Hebrew, Greek, Septuagint

Orthographic variation within the manuscripts of the Greek NT is seldom a cause célèbre beyond the ranks of diehard textual critics. Even among these most will concede that orthographic irregularities amount to little more than evidence of scribal incompetency or inconsistency in their spelling practices. To find the same word both spelled correctly and misspelled with a single manuscript b the same scribe is not uncommon. It approaches the  norm. The critical editions of our Greek NTs have therefore opted, on good grounds, to exclude textual variants displaying non-standardized spelling. To include them would make it impossible for anyone to use the critical apparatuses in a meaningful way. The deluge of senseless errors would drown out variants of demonstrable textual significance.

summAry: Fabrics such as byssus and crimson wool can provide us with a surprisingly large amount of information about the circumstances of Biblical books origin. Analysis of lexis related to mentioned textiles, present in Exodus and in Chronicles, allows to notice a meaningful change, occurring in technical biblical terminology. In Exodus, byssus is represented by ‫ׁש‬ ֵ ‫ׁש‬ and crimson – by ‫ִי‬ ‫נ‬ ָ ‫ׁש‬ ‫ַת‬ ‫ַע‬ ‫,ּתֹול‬ whilst in Chronicles naming is changed respectively to ‫ּבּוץ‬ and ‫יל‬ ִ ‫מ‬ ְ‫ַר‬ ‫.ּכ‬ Analysis of etymology leads to the conclusion, that textiles mentioned in Torah belong to an early vocabulary, created in the times before the exile, in Chronicles, on the other hand, encountered terms belong to period of Babylonian captivity or after the exile. Confrontation of these textiles with the other, non-biblical sources, provides a confirmation of proposed dating and facilitates identification of mysterious biblical byssus, which turns out to be a very thin linen and not – as sometimes confused – sea silk. Juxtaposition of the Greek equivalents allows to draw a conclusion, that terminology of both Torah and Chronicles was known to the LXX translators, who – despite a clear caesura – translate terms consequently: ‫ׁש‬ ֵ ‫ׁש‬ and ‫ּבּוץ‬ to βύσσος/βύσσινος, and ‫ִי‬ ‫נ‬ ָ ‫ׁש‬ ‫ַת‬ ‫ַע‬ ‫ּתֹול‬ and ‫יל‬ ִ ‫מ‬ ְ‫ַר‬ ‫ּכ‬ to κόκκινος. T he research on the Biblical material culture constitutes mainly the archeological domain. The Biblicists reach for it readily in order to come to conclusions as regards the text. What is of a popular interest here is mainly sculpture, glyptic, writing culture and architecture. It is rare for the research to focus on the more prosaic elements of everyday life, such as wine, food or textile production. As far as the last case goes, the most numerous are the studies regarding purple. It is one of many fabrics (we are considering here not the color but the wool dyed

The Septuagint renderings of recurring Hebrew phrases that are found in different biblical books have been used as a means to characterize a translation and to identify its relationship to the translations of other books. The translation of the Pentateuch, for example, is thought to have been used as an example by later translators of other books. Deuteronomistic phrases occur in a wide array of biblical texts and usually occur more than once. Within the text of the book of Jeremiah, numerous deuteronomistic phrases have been identified, and they therefore provide a good opportunity to evaluate the character of Jeremiah LXX as a translation and its relationship to the translations of other deuteronomistic books. My paper will consider the value of comparing translations of recurring Hebrew phrases in an attempt to determine the relationship between the translations of various books. I will use Jer 11:1–14 as a case study in an attempt to identify any precedent translation that the translator of Jeremiah LXX might have used to make his translation of this passage.