Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Hebrew Textual Variations

I have been a strong supporter of staying strictly Masoretic for the Hebrew text.  And I'm still against any changes that are supported only by the Septuagint.  But I've rethought a few things.

Number one would be differences that do not actually change a single letter, but just the vowel indicators that didn't come into existence till well after New Testament times (and thus can't be included in the Jot and Tittle reference).

This can explain why Acts 15:16 says Man/Mankind(Anthropos) where Amos 9:12 says Edom.  Edom and Adam are spelled the same in Hebrew but pronounced differently.  From that I've wondered if other apparent references to Edom could be the same, like Isaiah 34 which lacks any references to specific Edomite tribal or place names like Teman or Mt Sier.  (Ezekiel 35-36 however does refer to Mt Sier.)

And it seemingly was also merely a difference in vowel indicators that lead one now gone Interlinear Torah website I used to visit to say that Nimrod's name means Rebel in the Masoretic Text but Leopard in the Samaritan Pentateuch.  The spelling is the same, the difference is if it's Marad with an N prefix or Namer with a D suffix.  The Samaritan meaning makes sense in the immediate context of Nimrod being a hunter since Leopards are animals who hunt.  And contrary to what people who want to vilify Nimrod will tell you "Before The LORD" here is not an expression of hostility in the Hebrew, it's the same phrase used of many things done in worship of Yahuah elsewhere.  So no Nimrod isn't rebelling against anything here.  So it's interesting then that Jeremiah 13:23 poetically compares Cushites to Leopards.

But that leads me to the subject of variations that would require changing at least one letter, or more, since the Samaritan Pentateuch has plenty of those.  But it is a received text as well, not some random text found rotting somewhere like the Alexandrian Bibles.

Any Samaritan variation about Mt Gerizim I inherently don't trust, those were motivated by their peculiar reverence for that mountain. And in the case of Deuteronomy 27:4 there are reasons why even non Samaritans might be uncomfortable with placing the Law on Mount Ebal, the Mountain of the Curse, so no, one DSS text agreeing with the Samaritan here doesn't impress me.  But for Christians Paulian Theology explains exactly why that was, meanwhile both Joshua 8:30-33 and Archaeology agree that Mount Ebal is where the Altar was constructed.

Some have suggested the Vulgate supports saying Moreh instead of Moriah in Genesis 22, but that's based on it translating the meaning rather then transliterating the name which really fits both names equally, in meaning Moriah is just Moreh made into a Yah theophoric name by the adding of one additional Yot. And in Genesis 12 Moreh is a plain not a mountain.

But for differences that aren't in any way connected to that issue, the possibility that the Samaritan could be closer to the original is worth considering.  But one thing I'll always be looking for is another witness to that alternate reading.

First off is the Chrono-Genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11.  The Book of Jubilees agrees with the Samaritan on the Genesis 5 ages but not 11.  The Samaritan matches the Septuagint for Genesis 11 except that it doesn't have an additional Cainan/Kenen between Arphaxad and Selah (something I think Christian copyists added to the Septuagint) and has different dates for Terah having him die when Abraham is called at 75 therefore lacking a timeline confusion other versions have.  Someday I could make a whole post on just this issue.

Meanwhile in Genesis 10 what reads Dodanim in the Masoretic is Rodanim in the Samaritan.  However all texts of 1 Chronicles 1:7 read Rodanim here, and the Septuagint transliteration also begins with an R rather then a D.  Yet the KJV uses Dodanim in 1 Chronicles 1:7 even though there is no Hebrew or Greek textual support for that, and the Strongs just claims Rodanim is a scribal error.  I will be doing a post soon (right here) that will explain how the context of what Javan actually refereed to in antiquity fits this name referring to Rhodes better then any identity a spelling that begins with a D leads to.

I've also seen it claimed that the Samaritan Pentateuch agrees with the Septuagint in saying Gog rather then Agag in Numbers 24:7.  Here is a website talking about that issue without firmly taking a side on it.
http://mydigitalseminary.com/gog-or-agag-jesus-or-david/
Now I can add that some have theorized Agag and Gog are basically different forms of the same name.  This is another subject that could become it's own post.  The Samaritans don't revere Ezekiel or any Prophetic books, so there is no reason for them to want to add Gog to a verse he wasn't originally in.  Meanwhile Ezekiel seems to say Gog is a figure already foretold elsewhere.

I may update this post to add more examples in the future.  For now these are the ones that have caught my attention.  None of them change any essential doctrine of Scripture, and are more relevant to my interests as a History Nerd.

Update: DSS(Dead Sea Scrolls) and the Isaiah Scroll.

I guess I should talk about DSS variants, one I already alluded to above in the case of Deuteronomy 27.  I also talked in my Sethie View post about a DSS variant in the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32) where the Samaritan sides with the Masoretic against the DSS variant.

The Samaritan is of course only relevant to the Pentateuch.  That now dead interlinear website I mentioned above compared Masoretic and Samaritan versions and included DSS readings when there were some, however there were not many from what I recall going over.

The Isaiah Scroll is the only complete book among the DSS manuscripts.  When it comes to talking about how much it agrees with the Masoretic text Wikipedia is the most unbiased discussion of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Scroll#Scribal_Profile_and_Textual_Variants

Now at first it may look like the statement that it mostly agrees with the Masoretic might seem contradicted by saying there were 2600 variations.  Isaiah is a big book, you could theoretically fit that many variations into one of the longer chapters.  Most of them are just stuff like different spellings of the same word or the words being in a different order, in ways that do not effect the meaning at all.  A lot of them could just be the Isaiah Scroll using less Yots and Vavs then the Masoretic in places where the Masoretic used those letters as vowels.

There are other DSS fragments of Isaiah, and when it comes to these variations other DSS Isaiah texts tend to agree with the Masoretic over the Isaiah Scroll.    So it doesn't make much sense to use the Isaiah Scroll to invalidate the Masoretic text, yet people try to sometimes to fit various agendas.  Maybe the very reason the Isaiah Scroll is unique among DSS manuscripts of Canonical texts in being complete is because it was a variant non standard text?  But again the variations aren't even significant.

In Isaiah 34:14 the Masoretic Text uses the spelling Lilith but the Isaiah Scroll uses Liliyyoth. I don't know if there are any other DSS manuscripts of Isaiah 34:14 but the Lilith spelling is used in Songs of The Sage (4Q510–511).  The Wikipedia page for Lilith says the Masoretic Spelling is singular and the Isaiah Scroll spelling is plural, but elsewhere ending with a th at all is defined as inherently a feminine plural while the feminine singular is ending with a Heh.  The context of Lilith's reference in 4Q510-511 has everything else listed around Lilith being plural.  So I think the meaning is intended to be plural regardless of which spelling is the original.

An author named Margraret Barker has claimed that the Isaiah Scroll reading of Isaiah 7:11 says "Ask a sign from the Mother of the LORD your God".  Most scholars disagree with this reading of the Isaiah Scroll, and I myself am far from convinced of it.  But Barker popularized this claim to support a fringe theory of ancient Hebrew Goddess worship.  The idea that it could instead lend support to the Christian reading of Isaiah 7:14, that Immanuel is YHWH incarnate, isn't talked about much.

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