Meroz (2012)

Journal for the Study of Judaism 42 (2011), 120-121, 2011

The Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies, 2018

The two long pluses in 3 Kgdms 2 (MT 1 Kgs 2) are among the most difficult puzzles in the septuagintal text. This paper focuses on v. 46c, specifically the word *δυνάστευμα (acc. pl. δυναστεύματα). This hapax legomenon has significant ramifications for the history of the text of 1 Kgs / 3 Kgdms. 46c having no clear counterpart in MT/LXX 3–11, all the scholars who dealt with it to date look for its parallel via the following verse (46d) and the similar passage in MT 9:17–19. While former proposals have suggested that it renders בעלת (MT 1 Kgs 9:18), חשק/עשק (9:19) or ממשלתו (ibid), I submit that the better Hebrew equivalent is מסכנות/ערי המסכנות (9:19). This argument is based on the frequent rendering of the term מסכנות in LXX as πόλεις ὀχυραί ‘strong cities,’ and the minuses in the parallel verse in LXX 3 Kgdms to 1 Kgs 9:19, i.e., 10:22a. If correct, this suggestion can contribute to our understanding of the growth of the text and the textual relationship between 2:46c–d in the Miscellanies and 1 Kgs 9:17–19/3 Kgdms 10:22a.

Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2007

Previous scholarship has mainly focussed on the issuing body, the nature of the rites and deities mentioned in the decree and possible associations with known polis festival, and the nature of the Eleusinion named thrice (9; 18; 23). Here, I want to focus on the group of participants who are mysteriously referred to as τῶν ἄλλων in the decree (8). David Whitehead interpreted these “others” as local metics, living in the deme, comparable to τὸς μετοίκ̣[ος] who are recorded as the recipients of a share of a sacrifice to Leos in a lex sacra of the Skambonidai (IG I³ 244.C4-10). Robert Simms has convincingly refuted this interpretation, emphasising the (unique?) vagueness of “the others” in the Phrearrhian decree compared to the explicitness of the Skambonidai decree. Observing that no Greek inscription appears to fail to further specify groups designated as οἱ ἄλλοι, and that the καὶ immediately following τῶν ἄλλων precludes any such further identification in the Phrearrhian decree, Simms concluded that the others in our decree are just that, an unidentified and unidentifiable crowd to be associated with the international clientele of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In this article, the reference to τῶν ἄλλων in the decree from Phrearrhioi will be placed in several, increasingly larger contexts – from the text of the inscription, to (Eleusinian) cults and sanctuaries in Attic demes that appear to mimic those of the polis, and, finally, to an epigraphic trend in several larger demes that seems to point to increasing supra regional claims of some of the larger demes across Attica at the close of the fourth century. In that way, I hope to shed a new light on the identification not only of “the others” mentioned in the decree but also of the decree itself and the Eleusinion mentioned in it. In addition, I hope to somewhat further our understanding of the complex dynamics of deme religion, especially concerning demes asserting their own (cultic) identity in relation and as related to larger polis cults and sanctuaries.

วารสารภาษาและวัฒนธรรม, 2011

This study is an exercise in method involving the writing of a commentary on three quite different chapters in the lxx. In Proverbs 1, most of the differences between the lxx and mt reflect the translator's exegesis. A smaller group of differences reflects the vicissitudes of the textual transmission of this chapter. On the other hand, probably most of the idiosyncrasies of Jeremiah 27 reflect an earlier stage in the development of the Hebrew composition than that reflected in mt. While the details commented on in these two chapters thus pertain to either the translator's exegesis or his deviating Hebrew Vorlage, 1 Samuel 1 involves differences of both types, most of them relating to textual criticism. It is the purpose of this study to compare the different types of information provided by the lxx.

In the present paper we shall consider a specific group of variants, to be named "pseudo-variants". Before the nature of this small group of variants can be established, we must dwell briefly on the essence of variants in general. Our discussion is limited to variants reconstructed from the ancient translations, and even this subject cannot be exhausted here. We shall merely discuss some methodological aspects of the issues under review.