Ferdinand Hitzig (1807-1875) famously said in his lectures on Old Testament Text Criticism:
Meine Herren! Haben sie eine Septuaginta? Wenn nicht, so verkaufen Sie Alles, was Sie haben und kaufen Sie eine Septuaginta!
Gentlemen! Do you have a Septuagint? If not,
sell all that you have, and go, buy yourself a Septuagint!
Hitzig’s advice is still sound. As Emanuel Tov more recently put it,
“Both the Hebrew parent text of G [=LXX] and certain of the Qumran texts reflect
excellent texts, often better than that of M” (my italics) (Textual
Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 22001
[1992]) 24).
There are many reasons why students of
the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament cannot afford to know little or nothing
about the Septuagint. For a fine list, see Tyler Williams’ excellent post.
(HT: Doug
Chaplin) If only someone paid Tyler a nice salary to blog full-time on
biblical studies. The world would be a better place.
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