Nor can the student of Ecclesiastical Literature succeed without familiarity with G (see Sw.pt. iii. ch. V. ' Influence of the LXX on Christian Litera- ture,' p. 46111".). The doctrinal as well as the devotional wTitings are full of its influence. Take a book like Brightman's Liturgies, Eastern and Western, where tlie quotations are printed in black type, or an edition like that of the Apostolic Con-ititutions bj' Lagarde, which gives at the foot of the text the references to the biblical pas- sages ; the index of the latter shows more quota- tions from the OT than from tlie NT.
Even many works of Christian art cannot be understood without recourse to G. Cf. D. Kauf- mann, ' Errors in the Septuagint and the Vulgate from which Illustrations and Scul|)tures derived their origin ' {JQli xi. 163-160). If we speak of the firmament, we do so because G used rrepiufw., considering the heavens as frozen water.
One side of tlie importance of G, which Pearson was not yet able to appreciate, lies in the value it ha,^ ior Semitic philology, apart from the exegesis of the OT. The system of^Hebrew vocalization is an invention of about the 7th cent. A.D. ; how the words were pronounced in the time of Christ, or Isaiah, or king Jlesha,— G calls him Muiro, see vol. iii. p. 349,— or David, or Moses, we do not know. Our oldest witness is again the transliteration of proper names and other words in G. Whether nouns of the form ijin inclek were still heard as monosyllables (nmUc), can be ascertained by the help of G. To have pointed out this importance of G is one of the merits of Lagarde {Ucbersicht, etc. ) ; the Supplement to the Concordance of Hatch- Red path (Fasc. i., containing a Concordance to the I'roper Names occurring in the Septuagint, 1900) helps much to facilitate studies in this direc- tion. These transliterations have, vice versA, their bearing on the question of Gree/c pronunciation ; see .some remarks in this directi(m bj' Kittel {SBOT, 'Chronicles,' p. 52 f.) and Macke, Era.imus oder Beuchlin (Siegburg, Progr. 1900).
On the place which G occupies in the history of the Greek Language, philologists now judge mucU more favourably than twenty years ago ; cf. ch. iv. in Sw. 289-314, ' the Greek of the Septuagint,' and add to the literature quoted there, p. 314, a reference to I v. Korsiinskie, Percvod iA'A''( Moskoa, 1878, 704 pp.), in Kussian : The version of the Septuagint and its importance in the hiitory of Greek Language and Literature ; further, Thayer s art. Language of the NT, vol. iii. p. 3611'. ; and Paul Kretschmcr, ' Uio Entstehung der Koine ' {Sitzungsb. d. IVirner A/c., phil. hist. KL, vol. 143, and sejiarately, 1900); Albert Thumb, Die griech- ische Sprache im Zi'italter (lis llcllenismus: Beitriige zur Geschichte unit Beurtheilitng der Koii'r), Strass- burg, 1901 (cf. Ed. Schwyzer in Ncue Jahrh. 1901, I). 2;J311'.); Oikonomos, ii. 91411. ; Grinfield, 146; H. A. A. Kennedy, ' Kcccnt Research in the Lan- guage of the NT" [Expos. Times, xii. 341, 455, 557) ; J. H. Moulton (i/». p. 362 in the notice of G. A. Deissniann, Bible Studies; Authorized Tr. by Alexander Grieve ; Edinburgh, Clark, 1901 *). * Interesting are the philological remarks of Origcn (now ed-X
452
SEPTUAGINT
SEPTUAGINT
If the use and importance of (5 are such even in the unsatisfactory condition in which it lies at present before us, how much more will these be acknowledged when we have a better edition of it. In such an edition, also, the accessory matter will demand due attention, the capitula- tion, lections, etc. (see Sw. pp. 342-366, 'Text- divisions : Stichi, Chapters, Lections, CateruB ').
(o) In careful MSS of the classics (as in iIkvsp of Demosthenes, Herodotus) the lines have been counted i^y hundreds or by fifties, and their total stated at the end, because the copyist* were paid according to their number, the normal line or (TT.'s;*? being the Homeric hexameter of 16 syllables or 37 to 38 letters on an average.* This has been introduced into Bible MSS. One of the copyists of B, for instance, preserved on the margins the numbers from the MS which he copie<i ; so did Paul of Telia from the copy which he translated (616) into Syriac Afterwards the numbers 'were gathered into sticho- metrica) lists ; the most important of those lists are that in the Codex Claromontanus, the one lirstpublished by Mommsen, and that of Nicephorus; Me Sandav, Studia Biblica, iii. 266; Sw. 346 ; Berger, Uistoire de la Vulgate, 1893, pp. 316-327, 363 ; 0. H. Turner in JTIiSt, ii. (Jan. 1901) 2a6. For books like Sirach and Job (with asterisks, 2200 ; without, 1600 stichi) these lists are especially valuable.
(t) Jerome introduced into his Latin Bible the custom ol writing the text according to sense'linti, k^Xo. or w^/wbtab, 'quo<l in Demosthene et TuUio solet fieri'; the same was done for the Greek Dijde^:ajjrop/teton by Hesychius of Jerusalem, who at the same time divided the text into chapters.
(c) Such a capitulation is found already in some of our oldest MSS, as ABS ; for several books B gives even a double capitula* tion, dividing, for instance. Proverbs into 61 and 16, Eccles. into 25 and 7, Canticles into 40 and 5 chapters. Likewise the Syriac Urzapla (apparently from the copy from which it was taken) has in Joshua 52 and 11, Judges 65 and 7, 8 Regn- 105 and 18 chapters. In the same version and several Greek MSS summaries, t.tAoj ot xtfixJux-ix, are added, and lists of them