IntroductoryThe publication in 1986 in a single volume of initial position papers, together with several responses by Barthelemy, Gooding, Lust and Tov, has helped to clarify many issues relating to the composition and textual history of 1 Samuel 17-18. These essays have also made it unnecessary for us to offer a full review of earlier scholarship. Although in some respects the four distinguished scholars appear as far apart in their approaches to these issues at the end of their joint volume as at the beginning, the quality of their rehearsal of the questions has enabled us to suggest a new way out of their impasse. In what follows, we propose a history of the composition of these two chapters that takes account of the fact that the Septuagint represents only some 55% of the Masoretic Text. Lust (1986: 5-18) thinks that there once existed two independent histories (H1, H2) of David. HI, represented in this section by 1 Sam. 17.12-31, 55-58 and 18.2, can be recognized from its 'relics' found in the MT pluses; and H2 (1 Sam. 17.1-11, 32-54; 18.1b, 3-4) was the Hebrew story translated into Greek which subsequently gave rise to LxxB (minus 18.lb, 3-4). Textual criticism rules out the possibility that the Greek version was shortened from the Hebrew story; and literary appreciation of the structure of the shorter story confirms that it (H2) was the basis from which expansion took place.Tov's study of the translation techniques that produced LXXB (1986: 19-46) persuaded his colleagues as well as himself that the translator would not have shortened the parent text. The comparison of the structures of the two versions side by side (pp. 40-41) suggests to him Downloaded from 20 that his Version 1 (Lust's H2) 'provides a sufficiently full picture, so that it could have existed as an independent version', whereas because of its incompleteness 'Version 2 [the MT pluses] could not have existed in its own right in its present form'.1 It cannot be known whether it once existed in a fuller form (p. 41). He suggests that major M T pluses were derived from a written source, with the addition of minor details by a final editor. A close reading of the two versions shows that Version 1 is more logical than Version 2 in the flow of the story. Several changes made by an editor after the juxtaposition of the two versions are also noted (p. 43) and used to support his view of the originality of Version 1.Tov's argument for the carefulness of the translation is very strong, well based on text-critical data, and supported by literary arguments.However, this does not preclude a truncation of the text prior to the translation. Moreover, as he himself admits, it is not known to him why the editor wanted to create an amalgam out of the two stories. These two points seem to be the only weakness or incompleteness of his argument. But they leave room for literary arguments such as Barthelemy's and Gooding's, which favour the longer story as more original than his Version 1.
This article adds some newly discovered literary links between Gen. xxxviii and the Succession Narrative (SN) to those already observed by scholars in the past thirty or so years. Gen. xxxviii is found to be dependent on and owes to the SN most of its literary components like names, plot, theme, motifs and special locutions. The literary conclusion arrived, contrary to the widely accepted traditio-historical view, is that Gen. xxxviii has no oral tradition stage before being written down. Further analysis of the story does not confirm its belonging to the J source but re-affirms its genealogical concern. The article concludes with a conjectured raison d'être for Gen. xxxviii, namely to provide a "narrative evidence" for David's genealogical link to Judah, i.e. to prove David's Jewishness. It is further conjectured that Gen. xxxviii was probably written about the time of the emergence of the book of Ruth, which shows similar concern.
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