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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Septuagint vs. Masoretes/75 vs. 70: How Many Hebrews Did Jacob Lead into Egypt?
  • Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:37:58 EST


R. Brian Roberts:

You wrote: “With all due respect, I think you're overthinking things, and
introducing an overly-complex Vorlage-esque "3rd solution" when either the
first
or the
second option works better. It's clear that, of the two (Masoretic or LXX)
that you prefer the LXX. As do I. Why not then let it stand on its own? Why
are you forcing a third solution?”

A. Although I slightly prefer the Septuagint to the Masoretic text regarding
chapter 46 of Genesis, nevertheless the Septuagint has major problems:

(1) The Septuagint arbitrarily drops the name “Huppim”, which is in the
Masoretic text as one of Benjamin’s named descendants.

(2) The Septuagint thus has 18 as the interior subtotal of Rachel’s
descendants. But that number should properly be 19. The number 19 is
consistently an
awkward, inauspicious number throughout the Patriarchal narratives. Though
Rachel is Jacob’s favorite wife, and Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph
is
Jacob’s most talented son, and Joseph is Jacob’s only heroic son,
nevertheless Joseph gets passed over in favor of Jacob naming a son by main
wife #1 Leah
to be the leader of the next generation of the new monotheists: Judah. Note
that (both in the Septuagint and the Masoretic text) Jacob is included in the
count of Leah’s 33 “descendants”. So chapter 46 of Genesis neatly
foreshadows that later, in chapter 49 of Genesis, it will be a son of Leah
(namely
Judah) who is the grand prize winner. 33 is a good number, featuring two
auspicious 3’s. The number of Rachel’s descendants should, by contrast, be a
suitably inauspicious number: 19. Each of Ishmael, Dinah and Joseph was age
19 “
years” (that is, 19 “years” in terms of 6-month “years”, being age 9½ regular
years), when he or she, as a nar/boy (with Dinah as well being called a
nar/boy, not a girl) is involuntarily separated from his or her father’s
family. If
we add back the deleted name “Huppim”, while otherwise going with the
Septuagint’s listing of names, we’re right where we should be, in terms of
numerical
symbolism.

(3) The Septuagint adds the awkward gloss “with Joseph” to Genesis 46: 27,
words which were probably not in the original text. The Masoretic text has
no
such words, and such words seem to be an awkward gloss. That error is part
and parcel of what I see as being the Septuagint’s numerical error, as the
Septuagint feels duty bound to add in all of Joseph’s family, getting to a
total
of 75 (vs. the 70 in the Masoretic text), with there now being no basis for
limiting the number of Joseph’s family that is counted here.

(4) We should expect to see the number 70 in chapter 46 of Genesis, a number
highlighted by the Masoretic text, but lost in the Septuagint. The first
sentence of the Patriarchal narratives (Genesis 11: 46) tells us that Terakh
was
age 70 “years” when he sired Abraham. The number 70 is uniquely associated
with Egypt, as the Egyptian New Year began 70 days after the temporary
disappearance from the Egyptian sky of Sirius, the brightest star, and a
pharaoh’s
mummification and burial rites had to be completed within 70 days. The first
sentence in the Patriarchal narratives sets forth the number 70, which deftly
foreshadows that Genesis will end in Egypt, the country associated with the
number 70. And it should also, per the Masoretic text, foreshadow that Jacob
will
lead 70 Hebrews into Egypt. This number 70/Egypt analysis is then nicely
consummated when the last chapter of Genesis reports that the Egyptians
mourned
Jacob’s death in Egypt for 70 days. Genesis 50: 3

I know that modern people do not like numerical symbolism. But like it or
not, the Patriarchal narratives are filled with numerical symbolism. The
number
70 is an obvious symbolic number in the Patriarchal narratives, whereas the
number 19 is a hidden symbolic number. These numbers are important.

Despite listing above what I perceive to be the manifold shortcomings of the
Septuagint as to chapter 46 of Genesis, you are nevertheless right that I see
the Septuagint as being better, on balance, than the Masoretic text here.

B. A satisfactory solution of this age-old problem needs, in my opinion, to
explain not only where, but why, either the Masoretic text editor, or the
Septuagint editor, or (in my opinion) both, went wrong. Other than chapter
46 of
Genesis, there are amazingly few differences between the Septuagint and the
Masoretic text as to the Patriarchal narratives.

Here is a brief overview of what I will explain in subsequent posts. The
Septuagint editor saw 66 people and 9 people in the original text, and
erroneously thought that those two numbers should be added to produce 75. So
the
original 70 that was in the text was changed to 75. That seemingly small
“correction
” then required the Septuagint editor to make numerous conforming changes,
one of the most important of which was to drop the name “Huppim” as one of
Benjamin’s descendants, as we shall see. The Masoretic editor reacted to the
same
perceived numerical problem in the opposite way. He changed the 9 to 2, so
that 66 + 2 = 68. Then adding Joseph and Jacob gives the right total number:

70. But he had 75 actual names staring him in the face, so he dropped one
entire sentence: the sentence in the Septuagint that sets forth 5 named
descendants of Manasseh and Ephraim. (That dropped sentence may have gone
into some
kind of a footnote or appendix or the margin or something like that
originally,
but later it got lost completely.)

In my view, each editor changed the text of chapter 46 of Genesis in order to
avoid a perceived mathematical error. But as we shall see, there in fact was
no mathematical error. The original text, in my view, set forth 75 names
(similar to the 74 names set forth in the Septuagint, but also having
Huppim),
but then went on to say that precisely 70 Hebrews are treated as coming into
Egypt with Jacob. That number 70 was important.

You see, the original author of the Patriarchal narratives was smarter than
the editors of the Septuagint and the Masoretic text. The original author
“had
his cake and ate it too”, as to the numbers in chapter 46 of Genesis. The
original author listed 75 names, thereby deftly matching Abraham’s stated age
when Abraham first got to Canaan after leaving Harran: age 75 “years”.
Genesis 12: 4 But a more important number than that in this connection was
the
number 70, for the reasons set forth above (namely that the number 70 is
associated with Egypt). So the original author of the Patriarchal
narratives, after
setting forth 75 names of Jacob and Jacob’s blood descendants, and indirectly
referring to 2 additional unnamed younger sons of Joseph, stated that Jacob
should be treated as bringing precisely 70 Hebrews into Egypt. The
difference
between 75 and 70 has to do with which members of Joseph’s family are
treated,
for purposes of chapter 46, as coming into Egypt with Jacob, as we will see.

In my view, numerical symbolism is one key clue to figuring this whole thing
out. 70 is the “Egyptian” number. It should be there when Jacob leads all
the Hebrews into Egypt. By contrast, 19 is an inauspicious number. It
should
be there for Rachel’s descendants when Jacob leads all the Hebrews into
Egypt,
foreshadowing that it will not be a descendant of Rachel (namely heroic,
favorite son Joseph) who will get the grand prize of being named by Jacob, in
Egypt, to be the leader of the next generation of the new monotheists. In my
humble opinion, we ignore this numerical symbolism at our peril.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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