historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

56 DANIEL R. SCHWARTZ
in Jerusalem, and b) that the author wouldn't care if Antiochus perpetrated
a massacre in Syria. So far I have discovered seven ways
of evading the problem:
a. Translate the text as is but notify the reader, in a note, that
the words are out of place and belong
before v. 21. So Kahana.
b. Omit the problematic words (so Oesterley) or bracket them (so
Schunck), notifying the reader that they are out of place or an
interpolation.
c. Change the order of the verbs (so Artom:
).
d. Leave the verbs in order but translate as
if it were a past participle referring to a point in time prior to
the actions listed before it (so Abel ["ayant repandu le sang"],
Goldstein ["having polluted himself with massacres"], Penna
["dopo aver fatto una strage di uomini"], etc.). 17
e. Insert additional words to make clear that the massacre preceded
the return (so Nelis: "Voor hij vertrok richtte hij een bloedbad").
f. Have some unnamed agent "take it all and go back to his land,"
thus allowing Antiochus himself to remain in Jerusalem for the
massacre (so the 1980 Einheitsubersetzung. ". . . und liess alles in
sein Land schleppen. Er richtete ein Blutbad an und fiihrte
ganz vemessene Reden)."
g. Do not translate as "massacre." This is suggested
above, and detailed in the article mentioned in n. 9 above.
17 Apart from the difficulty of changing the verb from a finite aorist to a participle,
note also that it seems to be impossible to suggest a Hebrew original which
could be rendered by these translations (or to explain why the Greek translator,
who could have used such a past participle had his Hebrew Vorlage somehow required
it, failed to do so).