Monday, January 13, 2014
The religious provenance of the Aquila manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah
Edmon L. Gallagher, 'The religious provenance of the Aquila manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah' Journal of Jewish Studies LXIV (2013), 283-305.
Abstract:
Abstract:
The Cairo Genizah yielded two palimpsest manuscripts of Aquila’s Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. For more than a century, scholars have commonly assumed, often without argument, that these manuscript fragments derive ultimately from Jewish circles. This in turn has led to citations of them in arguments regarding the Jewish reception of Greek scripture in Late Antiquity and the origins of the system of contractions known as nomina sacra . However, the opinion that these are Jewish manuscripts cannot claim universal scholarly assent, though doubts in this regard have not often been noted. This article surveys the use of these Genizah manuscripts in arguments concerning the Jewish use of Greek scripture and the nomina sacra and then examines the evidence to hand regarding their religious provenance. It concludes that the general assumption of a Jewish provenance remains unproven.I would say that this article is more interesting than it sounds. Broadly speaking it is a reminder that some things we think we know (i.e. that LXX texts with the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew characters reflect a Jewish provenance) are not necessarily absolute. Among other things Gallagher argues that it is possible that there is evidence for Christian scribes attempting to preserve the representation of the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew square letters within copies of the Greek Old Testament (p. 303 - but the actual evidence is only for PIPI being used in some context, which may have become conventional); and even possibly that Christian scribes might attempt to preserve a form of the Tetragrammaton in palaeo-Hebrew characters (p. 304).
No comments:
Post a Comment