Abstract
Views about the value of the Septuagint (LXX) and of its Hebrew source has evolved considerably in the area of text criticism and history of the biblical text in recent decades, from the discoveries of the Dead Sea scrolls to contemporary discussion. In the historical books (Samuel and Kings), it seems likely that the LXX bears witness to a text type which differs from the Masoretic text (MT). The question we should ask is whether de LXX is not based on an underlying Hebrew text distinct from the ancestor of the MT (which we call the proto-Masoretic text), and, perhaps, older that this ancestor. The present study intends to make a twofold contribution to this discussion, a theoretical contribution and an empirical one.
The first chapter presents a critical and well-argued assessment of the research done in this area. It aims to work out the possible conditions for the use of the oldest LXX in the history of the text of the Hebrew Bible, especially for the books of Kings. This overview will allow us to define the task which falls to textual criticism today. In addition to this traditional task of detecting errors of transmission and thus to clear the text up, this task involves identifying the different literary forms and editions of the biblical text to locate these text types chronologically in their relation to one other.
After this, the body of this monograph (chap. 2-6) is devoted to the comparative study of the MT and the LXX in 1 Kings 17-18 and of some affiliated texts in 1 King 19 and 21(20) as well as 2 Kings 4. The Greek form of the Elijah story has not yet attracted much scholarly attention. the empirical inquiry consists in trying to decide whether these differences are due to the intervention of the translator or to corruptions of internal evolutions of the Greek, or whether they are rather due to a text type different from the proto-Masoretic text. The comparison of the two literary forms of the story enable us to determine their chronology and the reasons which have guided the textual development.
This study arrives at the conclusion that the LXX's underlying Hebrew text of 1 Kings 17-18 generally attests an older textual and literary form that the proto-Masoretic text. The proto-Masorretx text, virtually identical with out MT, is a revision or a reedition which, for theological reasons, tries to modify the portraits of the prophet Elijah, of king Ahab, and of the characterisation of idolatry.
Hugo, Philippe