Читать книгу Genesis 1-11 - David M. Carr - Страница 17

In addition to a few fragmentary Qumran biblical manuscripts for Gen 1–11, there are three major early textual traditions for Genesis, each of which testifies to a different strand of textual transmission of Genesis during the Hellenistic period.⁶¹ The Septuagint of Genesis (LXX), probably composed in the mid-third century BCE, witnesses both to an early Hebrew Vorlage and (by way of exegesis implicit in its translation) to some traditions of Jewish exegesis at the time.⁶² The Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) appears to represent a slight Samaritan Recension of a Palestinian text tradition current in the early second century BCE.⁶³ Finally, the Masoretic text (MT) generally reflects a text tradition that probably dates (for the Pentateuch and some other books) to the second or first century BCE, but did not become dominant among Jewish circles until after the destruction of the Second Temple.⁶⁴

Harmonization within each traditionAs we will see, all three traditions attest to varying levels of scribal harmonization and other forms of scribal coordination. This appears particularly the case as these tradents confronted potential problems in reconciling the chronology of the above-mentioned Toledot book with parts of the narratives that followed it. For example, the Masoretic text for Gen 11:10–26 appears to reflect an early chronology that implied that all of the post-diluvian patriarchs survived into the time of Abraham, with Shem surviving into the time of Jacob. In contrast, the archetype behind the Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint eliminated that implication by lengthening the ages at which most post-flood patriarchs fathered their first son and then reducing the remainder of their life by a corresponding amount. So also, the Masoretic text and Septuagint both witness to an early reading for the total years of Terah’s life in Gen 11:32 that has him surviving another sixty years after Abraham’s departure for Canaan (Gen 12:4; cf. Gen 11:26), while the Samaritan Pentateuch avoids that problem by having Terah die in the year of Abraham’s departure.⁶⁵ Turning to Gen 5, the Samaritan Pentateuch witnesses to an early chronology for pre-flood patriarchs that has several of them (Jared, Methusaleh, Lamech) die in the midst of the flood, while the Septuagint and Masoretic text avoid this implication by lengthening the years of their lives in different ways.⁶⁶ In this way, the Masoretic text shows use of a scribal coordination strategy (here lengthening of patriarchs’ life lengths) that is also seen in the Septuagint and Samaritan traditions (SP and LXX for Gen 11:10–26; LXX also for Gen 5), even as these latter traditions, especially the Septuagint, manifest a more marked tendency toward such scribal adaptation in these and other loci across the rest of Gen 1–11.⁶⁷

Continuing literary developmentThese divergences in the textual traditions for the primeval history show that the process of the formation of Gen 1–11 did not conclude with the above discussed combination of P and non-P. On the contrary, later scribal copyists continued to coordinate the P and non-P strands, dealing with specific problems that they perceived in the text that they had received. This probably began in the Persian period, but extended long after. The various “final redactions” that we now have in the Septuagint, Samaritan, and Proto-Masoretic versions of Genesis represent diverse products of this long-term process of scribal coordination and revision, including revisions that did not relate to the combination of P and non-P.

Though these three traditions represent slightly different literary wholes, they do not constitute the kind of fully separate literary composition that we see, for example, in the differences between Ezra–Nehemiah and Esdras or even the MT and LXX editions of Jeremiah. This commentary focuses on reconstructing, translating and commenting on a text of Gen 1:1–11:26 as close as possible to the archetype of the LXX, SP, and MT Genesis. Thus, the target text for this commentary stands prior to this broader process of scribal harmonization and other forms of coordination, even as these different textual recensions will be considered below at relevant points.