Bible Difficulties by Bible Difficulties Read Free Book Online Page B

spelling lo as l-w-' , 1QIsa is not very helpful here. The Septuagint (LXX) is no help at all because the translator garbled the Hebrew completely and does not have either type of lo indicated in his rendering ("The majority of the people, which You have brought down in Your joy, they also will joy before You like those who rejoice in harvest.") But it is at least 90 percent certain that NASB is correct in its translation: "Thou shalt multiply the nation, Thou shalt increase their gladness; they will be glad in Thy presence as with the gladness of harvest."
    After considering this example of textual correction, let us survey eleven main kinds of transmissional errors known to the field of textual criticism.

    1. Haplography

    Essentially, haplography means writing once what should have been written twice. In student papers one often reads occurence instead of occurrence : the r has been written just once--which would make the word sound like o-cure-ence , according to our regular English spelling rules. In Hebrew it may be a single consonant that appears where there should have been two. Or it may be that two consonants are involved, or even two words. For example, in Isaiah 26:3-- "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in You"--the final words literally are "in you trusting,"
    followed by "Trust in Yahweh" in Isa. 26:4. In Hebrew the final word "trusting" is batuah , written b-t-w-h ; the initial "trust" in v.4 is bithu , written b-t-h-w . As they appear in the unpointed consonants, then, we have b-t-w-h b-t-h-w . These two words are therefore almost identical in appearance, even though the first is a masculine singular adjective and the second a plural imperative of the verb. Scroll 1QIsa has only b-k b-t-h-w , omitting the previous b-t-w-h altogether. Hence the Dead Sea Scrolls of Isaiah condense verses 3 and 4 to read thus: "A mind supported You will keep in real peace [lit., salom salom , `peace peace']; because in you...they have trusted [or else a new sentence:
    `Trust'] in Yahweh forever." The MT reads (correctly): "A mind supported You will keep in real peace, because it is trusting in You. Trust in Yahweh." It should be added that the 22

    word translated "trust" implies the vowel pointing bithu ; the 1QIsa context might imply a different pointing; i.e., bathu , which means "they have trusted." The LXX implies only a single salom and a single verb bathu , for it translates the whole section (including v.2) as follows: "Open the gates, let there enter in a people who observe righteousness and observe truth, laying hold of truth [apparently reading yeser (`mind') as the participle noser (òbserving, keeping')] and keeping peace. For in You [v.4] they have hoped [or
    `trusted'], O LORD [the regular substitution for Yahweh ] forever [ àde-àd lit., ùnto the age,' a rendering attested by both the MT and the corrected reading of 1QIsa]."
    In other instances haplography may have occurred in the MT itself, as is probably the case in Judges 20:13. The regular Old Testament usage is to refer to the tribesmen of Benjamin as bene-binyamin , but the Sopherim consonantal text reads the tribal name binyamin alone (which also occasionally occurs). But LXX indicates the normal "the sons of Benjamin" reading ( hoi huioi Beniamin ) in both the A version and the B version (Judges in the LXX has two different Greek versions, both going back to the same Hebrew Vorlage , apparently). Interestingly enough, even the Masoretic scribes believed that the "sons of" should be in there, for they included the vowel points for bene ("sons of"), even though they did not feel free to put in the consonants of the word in such a way as to alter the Sopherim consonantal text that had been handed down to them.

    2. Dittography

    This common transcriptional error consists of writing twice what is to be written only once. A clear example of this in the MT is Ezekiel 48:16: hames hames me'ot ("five five hundred").