Deuteronomy 32:8
This verse has a variant reading
between G/4QDeutj and MT/SP.
ὅτε διεμέριζεν ὁ ὕψιστος ἔθνη, ὡς
διέσπειρεν υἱοὺς Ἀδάμ, ἔστησεν ὅρια ἐθνῶν κατὰ ἀριθμὸν υἱῶν θεοῦ
“When the Most High was
apportioning nations, as he scattered Adam’s sons, he fixed boundaries of
nations according to the number of the sons of God.”
MT:SP: בְּהַנְחֵל עֶלְיוֹן גּוֹיִם בְּהַפְרִידוֹ בְּנֵי אָדָם יַצֵּב גְּבֻלֹת
עַמִּים לְמִסְפַּר בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
“When the Most High was
apportioning nations. Can it be determined if one reading is earlier than the
other? Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the G reading was dismissed
as secondary and the result of translation practice. However, G’s reading is
shared by 4QDeutj, a Hebrew manuscript: בני אלוהים (“sons of God”).
G’s reading, therefore, is a translation of a Hebrew text of Deut 32:8 that was
known in the Second Temple period, although it was not present in the MT/SP
tradition. It is likely that the reading of the MT and SP is secondary, a
scribal change made to deemphasize the perceived polytheism of the original
text. (Sidnie White Crawford, “The Textual Evidence,” in Rethinking the
Composition of the Pentateuch, ed. Kenneth Bergland, Roy E. Gane, Gary A.
Rendsburg, and A. Rahel Wells [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2026], 44-45)
