RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Bible "Versions
Quarterly- Review, Apr., 1899, 102 sqq., and the annual accounts published during the progress of the work from 1789 to 1805). The text is that of b. Not less than 164 volumes of manuscript collations prepared for this work are still in the Bodleian Library. All manuscripts, versions, and quotations were put under contribution. Despite some drawbacks in the plan and still more in the execution, the work deserves admiration; it is still indispensable to all who wish full information about the Old Testament in Greek. The advance made in the course of the nineteenth century is due, on the one hand, to the discovery of new materials (e.g. the Codex Sinaiticus ; see Bible Text, II, 1, § 9); on the other, to greater exactness in handling witnesses Both these advantages are evident in the work of C. Tischendorf, P. de Lagarde, and H. B. Swete. Tischendorf (Vetus Testamentum Greece juxta LXX inter-pretes, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1850; 7th ed., 1887) repeated the text of 6 and enriched it with variants from the Codex Alexandrinus, Ephraemi Rescriptus, and (after 1869) the Sinaiticus, adding rich prolegomena. Lagarde's work, though left incomplete, was monumental (for list of his publications, see Lagarde, Paul Anton de). Swete reproduced in his edition (The Old Testament in Greek according to the Septuagint, 3 vols., Cambridge, 1887-94; 2d ed., 1895-99; 3d ed., 1901-07) for the first time not the printed text of b, but the Vatican manuscript itself, in the first edition according to the facsimile impression of Fabiani-Cozza (Rome, 1869-81), which for the second has been revised (by E. Nestle) after the photographic reproduction. Where the manuscript is deficient the text has been taken from the oldest manuscript accessible in a trustworthy form, while under the text variants have been given from some of the oldest manuscripts, as Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Ambrosianus. The merit of this edition is that it gives the materials with greatest accuracy; its defect, that it does not make any attempt to construct the text according to the principles of textual criticism, but follows the leading manuscript even in its most glaring faults. And in some books at least (e.g. in Ecclesiasticus), the oldest manuscripts are far from being the best. But this deficiency is fully explained by the fact that the edition is intended to be but the basis of a great critical edition now in course of preparation, of which the first part has already appeared, The Old Testament in Greek, according to the Text of Codex Vaticanus Supplemented from Other Uncial Manuscripts, with a Critical Apparatus Containing the Variants of the Chief Ancient Authorities for the Text of the Septuagint, ed. A. E. Brooke and N. McLean, vol. i, The Octateuch, part i, Genesis (Cambridge, 1906; cf. JTS, iii, 601-621, and E. Nestle, Die grosse Cambridger Septuaginta, in Verhandlungen desXIII. Internationalen Orientalistenkongresses, 1902; idem, Septuagintastudien, vol. v, 1907).
There are two English translations: The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament according to the Vatican Text, translated into English, with the principal various readings of the Alexandrine copy,
and a table of comparative chronology, by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton (2 vols., London, 1844; has also the Greek text); the other by Charles Thomson (Philadelphia, 1808; new ed., The Old Covenant, commonly called the Old Testament, by S. F. Pells, 2 vols., London, 1904).
That there is yet not a satisfactory edition of the
Septuagint is not because of want of materials for
its preparation — there is on the contrary an em-
barras de richesse — but of its complicated history.
The history of a translation will always
3. Early De more complicated than that of ^oTthe011 an original text, but in this case it Text. is the more so as the Septuagint is a work of Jewish origin, taken over into the Christian Church. Of the pre-Christian period of its history next to nothing is known. There are some Hellenistic writers who used the Septuagint, as Demetrius, Eupolemus, Aristeas (the historian), Ezekiel, and Aristobulus; but the preserved fragments of their writings are too few and incomplete to establish more than the mere fact that they used the Septuagint. Philo made extensive use of the law, but his quotations from the rest of the Old Testament are very few, and from Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel he does not quote at all. Besides, his writings can be traced back only to the library of Origen, and have been transmitted to us probably exclusively through Christian copyists. For Josephus we must be content to know that for his description of the restoration he used what is now called I Esdras; but about his relation. to the chief manuscripts there is uncertainty. Even the quotations in the New Testament do> not justify very definite statements, except that, they prove that already in those times the copies were not free from textual corruption (cf. Heb. iii, 9, xii, 5). A little later the situation is described by Origen— speaking, it is true, chiefly of the manuscripts of the New Testament, but what he says holds good also of those of the Old Testament : " Now it is clear that there has come a great difference in copies, either through the laziness of scribes or from the audacity of those who introduced corruptions as amendments, or of others who took away from or added to their new text such things as seemed good to them."
If the situation was already bad, since any copyist or reader who was acquainted with the original might change single passages on comparison with the Hebrew, it became worse when new translations appeared, especially those of Aquila, 4. The Hex- gymmachUs, and Theodotion (see be-
Ori^n l°w' 2)- At last a systematic com" parison of the Septuagint with the
Hebrew and these versions was carried out by Origen in the Hexapla (see Origen), and what appeared to him a safeguard against the calamity that threatened the text turned out — not by his fault, but through later ignorance and carelessness — the worst aggravation of it. In continuation of the passage just quoted, he goes on to say that through the guidance of God he found a way to correct the dissonance in the copies. Using the Hebrew as a criterion, and adopting the text of the Septua-
Bible Versions