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Old Readings in 1 Esdras: The List of Returnees From Babylon (Ezra 2 // Nehemiah 7)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Ralph Walter Klein
Ralph Walter Klein
Affiliation:
Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri 63123
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Extract

In a recent study of the Greek text of 1 Esdras we argued that it frequently reflected an old, often nonexpanded Semitic Vorlage despite the many corruptions and secondary expansions peculiar to the “apocryphal” text. Esdras B [hereafter: G], on the other hand, was also found to differ from the received Hebrew text, but its variants were small enough that its underlying text-type could be called Proto-Massoretic. This analysis conflicts with that of Bernhard Walde, Wilhelm Rudolph, and others, who would assign the same geographical and chronological horizons and nearly identical Vorlagen to 1 Esdras and G. We shall test our interpretation, therefore, by studying the differences in the Hebrew texts of Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 on the basis of the translation of Ezra 2 in 1 Esdras 5. Although the latter has many omissions and doublets —in fact, it is in relatively poor shape —not enough attention has been paid to its alternation between Ezra-type and Nehemiah-type texts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , January 1969 , pp. 99 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1969

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References

1 See our unpublished doctoral dissertation: Studies in the Greek Texts of the Chronicler (Harvard Divinity School, 1966).Google Scholar A brief summary appeared in HTR 59 (1966), 449Google Scholar.

2 We exclude Ezra 2:70 and Nehemiah 7:72, since they can be better studied with the succeeding contexts, and since 1 Esdras translates both verses in their respective contexts.

3 The transition from Ezra 2:70 to 3:1 (not the corresponding Nehemiah transition) appears in 1 Esdras 5:45–46 while the text of 1 Esdras 5 includes certain passages peculiar to Ezra but excludes others peculiar to Nehemiah.

4 Cf. also Ezra 2:21 ; Nehemiah 7:26 ; and 1 Esdras 5:17 νίοì έκ. Perhaps the Greek conflates ancient variants.

5 Possible exceptions include at least 2, 15, and 17.

6 Fifty-one numbers are given in vs. 1-69. In sixteen instances, the numbers in Ezra and Nehemiah MT are identical and are attested in one of the uncial manuscripts of 1 Esdras; in ten cases, th e numbers in Ezra and Nehemiah are identical, but 1 Esdras is corrupt or haplographic; the three numbers in Ezra 2:65 and 66 (200, 736, and 245) are not assigned to the above categories, since both 1 Esdras and Nehemiah M T are defective —although independently. The numbers in Nehemiah 7:69 and 70 do not occur in Ezra-type passages.

7 In Ezra 2:19 and 28 (= Nehemiah 7:22 and 32), 1 Esdras lacks the number. I Esdras 5:23 attests a third number when compared with Ezra 2:35 and Nehemiah 7:38. The variation between 128 and 148 occurs not only between the Hebrew texts of Ezra 2:41 and Nehemiah 7:44, but within Ezra G and 1 Esdras as well.

8 There are almost innumerable variations in the 1 Esdras manuscripts, to be sure, frequently based on miswritten Greek abbreviations.

9 BhELvS: corrupt; A: 647 (XMZ); Nrell: 667 (XΞZ).

10 BhkpES read 2,606, presupposing a switching of X (600) and Ξ (60).

11 Walde, Bernhard, Die Esdrasbücher der Septuaginta (Freiburg, 1913), 142–48.Google Scholar In our Table 1 Walde missed 6, 8, 9, 14, and 16, and in Table 2 he omitted 1, 2, 6-11, 14, 17, and 19. From our Table 3 Walde missed 2, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13. He overlooked the second reading in which 1 Esdras supports the Nehemiah number, plus all three partial cases.