Archaeology of the Books of Samuel: The Entangling of the Textual and Literary History

323 Pages·2009·2.07 MB·English

by  Philippe Hugo and Adrian Schenker

PHILIPPE HUGO
A N D ADRIAN SCHENKER
Archaeology
of the Books
of Samuel
The Entangling o f
J
2
3
I the Textual and Literary History
[

M
U
T
N
E
M
A
T
S
E
T
S
U
T
E
V
O
T

S
T
N
E
M
E
L
P
P
U
S
Λ if L·
i t
BRILL
Archaeology of the Books of Samuel
Supplements
to
Vetus Testamentum
Edited by the Board of the Quarterly
h. m. barstad – r. p. gordon – a. hurvitz – g. n. knoppers
a. van der kooij – a. lemaire – c. a. newsom – h. spieckermann
j. trebolle barrera – h. g. m. williamson
VOLUME 132
Archaeology of the
Books of Samuel
The Entangling of the Textual and
Literary History
Edited by
Philippe Hugo and Adrian Schenker
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Archaeology of the books of Samuel : the entangling of the textual and literary history
/ edited by Philippe Hugo and Adrian Schenker.
p. cm. — (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum ; v. 132)
Essays in English, French, and German.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-17957-8 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Bible. O.T. Samuel—Criticism, Textual. 2. Bible. O.T. Samuel—Criticism,
interpretation, etc. 3. Bible. O.T. Samuel. Hebrew—Versions—Dead Sea scrolls
(4QSama) 4. Bible. O.T. Samuel. Greek—Versions—Septuagint. I. Hugo, Philippe.
II. Schenker, Adrian, 1939–
BS1325.52.A73 2010
222’.448—dc22
2009039905
ISSN 0083-5889
ISBN 978 90 04 179578
Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by
Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to
The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,
Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................................. vii
Pierre-Maurice Bogaert
List of Contributors ........................................................................... xi
List of Abbreviations of Text Sources ............................................ xiii
Introduction ........................................................................................ xv
Text History of the Books of Samuel: An Assessment of the
Recent Research ............................................................................. 1
Philippe Hugo
I. EVIDENCES FROM 4QSAMA AND ITS
CHARACTERIZATION
Hannah’s Psalm in 4QSama ............................................................. 23
Anneli Aejmelaeus
4QSama (2 Sam 24:16–22). Its Reading, Where It Stands in the
History of the Text and its Use in Bible Translations ............ 39
Innocent Himbaza
Hannah in the Presence of the Lord .............................................. 53
Donald W. Parry
Midrashic Traits In 4Q51 (so-called 4QSama) ............................. 75
Alexander Rofé
II. THE GREEK TEXT OF I–II REIGNS
Textformen und Bearbeitungen. Kriterien zur Frage der
ältesten Textgestalt, insbesondere des Septuagintatextes,
anhand von 2 Sam 12 ................................................................... 91
Siegfried Kreuzer
vi contents
III. TEXT HISTORY AND THE QUESTION OF
DISTINCT LITERARY EDITIONS
Imag[in]ing Editions of Samuel: the Chronicler’s
Contribution ................................................................................... 119
Graeme Auld
Doch ein Text hinter den Texten? Vorläufige textkritische
Einsichten eines Samuel-Kommentators ................................... 133
Walter Dietrich
L’archéologie textuelle du temple de Jérusalem. Étude
textuelle et littéraire du motif théologique du temple
en 2 Samuel .................................................................................... 161
Philippe Hugo
Theologische Textänderungen im Massoretischen Text und in
der Septuaginta von 1–2 Sam ..................................................... 213
Jürg Hutzli
Textgeschichte von 1 Sam 5:1–6 im Vergleich zwischen dem
hebräischen Text der Massoreten und der ältesten
griechischen Bibel .......................................................................... 237
Adrian Schenker
Textual Criticism and the Composition History of Samuel.
Connections between Pericopes in 1 Samuel 1–4 ................... 261
Julio Trebolle
Index of Authors ................................................................................ 287
Index of Biblical References ............................................................. 292
Index of Other Sources ..................................................................... 301
PREFACE
As is commonly known, 1 and 2 Samuel in the Hebrew Text corre-
spond to the first two of the four books of Kingdoms in the Septuagint.
If the division of the text attested by the Lucianic manuscripts of the
Septuagint and corroborated by the research of Henry St. John Thack-
eray (βγ section) is recognized, the second Book of Kingdoms actually
ends at 3 Kingdoms 2,11 (= 1 Kgs 2,11), a narrative covering the entire
reign of David. The ques tion is: where does 2 Kingdoms really end?
The answer is beyond the limits of textual criticism. Different literary
purposes are entailed by the different tradi tions. Every participant in
the colloquium and contributor to this volume agrees on this point,
even if the inferences drawn from it are divergent.
Study of biblical books that entail manifold literary traditions seems
to be the order of the day. Yet there is nothing new under the sun. In
1948, in a book entitled Paul Claudel interroge le Cantique des Can-
tiques (LUF, Egloff), the author “questions” the Song of Songs. He
inquires of a biblical specialist about the translation of the Septua-
gint. Canon Max Overney, from Fribourg, Switzerland, reassures him
and recalls the words of Pope Sixtus V giving his full authority to the
Roman Edition of 1587: . . . Vetus Graecum Testamentum iuxta Septua-
ginta ita recognitum et expolitum ab omnibus recipiatur ac retineatur,
quo potissimum ad Latinae vulgatae editionis et veterum Sanctorum
Patrum intelligentiam utantur.
Not many years afterwards, a great scholar, also from Fribourg,
examining the fragmentary scrolls from the Desert of Judah, discov-
ered “a missing link” (“un chaînon manquant”) in the history of the
Septuagint (Revue Biblique, 1953). Did Father Dominique Barthélemy
suspect at that moment that he had opened a new avenue of study
of the oldest forms of the Greek Bible? Scholars came to understand
that three phenomena were operating simultaneously: the gradual
standardization of the Hebrew text, the successive revision of the Greek
translat ions to better correspond quantitatively to the Hebrew text in
process of standardization, and the addition of glosses and notes in the
margins when the definitively standardized text no longer admitted
internal additions or rewriting. Once these three processes had been
viii preface
identified, was it not possible to row upstream and, with a new appli-
cation of the method of Paul de Lagarde, to arrive at the Old Greek
behind the revisions?
Such conclusions were not unpredictable. Within the Hebrew Bible
itself, Chroni cles may be read in large measure as a kind of midrash of
2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings. The Book of Isaiah had, of necessity, a long
literary history. And since Origen, scholars have been aware that the
Septuagint of Jeremiah was built on a plan other than our received
Hebrew text. The last chapters of Exodus, the books of Kingdoms,
Chapters 36–40 of Ezekiel, and Esther offer divergent versions, some-
times concealed by revisions, but obvious enough if one also compares
the less revised texts of the Vetus Latina.
Structuralist, holistic, canonical, narrative readings, which gained
favour during the last decades, are founded on the notion of a single
original text or at least on one text, decreed to be preferable. Simulta-
neously, discoveries at Qumran and advancing research on the Septua-
gint have added considerable data, resulting in various interpretations
and reactions. Some firmly hold that the presently received text was
fixed shortly after the return from exile, and they regard the variations
as the result of a midrashic activity. Others think that the fixation of
the text, at least for certain books, is either the end of a process, or
results from a selection among available editions, both phenomena
being dated after the destruction of the Second Temple. I shall not
try to reconcile at any price those two approaches, but I dare to pro-
pose that authoritative texts existed before our received text and that
a midrashic activity existed before midrash in the proper sense of the
term. The authority – the canonicity – of a text did not involve imme-
diately its fixation to such an extent that commentary was no longer
allowed. Interpretation, which today appears in the margins or out-
side, was permitted in the text, and so in doing the commen tators
presented a tribute to the commented text.
The binocular and stereoscopic vision of the Biblical tradition, fur-
nished in texts read afresh, and resulting in the contributions assem-
bled here, is a genuine advance in the daily exercise of exegesis and
opens vistas for reflection, be it cultural, literary, philoso phical or
theological, on the exegesis.
Professor Dr. Adrian Schenker and his disciples – now masters –
have played a decisive role in the gradual acclimatisation of the bibli-
cal disciplines to these unexpected views. The reader will be grateful
preface ix
to them, especially to Dr. Philippe Hugo who spent time and effort to
co-ordinate the work and to present us with new contribu tions that
disentangle the textual and literary history in the 1–2 Samuel and 1–2
King doms.
Pierre-Maurice Bogaert
Université catholique de Louvain
Abbaye de Maredsous