The Text of the Septuagint: Its Corruptions and Their Emendation

Editor's note
At this point Dr Walters indicated that in a second volume which he
intended to write he would deal with a series of questions more closely
connected with textual criticism, and would proceed to the more
intricate problems of the recensions of the LXX. In his review of Rahlfs'
edition (ThLZ, 1936) he published more than 900 emendations, both
old and new, in addition to grammatical corrections. As a result of his
subsequent work he claimed 'this number has since been more than
doubled'. (He discussed a few in English in 1942 in his contribution to
a congratulatory volume dedicated by some German pastors to the
Bishop of Chichester.)
His belief was that ' even if we allow for the many obscure translations
which are due to the incompetence of the translators, there are
many other passages at the root of which there is no lack of understanding,
no guess-work, no confusion of Hebrew roots, but simply a
hitherto unnoticed corruption. The more carefully we go into the former
classes of mistranslations, the more clearly are we able to single out the
quite different class of often utterly startling corruptions.'
The final goal of his labours he described as follows: 'The end in
view has always been the text itself, presented for the first time in an
emended form which is meant to have profited by all these preceding
grammatical and textual considerations, together with a selected
apparatus which is to include precise information about the authors of
the emendations received into the text.'
About the possibility of a LXX Lexicon he had this to say : ' For want
of an up to date LXX Lexicon we gratefully draw on LS and attempt to
requite its services with lexical remarks which in themselves suggest that
it may no longer be premature to prepare a LXX Lexicon.'
Dr Walters was not spared to complete this herculean task which he
had set himself. But some of the necessary preparatory work is to be
found in the excursuses in this present book and in his numerous other
publications, for which see the Bibliography, pp. 350-1.