Monday, July 22, 2024

Excerpt from Emanuel Tov, “The Nature of the Differences Between MT and the LXX in 1 Sam. 17-18[1]" (1986)

  

As noted, the juxtaposition of the two versions created several conflicts. The fact that the editor created these conflicts, sometimes in important details, should not cause much surprise, because also elsewhere in the OT did expansions or interpolations created similar problems. The following difficulties may be observed:

 

1. David is depicted in different ways in the two versions. In verse 1 he is Saul’s armor-bearer (16,21) and in that capacity he fights Goliath. In version 2 he is an unknown shepherd who happens to be on the spot when Goliath calls the Israelites to a duel.

 

2. The most conspicuous difficulty is, as explained on p. 38, that after David has been introduced to Saul and has been in his court (16,17-23, version 1), in version 2 (17,55-58) he is still unknown to Saul who asks Abner and David after the latter had defeated Goliath.

 

3. According to version 1, David marries Michal, “the daughter” of Saul (18,20-26) but in version 2 Saul offers David his eldest daughter, Merab, in accordance with another section of version 2 (17,25).

 

4. In the first sentence of version 2 (17,12), David and Jesse are introduced to the reader, but David was already known from version 1 (ch. 16) and his father had been introduced as well (16,1.10).

 

5. The detail in version 2 that Goliath paid a daily visit to the camp for forty days (17,16) is apparently not known to the author of 17,11 (version 1).

 

6. According to version 2 (17,25ff.), he who defeats Goliath will be given the king’s daughter. Apparently this promise is not known to version 1 (18,20ff.), since Saul looks for pretexts that would convince David to marry his daughter.

 

7. If indeed Eliab was present at the time of David’s anointing (16,13 = version 1), it is hard to understand why he should utter such harsh words to David (17,28 = version 2).

 

8. Twice David is made an offer in Saul’s army, once in version 1 (18,13) and once in version 2 (18,5). (Emanuel Tov, “The Nature of the Differences Between MT and the LXX in 1 Sam. 17-18[1],” in The Story of David and Goliath: Texutal and Literary Criticism, ed. Dominique Barthélemy, David W. Gooding, Johan Lust, and Emanuel Tov [Orbis Biblicus Et Orientalis 73; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986], 42-43)

 

Blog Archive