As far as the Books of Samuel are
concerned, the story of David and Goliath is by far the most important of the
contexts in which several manuscripts of the Septuagint, among which the early
majuscule B, differ considerably from the present Hebrew text. The Greek
version in these manuscripts is much shorter than the Hebrew. It omits 1 Sam.
17,12-31.41.48b.50.55-18,6a.10-12.17-19.21b.30. (Johan Lust, “The Story of
David and Goliath in Hebrew and in Greek,” 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], 5)
I.
THE WITNESSES
1. The Greek Text
a. Direct Witnesses
As stated in the introduction, several
Greek biblical manuscripts omit large sections of 1 Sam. 17-18. It should be noted
however that not all of them omit all the sections mentioned in the introduction.
The shortest tet is to be found in Manuscripts NV anvyb2. The longer text
corresponding with the MT is given by manuscripts Ab + d + we. Other
manuscripts have some of the omissions: cx fms ghija2. The relatively recently
discovered fragment B15 written in Majuscules, probably in the fourth century
(A.D.0, has 1 Sam. 18,8-25 including vv. 17-19 but not vv. 10-11.21b.
The Greek text of the “pluses” in
codex A, and in the other verse shaving the longer text, does not belong to the
original LXX. They are inserts based on the MT. This is most obvious in codex
A, where 17,11 is followed by the beginning of 17,32: και επιεν
δαυειδ and then by 17,21-31. Moreover, the Greek
vocabulary and style of these “pluses” differ from the language and style of
the surrounding sections. This must be due to the fact that these sections were
translated separately, by a revisors. We do not have to elaborate the
argumentation here, since this has been done sufficiently by other authors. The
same argumentation applies to the “pluses” in the Lucianic manuscripts. In this
case the Lucianic codices certainly do not preserve any trace of the Old Greek.
All these data strongly suggest that
the original Greek text did not have the “pluses” o the MT.
b. Indirect Witnesses
Some early indirect witnesses should be
mentioned here. Josephus seems to have the shorter text, with the exception of
17,12-31, which he renders in his own style. (Antiq. Jud. VI, 175ff. Josephus
probably used both the Hebrew text of the Bible and the Greek translation)
The Sermo Hippolyti might prove
to be of special interest in this context. It is the earliest commentary on 1
Sam. 17,1-18.8, dating from the second century (A.D.). The text has been preserved
in two Georgian manuscripts and in some fragments of an Armenian “catena”. The
Georgian version appears to be a translation of the Arminian text, which in
turn is based on the Greek. They are thus translations of translations. This
may make it difficult to recover the original Greek wordings. Nevertheless, it
appears possible to discern some important characteristics of the prehexaplaric
Greek text.
Hippolytus quotes 1 Sam. 17,2-11 word
for word (De David et Goliat 6,2-17). After a rather lengthy commentary on
these verses, he quotes v. 17,32, omitting the verses inbetween (De David et
Goliat, 10,2-4). The dialogue between David and Saul in 17,33-37 is also given
almost literally (De David et Goliat 10,16-11,18) whereas the following
passages are rendered more freely, taken up in a running commentary. None of
the passages omitted by LXXB are referred to. However, there is one exception.
Towards the end of this homily, Hippolytus combines 17,54 with 18,1b.4: When
Jonathan sees David carrying the head of Goliath in his hand, he loves him. He
thus omits 17,55-58, but not 18,1 ff.
Hippolytus obviously uses a Greek text
which was very close to LXXB. He not only omits the same sections—with the exception
of 18,1b-4—he also has other characteristics in common with LXXB. In 1 Sam.
17,4 both give Goliath four cubits height instead of MT’s six. In Goliath’s
taunt in 17,8 the Israelites are called “Hebrews” (עבר) instead of “servants” (עבד,
MT). In his answer to Saul, in 17,32, David quietens “his Lord’s” (אדוני) heart
instead of “man’s” (אדם). In 17,43 David is said to come to Goliath with “a
stick” and with “stones” and not with “sticks” only (MT).
2. The Hebrew
Text
Besides the Masoretic text we possess
two minor fragments of 1 Sam. 17-18, discovered in Qumran. A first one is
merely a scrap found in Cave 1. It is published and identified as part of 1
Sam. 18,17-18. (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, I, ed. D. Barthélemy,
Oxford, 1956[2], p. 64-65) If the identification is correct, the manuscripts to
which the fragments belonged probably contained the longer text, since 1 Sam.
18,17-18 is missing in the shorter text.
The other fragment was hidden in Cave 4.
It has not yet been published, but it is known from E. Ulrich’s study on The
Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus. (HSM 19, Harvard, 1978, p. 79, 177, 271)
The preserved text belongs to 1 Sam. 17,3-6. It displays one major variant when
compared with MT: In verse 4 it reads “four” cubits instead of “six”. It should
be noted that the earliest witnesses of the short Greek version agree with the Qumranic
fragment and also read “four”: i.e. ms. B, Josephus, the Sermo Hippolyti as
well as the Lucanic manuscripts. (We may suggest that perhaps the Lucanic
codices have preserved here a trace of the early Greek text. It may also be
noted here that quite a few mss. give Goliath “five” cubits. Among them are
representatives of the short text: Vanyb2 as well as representatives of the
middle form and longer text: msj and we. A d+ and cx have “six” cubits)
If we are to believe F. M. Cross and
E. Ulrich, the fragment of 1 Sam. 17,3-6 belonged to a scroll 4 Q Sam. a, representing
a non-MT type of Hebrew manuscript agreeing in many points with the LXX. This
and other similar discoveries demonstrate “that the LXX’s particularities are
more likely to be based on Hebrew texts than we hitherto thought. However, they
have not given us grounds for thinking that every single difference between the
LXX and the MT presupposes the same difference in some Hebrew Vorlage”. I
quoted DF and agree with him. how does his statement apply to 1 Sam. 17-18? In
my opinion, the agreement between 4 Q Sam. a, and the LXX 1 Sam. in general ,
and between the Qumranic and LXX versions of 1 Sam. 17,4 in particular, plead
in favour of the possibility that 4 Q Sam. a offered the shorter text of 1 Sam.
17-18. This would imply that the shorter text of the LXX was based on a shorter
Hebrew Vorlage. The different and longer MT would be based on a different and
longer Hebrew Vorlage. However, “other possible causes of difference have not automatically
been ruled out”. We still need “to assess the comparative likelihood of the competing
possibilities, before deciding which is the most probable.” (Johan Lust, “The Story
of David and Goliath in Hebrew and in Greek,” 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], 6-8)