Some notes on Proverbs 20 intertextually

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint Lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

30 December 2010

One of the most important principles we must keep in mind in dealing with more than one text of the Bible, that is with translations or other forms of the original, is that they cannot replace or substitute the original in any way. Translations are derivative forms of the original and are loaded with problems of their own. Of course the translation is nearly 96% close to the original but there are always some parts that are problematic. In the consideration of Provebs 20 we have available the Bodmer Coptic text, Jerome's translation of 394 CE, Origen's translation of the Septuagint, the Hebrew, the Syriac, Targum (in Aramaic). How does one work with so many texts available? Conventional textual criticism wants to place them all on the same level or grade of importance. This cannot be done since a normative approach is not only available but also imperative. The Hebrew text is the original and serves as norm by which all others are measured, case by case. Conventionalism will brand this approach as the standard text method whereas they themselves think that the eclectic approach is a better one. It means reconstruction with a pick and chose method. This approach of picking and choosing places the norm within the mind of the investigator and thus outside the text. This is very dangerous. The text should be the navigator at all times and man's choice or decision making should be minimized to almost zero.

If someone says that he has studied textual criticism and that he has used the book of Emmanuel Tov (1993) on the subject and his very positive about it, he needs to go back and study again. The final result of E. Tov's approach is nihilism (nothingness). It is normless. It is rejecting the priority of the Hebrew Text for all decisions because Tov is an advocate of the eclectic approach that gained popularity since 1970. Of course there were problems with the general standard text method of earlier times. It was the approach where one text [anyone] was chosen as norm and all others were considered in subordinate position of importance. What we are advocating here is that the original word of God is the Hebrew text and that is the standard for the Old Testament and the only standard. That excludes the Targumim, or any other translation as the standard. This is the only standard text method that is employed in this writing and should be clearly distinguished from the earlier approaches against which the eclectic approach scholars are objecting.

Proverbs 20:1

Churchfather Jerome said in 394 CE that wine is a luxurious thing. Origen who wrote 150 years earlier said that "wine is an intemperate [akolaston] thing". The original read that wine is a mocker. The question is, where did Jerome get his luxurious from and where did Origen get his intemperate from?

Like the original Hebrew, Origen's Greek text read that strong drink is full of violence [ubristikon methe].

Proverbs 20:2

The Greek so-called LXX or Septuagint in this verse is so paraphrastic that it is almost a Targum and not a translation. What is the history of this dilemma of the Septuagint? At the library of Alexandria during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes librarians were in charge that allowed the recreation and deconstruction and reconstruction of texts. Many plusses and minusses originated in this time in the text of Homer's Iliad and also with the Septuagint. "The threat of a king differs not from the rage of a lion" for the Hebrew "Roaring like a lion is (like) a threat of a king". The Coptic text of the Bodmer VI papyrus differs not from the Septuagint in this phrase just mentioned but the next part in which the Hebrew has no copulative at all, the Septuagint used an adversative particle (de) and similarly it is used in the Coptic (but). The Coptic and Septuagint as we find it transmitted by Origen read this last part of the verse the same. The Hebrew of Solomon read only "he that provoke him sins against his soul" but the Septuagint of the Byzantine times and the Coptic of the same, read more plusses, "but he that provoked him, sins against his own soul".

The Syriac and Targum kept mainly to the proper Hebrew form of Solomon but introduced a waw-copulative = and with the next phrase that is absent from the Hebrew.

There is a connection between the Syriac, Targum and Greek misform of Origen's day that includes an extra preposition (al = `l = upon). There is a curious connection between Qumran's errors and variants with the Masoretic Text and the Syriac, Targum and Greek of Origen's day, especially with the book of Isaiah. This writer thinks here of the facts of A. Penna in his articles and also that of M. Gottstein.

Proverbs 20:3

The Hebrew read "glory/honor to a man who separates from quarrels". This cryptic text is expanded in the following ways by the Vulgate of Jerome and Septuagint of Origen's time. The Hebrew continued: "and every fool quarrel". Origen and Jerome both read fools that means, in the plural. How can one change the Word of God from the singular to the plural and be satisfied with such a deformation? Many people say it does not matter. But, it does, since it is not the words of man or even mine, it is God's Word. We need to be patient with Jerome since he tried to get good Hebrew copies to retranslate the Latin of the Old Latin to the Vulgate form but at times his copies was defective copies of the already defective copies from Qumran. That is why in Isaiah there is a strong connection between the errors of the Targum, Syriac and Greek LXX of Origen's day and the text of Jerome in the Vulgate. It is not because they had the correct Hebrew. It was difficult times to procure a proper text. The hithpael verb ytgl` is translated by both Origen's LXX and Jerome's Vulgate with plusses in order to bring out the proper meaning of the hithpael form. Whereas the word means: "break loose" Jerome read it as "are meddling with reproaches" and Origen read it as "is entangled with such matters".

Proverbs 20:4

The Hebrew text is the standard because it was transmitted so accurately over more than a millennium that Codex Aleppo on Daniel agrees almost to the point of 99.9% at Qumran. No translation has this high correspondence for even short periods of less than a hundred years. Therefore, translations cannot be a norm at all to "improve" understanding, grammatical syntax, etymology and other matters. Because it deviates it cannot improve.

The Hebrew read, "from the cold the sluggard does not plough, he will ask in the harvest and there is nothing".

The Greek text from the time of Origen read it that "A sluggard when he is reproached is not ashamed, in the same way will he ask in the summer also corn". The word mhrp in Hebrew was read as a noun by Jerome in 394 CE but as a verb in the Piel form by the text that Origen placed in the Hexapla. Why? Because only the consonants were in the originals and vowels not. It was left to the reader to place the vowels in the consonants and sometimes the same consonant set can give two meanings as in the this case where it can be a noun or a verb. Jerome read mehorep but in Origen's day the Greek read mǝhērēp. That is why the Greek read it "when reproached" but Jerome read it "because of the cold". Jerome added that when he asked in the summer "it shall not be given to him". It is implied by the short particle of non-existence but elaboration cannot be done if one wants to be as literal as possible. One cannot make explicit what the original did not make as well. Jerome is under criticism here. The Vulgate is not correct in this last part of the verse.

How Origen arrived at "be ashamed" is an interesting one. It is the same by the Targum, Syriac and Greek and if a Qumran piece would have survived, also there. But, the fact the Qumran texts date to 130 BCE-60 CE, does not say anything in the light of the degeneration of classical texts at the Library of Alexandria as M. Fraser indicated in his 1970 volumes on Ptolemaic Alexandria, especially the thick volume on the Notes. It is possible that the scribe of the Greek misheard yḥrš of the original Hebrew as yhrs and this misperception due to slip of the ear could (dictation process) could have led him to think of yhrs = "to be broken" and this led to the view of ashamed as meaning. We need to return to the Syriac since a miscopy happened to the root of the first word which the Targum, Greek and Syriac shares. Whereas the Syriac has the last letter as a dālath the Targum and Greek read it as a resh. This was due to a slip of the eye. The handwriting of the orthography of the Hebrew manuscript from which they were working was very bad and the copyist misread the /d/ and /r/, a very common Semitic variant. The reading of ḥsd = to be in wanting, decrease, insufficient but as it is in the Syriac with the Ethpa`al which is a intensive passive of the root given above, thus to be damaged, to be fined, by the Syriac is probably closer to the Masoretic Text than the misreading of the Targum and the Greek.

The Syriac reads the verse as "A sluggard/lazy man is damaged and he will not cease be silent, and he shall ask in the harvest and not receive". There is a possibility that the accompanied text that we attach to this writing has a misprint in the Syriac for the word "harvest" which it read as bḥbd' but which should be bḥṣd'. The last one is the Syriac for harvest and that is how George M. Lamsa translation of the Syriac read it. The way the word wlyt that we find in the Targum and Syriac as the last word, was misread by the Greek as we find it in the Hexapla of Origen, is that the orthography was extremely problematic and the scribe thought that he can see wlḥm = siton = corn here. Also the Bodmer Papyrus of the Coptic read this word wlyt as wlḥm = KOC = corn here. It should be clear to the reader that the translations are full of errors and that no scholar can suggest that one should rather follow the Coptic, Syriac, Targum, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian translation here and there for a word that will change the form of the Hebrew word into something else than we have it currently. There can be no improvements of the Hebrew text in any way. The consonants of the Hebrew text is inspired and the Word of God. The vowels may change since the original did not have any vowels and that is a later addition.

Sources:

1. Coptic Text Ruth 1, Proverbs 19, 20, 21:1-4 Michigan MSS 166 Papyrus Bodmer.

2. David Sperber, "myny trgwm" Otsar Haḥayim 2 (1926):6.

3. Armand Kaminka, "Septuaginta und Targum zu Proverbia," HUCA 8/9 (1931-1932): 169-191.

4. Hermann Pinkuss, "Die syrische Uebersetzung der Proverbien textkritisch und in ihren Verhältnis zu dem masoretischen Text den LXX und dem Targum," ZAW 14 (1894): 65-141.

5. Jakob Reiss, "Erläuternde Bemerkungen zu einige Stellen im Targum zu den Psalmen und Sprüchen" JüdLitblt 21 (1892): 127, 131, 134-135, 139.

6. Y. S. Schwartz, "h`rwt gṣrwt" `ivri Anokhi 1 (1865): 15-16.

7. Fransico Rossi, "Trascrizione con Traduzione Italiana dal Copto di due Omelie S... Giovanni Grisostomo con alcuni Capitoli dei Proverbi 여 Salomone e Fragmenti vari di due esegesi sul Giorno Natalizio del nostro signore Gesu Christo" Mem. Acc. Scienze Torino 11.40 (1890): 99-208.

8. D. Winston Thomas, "Notes: Proverbs XX,26," JJS vol. XV, nos. 3-4 (1964): 155ff.

9. Susan Niditch, "A Test Case for Formal Variants in Proverbs," JJS vol. XXVIII, no. 2 (Autumn 1976): 192ff.

10. A. Ca Lini, A. Citi, "Susanna e la prima visione di Daniele in due papiri inediti della Bibliotheca Bodmeirana. P. Bodmer X LV e P. Bodmer XLVI," Museum Helveticum 38 (1981): 81-120.

11. Peter Nagel, "Papyrus Bodmer XVI und die aechmimische version de Buek Exodus" in Agypten und Altes Testament 94-152.

12. Rodolphe Kasser, "Usage de la surligne dans le P. Bodmer V. Notes Additonelles" Bulletin Soc. d' Egyptol-de Geneve 5 (1981): 23-32.

13. idem, "Usage de la surligne dans le P. Bodmer V" Bulletin Soc. d' Egyptol-de Geneve 4 (1980): 53-59.

14. Melvin K. H. Peters, "The Textual Affiliation of Genesis 1:1-4:2 According to Papyrus Bodmer III," De Septuaginta, A. Petersma, C. Cox, eds (Missisanga: Benben Publishing, 1984): 263-286.

15. Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer XIII (Cologne-Geneve: Bibl. Bodmeriana, 1960).

16. Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer X-XII (Cologne-Geneve: Bibl. Bodmeriana, 1957).