Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>]

On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:20:29 -0700, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
> Arnaud:
> 
> Interesting question.
> 
> I don’t know about Vaticanus, but in checking the online version of LXX that
> is available for free at crosswire.org, I found that the first few chapters
> of 1 Chronicles has almost all tsadas transliterated with simple sigmas. I
> don’t know how typical that is for the rest of Tanakh, I just chose those
> chapters because I knew that there is where I can expect to find several
> names with tsadas that were transliterated into Greek.
> 
> Does Vaticanus follow the same pattern?

The LXX consistently uses sigma to transliterate sadhe/tsade (and shin)
in the text.  The only places where there may be departures from this is
when the names of the Hebrew letters were added to acrostic poetry to
indicate the letters the verses (or portions) started with (obviously
unnecessary for the Hebrew text itself.  In the edition of the LXX that
I have, the portion of Ps. 119 (LXX Ps. 118) v. 137 is headed by ιη' σαδη
(18 sade).  There is no note about Ms variants.  At the beginning of
Θρηνοι/Lamentations, there is a note about the insertion of letter names with
variant spellings in the Mss.  The letter צ is indicates as σαδη/sade
and in parentheses (B*+ τιαδη), where B = Codex Vaticαnus, * = original
reading of the Ms, + (dagger) = only the cited Ms (i.e., Vaticanus) and,
at the most, not more than one minuscule unmentioned, τιαδη = "tiade".
So, even in the names of the letters used for acrostic poetry, the
general practice of the Mss is to use simple sigma.

-- 
William Parsons