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of r and d . The MT reads, "They shall look upon me whom they have pierced [ daqaru ]." But the Greek version reads, "They shall look on me, because they will dance in triumph over [me]." The incongruous "dance"
comes from misreading daqaru as raqadu , which involves reading the d as r and the r as d , all the same word. But Theodotion preserves the correct reading by rendering exekentesan ("they pierced through").
One of the most interesting and involved cases of letter confusion is found in the LXX rendition of the name of the pagan god mentioned in Amos 5:26. The MT spells this name as kywn ("Chiun," KJV), but the LXX gives it a Raiphan , implying rypn as their reading of their Vorlage . Now it so happens that in the period of the Elephantine Papyri (fifth century B.C.), k (kaph) was shaped very much like r (resh), and w (waw) greatly resembled p (pe). This meant that kywn could be mistaken as rypn . If the Vorlage read by the LXX looked like rypn , the translators had no way to correct it to the better reading because it was a foreign, heathen name. But we now know from the Akkadian spelling of the name of this god, associated with the planet Saturn and pronounced Kaiwanu , that kywn was the true, historical spelling of the name back in Amos's day. The interesting feature about Raiphan , however, is that it is so spelled in Stephen's quotation of Amos 5:26 appearing in Acts 7:43. As he addresses a mixed audience of Greek-speaking and Aramaic-speaking Jews, and representing as he does the Greek-speaking Dispersion of the Jews, he quotes from the LXX, rather than going back to the original Hebrew. For missionary purposes most of the apostles quoted from the LXX, simply because that was the only form of the Old Testament available to the Greek-speaking population of the Roman Empire. If they were to "search the Scriptures" to see whether Paul and the other Christian evangelists were treating the Old Testament fairly, they had to check in the LXX version to confirm the apostolic message as the truth of God.
On the other hand, there are some instances where the LXX seems to preserve a better reading than the MT, though this happens but rarely. In the Jerusalem church council narrated in Acts 15:17, James quotes a clinching argument for the divine warrant authorizing the addition of Gentile converts to the church without forcing them to become Jewish proselytes. He builds on the promise of Amos 9:11-12, which he quotes as "that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles [ ethne , "nations"]
who bear My name." The received text reads as follows: "So that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the nations that bear My name." If that was the reading of the Hebrew text in the middle of the first century A.D., then James would have been rejected as grossly misquoting Scripture; for the whole point of the passage according to James was that the "remnant of men" were going to "seek the Lord." But if the only valid reading was yiresu ("possess"), rather than the yidresu implied by the LXX ("that they may seek"), then James' argument would have been totally beside the point. The progress of the textual corruption is easily reconstructed. If we assume that the original text read le maàn yidresu 'oto (w) se'erit 'adam ("that the remnant of men may seek him"), then we can see that the word 'adam ("men") might early have been misread as 'edom ("Edom") since in the earlier orthography they would have been identical in appearance. The yidresu may have looked like yirresu , especially after d (daleth) acquired a short tail in the period of the Lachish Ostraca (Jeremiah's time); and the copyist may have thought he was looking at a dittograph that needed correction to yiresu --which in turn might well be 27
construed as equivalent to yi(y)resu (from yaras , "to possess"), inasmuch as the second y would hardly have appeared in writing according to the older orthography. The 'et of the MT, which is the sign of the
comes from misreading daqaru as raqadu , which involves reading the d as r and the r as d , all the same word. But Theodotion preserves the correct reading by rendering exekentesan ("they pierced through").
One of the most interesting and involved cases of letter confusion is found in the LXX rendition of the name of the pagan god mentioned in Amos 5:26. The MT spells this name as kywn ("Chiun," KJV), but the LXX gives it a Raiphan , implying rypn as their reading of their Vorlage . Now it so happens that in the period of the Elephantine Papyri (fifth century B.C.), k (kaph) was shaped very much like r (resh), and w (waw) greatly resembled p (pe). This meant that kywn could be mistaken as rypn . If the Vorlage read by the LXX looked like rypn , the translators had no way to correct it to the better reading because it was a foreign, heathen name. But we now know from the Akkadian spelling of the name of this god, associated with the planet Saturn and pronounced Kaiwanu , that kywn was the true, historical spelling of the name back in Amos's day. The interesting feature about Raiphan , however, is that it is so spelled in Stephen's quotation of Amos 5:26 appearing in Acts 7:43. As he addresses a mixed audience of Greek-speaking and Aramaic-speaking Jews, and representing as he does the Greek-speaking Dispersion of the Jews, he quotes from the LXX, rather than going back to the original Hebrew. For missionary purposes most of the apostles quoted from the LXX, simply because that was the only form of the Old Testament available to the Greek-speaking population of the Roman Empire. If they were to "search the Scriptures" to see whether Paul and the other Christian evangelists were treating the Old Testament fairly, they had to check in the LXX version to confirm the apostolic message as the truth of God.
On the other hand, there are some instances where the LXX seems to preserve a better reading than the MT, though this happens but rarely. In the Jerusalem church council narrated in Acts 15:17, James quotes a clinching argument for the divine warrant authorizing the addition of Gentile converts to the church without forcing them to become Jewish proselytes. He builds on the promise of Amos 9:11-12, which he quotes as "that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles [ ethne , "nations"]
who bear My name." The received text reads as follows: "So that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the nations that bear My name." If that was the reading of the Hebrew text in the middle of the first century A.D., then James would have been rejected as grossly misquoting Scripture; for the whole point of the passage according to James was that the "remnant of men" were going to "seek the Lord." But if the only valid reading was yiresu ("possess"), rather than the yidresu implied by the LXX ("that they may seek"), then James' argument would have been totally beside the point. The progress of the textual corruption is easily reconstructed. If we assume that the original text read le maàn yidresu 'oto (w) se'erit 'adam ("that the remnant of men may seek him"), then we can see that the word 'adam ("men") might early have been misread as 'edom ("Edom") since in the earlier orthography they would have been identical in appearance. The yidresu may have looked like yirresu , especially after d (daleth) acquired a short tail in the period of the Lachish Ostraca (Jeremiah's time); and the copyist may have thought he was looking at a dittograph that needed correction to yiresu --which in turn might well be 27
construed as equivalent to yi(y)resu (from yaras , "to possess"), inasmuch as the second y would hardly have appeared in writing according to the older orthography. The 'et of the MT, which is the sign of the
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