manuscripts. Note also that the
DSS is a confirmation of Psalm 14 (and 13) as
in the Masoretic Text, omitting one verse in
the reconstruction while matching the Masoretic
Text verse by verse.

============= Harold, do you agree with
Professor Klein and BHS that this was a Greek
OT rigging 'smoothing' to match Psalms ?

HH: Klein does not use the words "rigging" or "smoothing," and I see no requirement for them. You need to realize that all sorts of things happened with ancient texts. People wrote in the margins of them, and often marginal notes were inserted into the main text by later copyists. This is perhaps because sometimes scribes committed omissions, which they later corrected by placing the omitted material in the margin. So scribes were used to regarding marginal material as possible main text substance. It could be that a scribe mistakenly did this with a marginal note of Psalm 14 that quoted Romans.

HH: I have not studied this issue in detail, though in the past I have noted the insertion. Delitzsch says that the addition is in Codex Alexandrinus, in the Greco-Latin Psalterium Veronese, and in the Syriac Psalterium Mediolanense. The words are in Apollinaris' paraphrase of the Psalms as a later interpolation. The Codex Vaticanus has them in the margin. Delitzsch says that Origen rightly excluded the LXX addition from his text of Psalm 14. Supposedly Jerome has a correct explanation o the matter in the preface to Book XVI of his commentary on Isaiah, but I do not have access to it right now.

Tyler Williams, Chair of the Religion & Theology Department and Assistant Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Taylor University College in Edmonton, Alberta, writes:
http://biblical-studies.ca/blog/2005/07/septuagint-psalm-superscriptions-part.html

The LXX is replete with examples of clearly secondary readings that have full textual support (The most famous is Psalm 14(13):3, which includes the text of Romans 3:13-18. This clearly was triggered by the fact that Paul quotes a chain of OT texts beginning with Ps 14(13):3 and then moving without comment to Ps 5.10, 139.4, 9,28; Isa 59:7, 8; Ps 35.2).

Or do you think that Paul was quoting a Greek
copy of Psalms verbatim ?

This example is so fundamental that I dropped
the dialog to share with the forum :-)

HH: Thanks for reminding of this passage, but it in no way supports the massive conclusions that Will Kinney wants to draw from it, leaning on the older view of John Owen.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard





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