Eberhard Bons

Textkritik und Textgeschichte

Studien zur Septuaginta und zum hebräischen Alten Testament

[Textual Criticism and Textual History. Studies of the Septuagint and the Hebrew Old Testament.]

Published in German. Ever since the era of humanism, biblical exegetes have consistently drawn on the Greek Bible text of the Septuagint when the Hebrew texts proved to be difficult or even puzzling, and they attempted to improve these at least selectively with the help of the Greek text version. In the past 30 years, this text-critical research on the Bible text has increasingly moved away from the procedure. In fact the text of the Septuagint, in its entire diversity and development, is regarded as a witness to the textual history of the Old Testament which deserves its own consideration. The articles in this volume deal with this issue. Using selected examples, mainly from the Psalms and the Prophets, they show that the translators tried to preserve the meaning of their Hebrew source text while trying to focus on new content.