index-passages 2023-10-22

Recently, I was puzzling a bit over the city of Pau, or perhaps Peor, as found in Genesis 36:39. Without retreading all the same ground, we may remind ourselves that where the Septuagint has Φογωρ ("Phogor") this is generally an equivalent of the Hebrew פְּעוֹר ("Peor"). This can be seen in the use of Φογωρ in Numbers 23:28, 25:18, 31:16; Deuteronomy 3:29, 4:46, 34:6; Joshua 13:20, 22:17.

So, when Phogor appears in the Septuagint of Genesis 36:39, we may guess that the translator had before him a Hebrew exemplar which read (or which he thought read) פעור rather than the פעו which now stands in the Masoretic Text.

So far, nothing too strange. But things do get a little strange when we get to 1 Chronicles 1:50, which copies material from Genesis 36:29. Only in the Hebrew text of 1 Chronicles 1:50, instead of the city פעו, we find it called פעי. It would appear, then, that the Chronicler -- or whoever is responsible for the presence of פעי in the bulk of surviving Hebrew manuscripts -- worked from a Hebrew manuscript reading פעו and confused a ו for a י.

I can imagine, then, two possible scenarios. In what I'll call scenario A, the Hebrew originally read פעו ("Pau", or perhaps with some other vowels, like "Peo"). The Septuagint translator, working on Genesis, then mistakes it for פעור, a more common name, and therefore reads in Greek Phogor. The writer of 1 Chronicles, working from the Hebrew Genesis text, also makes a mistake when he encounters the rare פעו. In this case, the Chronicles writes פעי, traditionally vocalized "Pai".

In scenario B, the Hebrew originally read פעור, and the Septuagint translator simply rendered it appropriately, as Phogor. Later, in the transmission of the Hebrew Bible, a letter was dropped, and פעו resulted. Working from a copy of Genesis with the erroneous פעו, the writer of Chronicles slipped and wrote it as פעי.

However, when we open up 1 Chronicles 1:50 in a Septuagint, we find something that is puzzling under either scenario. Here's the verse as found in the Larger Cambridge Septuagint, with the KJV and New English Translation of the Septuagint next to it as an aid to comparison:

καὶ ἀπέθανεν Βαλαεννὼρ υἱὸς Ἀχοβώρ, καὶ ἐβασίλευσεν ἀντʼ αὐτοῦ Ἁδὰδ υίὸς Βαράδ, καὶ ὂνομα τῆͺ πόλει αὐτοῦ Φόγωρ. NETS: And Balaennon son of Achobor died, and Hadad son of Barad became king in his stead, and the name of his city was Phogor. KJV: And when Baalhanan was dead, Hadad reigned in his place: and the name of his city was Pai ...

The KJV here accurately represents the Masoretic Text. Notice that where the Masoretic text has פעי ("Pai"), the Greek has Phogor. How are we to account for this?

In scenario A, we posited that פעו is the original Hebrew reading, and then the translator of Genesis into Greek hypothesized that the correct reading should be פעור, and thus read Phogor. Are we to imagine that another translator, looking at פעי in 1 Chronicles 1:50, also somehow decided to read that word as Phogor? It seems unlikely.

In scenario B, פעור is the original reading, correctly translated in the Septuagint of Genesis and then changed to פעו at some point in the transmission of Genesis. After this point, the text of Chronicles is created, using Genesis as a source. Either immediately or early in the transmission of Chronicles, the reading פעי appears. The translator of Chronicles into Greek, looking at פעו or פעי, somehow reads Phogor -- as if clairvoyantly excavating the true original reading as it existed even before the creation of Chronicles.

In either case, it seems to me unlikely that Phogor could be derived from whatever was in the Hebrew text of Chronicles that the Septuagint translator had before him. It seems to me that either the translator or a later scribe or editor conformed the Greek text of 1 Chronicles 1:50 to Genesis. And indeed, we find more signs than just Phogor that Genesis was used as a source by the producer(s) of Greek Chronicles.

Notice, above, how a figure simply called "Baal-hanan" in Hebrew becomes "Balaennon (or Balaennor) son of Achobor" in the Greek. Where does "son of Achobor" come from? It seems to come from Genesis 36:39. And how does "Hadad" become "Hadad son of Barad"? This seems to come from Genesis 36:35.

Here it could be useful to take a look at the textual apparatus of the Larger Cambridge Septuagint, which for 1 Chronicles 1:50 is below.

Notice that there's Balaennor, Balaennon, Balaenon, Ballenon, Balaenan -- a whole batch of variants of the Hebrew Baʿal-ḥanan. Then that phrase "son of Achobor" from Genesis -- sometimes it is present, sometimes not, in at least one case it's "Achabor". The same sort of thing happens with "son of Barad" -- sometimes it is included, sometimes not.

And then look at the spelling of Peor or Pau: Phogor, Phogaur, Phago, Phaaur, Phoor, Phaou, Phaaul, Phaaua, Phoua. Sometimes the Hebrew ע, ayin, is represented by a gamma and sometimes it is omitted. In some cases, the r appears at the end as if dependent on the Septuagint Genesis, while in other cases it is gone.

Based on this fairly small sample, it looks like Greek texts have been subject to constant revision with information coming in from both the Hebrew of Chronicles and the Greek of Genesis. I don't know the documents being referenced well enough to form a clear picture of the process, but looking into the apparatus of the Larger Cambridge Septuagint does give me a picture of the Septuagint as a vastly more varied set of documents than the Hebrew texts I am more used to looking at.

It is probably a good idea, when you see a variant reading marked as the "Septuagint's" reading in an apparatus, to go consult a good Septuagint apparatus to see whether "the Septuagint" really is a unified tradition on that particular point.