The Text of the Septuagint: Its Corruptions and Their Emendation

Cambridge editors of the LXX, and devised by Hort, expressly
excluded any approach to textual criticism, including the valuation of
grammatical variants. They were only allowed to apply in a sweeping
fashion Hort's orthographical principles, and these not only were a
doubtful asset in themselves, but being formulated for a post-Christian
corpus, the NT, could not without modification be applied to a collection
of Ptolemaic writings like the LXX. So, apart from the frequency
of itacistic spellings, inconsistencies abound, e.g. 2 Sam. 18: 10 έώρακα]
ÊopctKoc A; 18: 11 έόρακας] εωρακας B ab
; 1 Kings 20: 29 έώρακας]
eopccKcrç A; 21: 13 έόρακας] εωρακας B ab
. In Swete these notes are to be
found in the apparatus. In BM they are in the first apparatus, which is
devoted to mistakes of the leading majuscules only, and this means that
the main apparatus does not indicate what other MSS share the
rejected readings. Fairly frequently we find inconsistencies of this kind
on one and the same page. Or at times BM extract from our evidence
more than it can possibly yield. So in 1 Sam. 2: 9 ITia is rendered έν
Ισχύϊ. Swete warily notes ' ενισχύει fort. BA' ; for the scriptio continua does
not admit a clear decision whether this is merely an itacistic spelling or
a mistaken verbal form inferred from it. BM, however, abandoning this
due precaution, annotate ' εν ισχυι] ενισχύει Β ' in their first apparatus
and 'εν ισχυι] ενισχύει BAb'fimwxz*' in their second apparatus, thus
indicating that they consider the variant to be a verbal form. Most of
these variant spellings are recorded in Thackeray's careful appendices to
Swete's three volumes and in BM's first apparatus. Yet the decision as to
which reading was to be in the text and which to be relegated to the
appendix, was by no means based on grammatical considerations. When
seen from the grammatical point of view, the distribution ought to have
been made very differently. In many passages it is not even easy to
recognize the standards which guided them to choose readings now
from B*, now from its correctors. Certainly they were not grammatical
reasons; probably the intention was to shorten the annotation. Thus
these minor apparatuses are not only incomplete, but often misleading
from the point of view of grammatical correctness (for further details
see ThLZ, i937> P- 344)·
It even happens that formations with which the editors were not
familiar were removed from the text and relegated to the limbo of
rejected and corrupt spellings, in spite of their very strong attestation,
with the result that these formations failed to attract the attention of
our grammarians. Thus άττοττέσοιν in Ps. 7: 5, though read by
B* vid
S*A, that is the whole evidence apart from L, the majority group