2. The omissions are few. Section 1 Kings vi, 11-14, is entirely omitted, and 37, 38 are only slightly alluded to at the opening of chap. iii. The erroneous clause 1 Kings XV, 6, is omitted ; and so are the dates of Asa's reign in xvi, 8 and 15 ; and there are a few verbal omis- sions of no consequence.
3. The chief interest lies in the additions, of wjiich the principal are the following. The supposed mention of a fountain as among Solomon's works in the Temple in the passage after 1 Kings ii, 35; of a paved cause- way on Lebanon, iii, 46; of Solomon pointing to the sun at the dedication of the Temple, before he uttered the prayer, " The Lord said he would dwell m the thick darkness," etc., viii, 12, 13 (after 53, Sept.), with a ref- erence to the i3ifi\iov r»)c voijg, a passage on which Thenius relies as proving that the Alexandrian had ac- cess to original documents now lost; the information that '■ Joram his brother" perished with Tibni, xvi, 22 ; an additional date " in the twenty-fourth j-ear of Jero- boam," XV, 8 ; numerous verbal additiong, as xi, 29, xvii, 1, etc.; and, lastly, the long passage concerning Jero- boam, the son of Nebat, inserted between xii, 24 and 25. There are also many glosses of the translator, explana- tory, or necessary in consequence of transpositions, as 1 Kings ii, 35, viii, 1, xi, 43, xvii, 20, xix, 2, etc. Of the above, from the recapitulatory character of tlie passage after 1 Kings ii, 35, containing in brief the sura of the things detailed in vii, 21-23, it seems far more probable that KPHNHN TH2 A1AH2 is only a corruption of KPINON TOY AIAAM, there mentioned. The ob- scure passage about Lebanon after iii, 46 seems no less certainly to represent what in the Heb. is ix, 18, 19, as appears by the triple concurrence of Tadmor, Lebanon, and Si'vafTTniiiara, representing in3'j''a'2. The strange mention of the sim seems to be introduced by the trans- lator to give significance to Solomon's mention of the house which he had built for (iod, who had said he would dwell in the thick darkness; not therefore under the unveiled light of the sun ; and the reference to " the book of song" can surely mean nothing else than to point out that the passage to which Solomon referred was Psa. xcvii, 2. Of the other additions, the mention of Tibni's brother Joram is the one which has most the semblance of an historical fact, or makes the existence of any other source of history probable. See, too, 1 Kings XX, 19 ; 2 Kings xv, 25.
There remains only the long passage about Jeroboam. That this account is onh'- an apocrj'phal version, made up of tlie existing materials in the Hebrew Scriptures, after the maimer of 1 Esdras, Bel and the Dragon, the
apocryphal Esther, the Targums, etc., may be inferred on the following grounds. The framework of the story is given in the very words of the Hebrew narrative, and that very copiously, and the new matter is only worked in here and there. Demonstrably, therefore, the Hebrew account existed when the Greek one was framed, and was the original one. The principal new facts intro- duced, the marriage of Jeroboam to the sister of Shi- sliak's wife, and his request to be permitted to return, is a manifest imitation of the story of Iladad. The mis- placement of the story of Aljijah's sickness, and the visit of Jeroboam's wife to Ahijah the Shilonite, makes the whole history out of keeping — the disguise of the queen, the rebuke of Jeroboam's idolatry (which is accordingly left out from Ahijah's prophecy, as is the mention at v, 2 of his having told Jeroboam he should be king), and the king's anxiety about the recoverj' of his son and heir. The embellishments of the storj', Jeroboam's chariots, the amplification of Ahijah's address to Ano, the request asked of Pharaoh, the new garment not icashed in water, are precisely such as an embellisher would add, as we may see by tlie apocryphal books above cited. Then the fusing down the three Hebrew names, fTT^li, n"^^:i, and n:i"ltn, into one, Hapipa, thus giv- ing the same name to the mother of Jeroboam, and to the city where she dwelt, shows how comparatively modern the story is, and how completely of Greek growth. A yet plainer indication is its confounding the Shemaiah of 1 Ivings xii, 22 with Shemaiah the Nehelamite of Jer. xxix, 24, 31, and putting Ahijah's prophecy into his mouth ; for, beyond all question, 'F.v\a^i (1 Kings xii) is only another form of Ai'Aw^iDje (Jer. xxxvi, 24, Sept.). Then, again, the story is self- contradictory ; for, if Jeroboam's child Abijam was not born till.a year or so ai'ter Solomon's death, how coidd " any good thing toward the Lord God of Israel" have been found in him before Jeroboam became king? The one thing in the story that is more like truth than the Hebrew narrative is the age given to Eehoboam, six- teen years, which may have been preserved in the MS. which the writer of this romance had before him. The calling Jeroboam's mother yvv)) Tropvt] instead of yvi») X'lpn was probably accidental.
On the whole, then, it appears that the great varia- tions in the Sept. contribute little or nothing to the elu- cidation of the history contained in these books, nor much even to the text. The Hebrew text and arrange- ment is not in the least shaken in its main points, nor is there the slightest cloud cast on the accuracy of the history, or the truthfulness of the prophecies contained in it. But these variations illustrate a characteristic tendency of the Jewish mind to make interesting por- tions of the Scriptures the groundwork of separate re- ligious tales, which they altered or added to according to their fancy, without any regard to liistory or chro- nology, and in which they exercised a peculiar kind of ingenuity in working up the Scripture materials, or in inventing circumstances calculated, as they thought, to make the main history more probable. The story of Zerubbabel's answer in 1 Esdras about truth, to prepare the way for his mission by Darius ; of the discovery of the imposture of Bel's priests by Daniel, in Bel and the Dragon ; of Mordecai's dream in the apocryphal Esther, and the paragraph in the Talmud inserted to connect 1 Kings xvi, 34 with xvii, 1 (Smith's Sac?: Ann. ii, 421), are instances of this. The reign of Solomon, and the remarkable rise of Jeroboam, were not unlikely to exer- cise this propensity of the Hellenistic Jews. It is to the existence of such works that the variations in the Sept. account of Solomon and Jeroboam may most prob- ably be attributed.