On Judgment in 2 Peter at the Septuagint Conference in Wuppertal 2018
By Koot
van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)
Some
notes about this 2018 Septuagint Conference should suffice here:
Source: Anna
Mambelli, "The Use of ὁµίχλη in the Septuagint and in the Second Epistle
of Peter in the Context of Divine Judgment" - Die Septuaginta. Themen –
Manuskripte – Wirkungen. 7. Internationale Fachtagung Wuppertal, 19.-22. Juli
2018
“Abstract:
The rare word ὁµίχλη is found in Greek texts as early as in Homer (Il. 1.359;
3.10) and in Aristophanes (Nub. 330), with the meaning of “mist”, “fog”. It
occurs ten times in the Septuagint, but only once in the New Testament. More
specifically, in 2 Peter 2:17 the false teachers are compared to “mists [ὁµίχλαι]
driven by a tempest, for whom is reserved the gloom of black darkness”. Some manuscripts
imported the lectio facilior νεφέλαι (“clouds”) from Jude 12. A question then arises: Why does 2
Peter 2:17 prefer to use the uncommon noun ὁµίχλη in reworking Jude 12-13? Can
the usage of this word in the LXX explain this choice?”
Van
Wyk Notes: First
we need to ask ourselves how early is the earliest Homer manuscript? How early
is the earliest Aristophanes manuscript. How early is the earliest 2 Peter
manuscript? How early is the earliest LXX manuscript? This
is the taxonomy of the question. That affects the methodology and eventually
the result analysis. But they are fundamental issues. Why must one believe that
Homer wrote in the 8th century BCE and his word dates from there and
the Septuagint is a mirror of 285 BCE and that these sources can determine
aspects in the New Testament like 2 Peter? These
are questions that Mambelli did not consider. “There
are more than 2000 manuscripts of Homer.[84][85] Some of the most notable
manuscripts include: Rom.
Bibl. Nat. gr. 6 + Matriti. Bibl. Nat. 4626 from 870–890 AD Venetus
A = Venetus Marc. 822 from the 10th century Venetus
B = Venetus Marc. 821 from the 11th century Ambrosian
Iliad Papyrus
Oxyrhynchus 20 Papyrus
Oxyrhynchus 21 Codex
Nitriensis (palimpsest)” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad#Manuscripts
[84]OCLC 722287142 [85]Bird, Graeme D. (2010). Multitextuality in
the Homeric Iliad: The Witness of the Ptolemaic Papyr. Washington, D.C.: Center
for Hellenic Studies.
The
earliest Iliad available is from the year 870-890 A.D. that is one millennium
after Homer lived! Then we did not even started with the discussion of the
preservation of the original Iliad transmission history. Consulting the book by
M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria especially his Volume II, Notes,
he mentioned on someone who travelled at Pella in the days of Antiochus
Epiphanes and asked the question where he can get a good copy of the Iliad of
Homer? The answer was: “as long as it is not one of these recent copies”. It was
the time of condensation, omissions, additions, remodeling of texts. A sloppy and
degenerative scholarship time period. Immediately
the “early” in Mambelli is under severe scrutiny here. The
faith in the reliability of transmission of Homer outshines the faith in the
transmission history of the biblical text here. It is too good to be true. Aristophanes
earliest manuscript is from the 6th century A. D. (John Williams
White (1906, January). The Manuscripts of Aristophanes. Classical Philology.
Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan., 1906), pp. 1-20, page 5. Downloaded on the 9th of December
2018 from https://www.jstor.org/stable/261346 Again,
the main problem is the finding of a manuscript close to the original date of
composition. Centuries lies between the original composition and the earliest
extant manuscript. This is a serious problem. The
words then that exists in these late manuscript texts should rightfully be
asked if they are really used earlier than the earliest manuscript? The
Septuagint is the same problem. None of the earliest manuscripts of the
Byzantine text of the Septuagint predates the Byzantine times.
Any
linguistic study is handicapped with this chain that limits the extend of the
investigation or its conclusions. Another article at the Conference in 2018 in Wuppertal on the
Septuagint: Knut Usener, (2018, July). “Griechisches im Griechisch der LXX.” Die
Septuaginta. Themen – Manuskripte – Wirkungen. 7. Internationale Fachtagung
Wuppertal, 19.-22. Juli 2018. In this article Usener tries to argue that the Old Testament in
Greek is using Greek classics to substitute meanings of words like in Ezechiel
25:4 where “milk” in Hebrew is substituted for “fat” in Greek of the
Septuagint. „Sie werden deine Früchte verzehren, und sie werden dein Fett
trinken“ (25:4) ist die für uns hier relevante Passage. In EzekLXX heißt sie: fagontai
tou karpou sou kai autoi piontai thn piothta sou.” In BDB of the Hebrew Lexicon page 316 lies the answer: there are
two meanings for halab: milk or fat. Milk is the Akkadian word alab and fat is
the Akkadian word ḫalab. Fat was also used in Aramaic. Thus, the author did not
know that. This is the case with many hapax legomena or strange translations
in the so-called LXX of the Byzantine period and later. Byzantine since we do
not have the original Septuagint and no editor ever claimed that they
successfully reconstructed the original Septuagint.
The substitution is not necessarily a Classical Greek mental
lexicon overspilling into the Greek LXX situation. Since the words and their
meaning were well known in Akkadian, Hebrew and Aramaic, a Greek borrowing of the
meaning is probably not a good choice here. Another paper delivered at the Conference was that of Emanuel Tov. Tov, Emanuel The Palestinian Source of the Greek Translation of the
Torah. Die Septuaginta. Themen – Manuskripte – Wirkungen. 7. Internationale
Fachtagung Wuppertal, 19.-22. Juli 2018
This is really a mirror of what he has presented before in 2015. Tov, Emanuel, (2015, August 24th). The Septuagint Translation of
the Torah as a Source and Resource for the Post-Pentateuchal Translators. pp.
293-305. Downloaded on the 9th of December 2018 at
https://bda.hypotheses.org/files/2016/09/281.LXX-Translation-of-the-Torah.pdf
Tov wrote on page , 305 “4. Influence on the Exegetical Level The contents of the Greek Torah often influenced the wording of
later translations on an exegetical level.24 1. In Jer 1:6; 4:10; 14:13 and 32
(39):17 (אהה)יהוה אדני has been represented by ὁ
ὢν (δέσποτα κύριε).25 אהה”) alas”) in this verse
has been derived from היה in Exod 3:14 (a central verse for biblical theology) and
rendered in accordance with the Septuagint translation of that verse: אהיה אשר אהיה – ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ
ὤν. אל תהי עד חנם ברעך 28:24 Prov. 2 μὴ ἴσθι ψευδὴς μάρτυς ἐπὶ σὸν πολίτην”
(Tov 305).
Here is the problem with Tov’s reasoning. Phonetically the pronunciation
of the Hebrew words are very similar to some people’s ears so that it is really
just a case of a slip of the ear in dictation. This has nothing to do with exegesis. The translator was trying to
render it correct but the kakophonia made it difficult to hear properly or
whatever other reasons like physical defects. In this article, Tov tried to list the words shared by the
Pentateuch and Prophets and other books of the Old Testament and then claimed
that this proved that they used the Pentateuch as a lexicon or dictionary to
the translation of the other parts of the Old Testament. There are problems with this view. Firstly, what Pentateuch? The
Greek Pentateuch of the Byzantine period? The earliest manuscripts are the big
Uncials and we do not have other. They differ sometimes from each other so that
the theory is better to say that what survived in the Uncials was not an
accurate careful copy of the original Septuagint, but the degenerative copies
that originated during the time of Antiochus Ephiphanes because the same
complaint that I am raising here is also present in the Iliad of Homer at
Ptolemaic Alexandria, see P. M. Fraser 1971. That is the Vorlage problem. But then there is also another problem that added to the errors. Constantine ordered 50 copies of the Old Testament in Greek to be made in haste and speed. Indeed speed with degenerative sloppiness: Uncials that is considered today our Byzantine Septuagint. Contrary to Tov’s and my teacher J. Cook’s view that Genesis was a
very literal translation, I tend to disagree and point out that it was literal
but not without sloppiness. It is a degenerative translation that could not
have originated by the original translators of the Old Testament. How do we know that? Case in point: In Genesis 1 the word בָּרָא is translated as epoihsen. But contrary to this translation, in Deuteronomy the word is
correctly translated as ktisen. There are two different Hebrew
words for these two Greek words. They mean differently since the one is a
making with material already existing and the other one is ex nihilo out of
nothing existing before. Genesis meant the ex nihilo but in the Greek
translated it as making with what is already there. Deuteronomy talking about
the same event used the correct rendering as pointed out above. What happened
here? Genesis translator was sloppy and too Hellenistic. He translated not with
a Hebrew audience in mind but a Greek one and was scared that a precedent might
be created if they say God is able to create ex nihilo? It was not a Hebrew Vorlage that used this word. The Masoretic consonantal form of the Hebrew text in Codex Aleppo
of 1008 A. D. is the very word of God and the very original of Moses. The five
slips did enter in the copying of it but consensus ironed them out so that the
correct core remained unblemished. The scholarship is of the highest quality
that any other manuscript in any culture can boast of. The other problem with Tov’s idea is his axiom of the multiplicity
of texts floating around in the Second Temple Period that had equal value. This
is not correct. There was a canonical form of one particular kind and that kind
was the same one that is in the consonantal form of the Masoretic Tradition. For the past 78 years scholars have been misled by Tov and his
predecessors like F. M. Cross on this very point. The day F. M. Cross published
the article on the Qumran fragment on Samuel in 1953, he made errorful
conclusions that placed all scholarship on a sidetrack. Ever since all were
leaning on these conclusions of Cross, Tov et al of his students of Cross, to
all concock the theory of the multiplicity of texts in the Second Temple
Period. What is the correct answer? The multiplicity of texts at Qumran is
evidence of the degenerative character of scholarship during the days of
Antiochus Ephiphanes in 150 BCE. Tov has never investigated the scholarly work of P. M. Fraser on
Ptolemaic Alexandria Volumes I and II. It provides the key to what I am saying
here since the same problems of textual omissions, like in Jeremiah of the Septuagint,
additions, substitutions, abbreviating tendencies, paraphrasing, were also
found in the Iliad of Homer. There were complaints about these phenomena and
scholars on the Septuagint today do not mention anything about this. To
be continued