The Textual History of 2 Kings 17

Timo Tapani Tekoniemi

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110720853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religioni antiche

The textual history of the Books of Kings forms one of the most complex and debated issues in the modern text-historical scholarship. This book examines and reconstructs the textual history of 2 Kings 17 in light of the preserved textual evidence. The analysis of textual differences between the LXX, the Old Latin, and the MT allows the reconstruction of the oldest text attainable. The Old Latin version appears to have in many cases best preserved the Old Greek edition of the chapter, now lost in the Greek witnesses due to Hebraizing revisions. The Old Greek version of 2 Kings 17 evidences a Hebrew Vorlage often radically differing from the MT. In most cases the MT exhibits signs of later editing. The LXX can thus help the scholars reconstruct multiple text-historical layers previously out of our reach, as well as shed new light on certain historiographical details recounted in 2 Kings 17. As supposed by the literary critics for well over a century, the textual data shows beyond doubt that there happened vast editing and rewriting of the Books of Kings even at very late date. Text-critical considerations are therefore not only useful, but invaluable to all scholarly work on 2 Kings 17, and the Books of Kings as a whole.

1 Introduction

1.1 The outline and aims of this study

This study will examine in detail the textual history of 2 Kings 17 both in light of the preserved textual evidence (“documented evidence”) and in light of the literary-critical method (“undocumented evidence”). After the Introduction, in section 2, I will analyze the often widely differing textual witnesses in verses 1–23, and aim to find and reconstruct the oldest text attainable. In this section the text-critical comparison of different Septuagint witnesses (and especially the Old Latin witness Palimpsestus Vindobonensis) with each other and with the text of the MT will take up the largest part of the discussion. ¹ After this, in section 3, I will delve deeper into the undocumented textual history of verses 7–23 (“the editorial prehistory” of these verses) from the viewpoint of both the MT and OG edition. A synthesis of the insights of the two editions will be given. In section 4, the textual history of verses 24–41 will be examined. While the different textual witnesses will also be analyzed here, the argumentation will be mainly literary critical since major textual differences between the main witnesses greatly decrease in the second half of the chapter. Despite this there are nevertheless certain readings in the Septuagint that need to be heeded in the text-historical study of these verses. At the end of the study a discussion on the Conclusions and their Methodological Repercussions will be provided, together with three Appendices.

The research question of this study may be posed as follows: “How has 2 Kings 17 been edited through its long transmission process, both in the light of the documented (textual) evidence, and the literary-redactional models, and can some textual stratum be posited through this study of different text forms as the earliest textual layer on top of which the later textual growth (via continuous Fortschreibung) took place?” The study of the text will thus be in general conducted through two interrelated phases, i.e., text critical and literary critical, as further explicated under the next heading, “Methodological considerations.”

This study of the textual history of 2Kgs 17 is important because no such systematical study that takes into account all the documented evidence has yet been conducted on the chapter. Moreover, especially in “historical” books such as Kings, the text-historical study has the potential to also enlighten the scholarship concerning the historiographical issues of the text. Most different theories concerning the destruction and exile of the Northern Kingdom are based on this chapter (especially verses 1–6 and 24–30). However, these theories are usually based only on the Masoretic form of the text, and therefore it is necessary to assess whether there are any text-critically important readings in these verses. It is argued that through the study of the textual material we are able to find more clues concerning the historical situation – and that, on the other hand, we have to abandon some former clues that become too doubtful through this inquiry.

1.2 Methodological considerations

1.2.1 In the search for “documented evidence”

Chapter 2 Kings 17 contains significant literary-/redaction-critical (Literarkritik) problems that have seen numerous proposed solutions in modern research. Nevertheless, most of this research does not make use of textual criticism and the evidence of other textual witnesses. Even some, if not most, of the most influential literary-critical and redaction-critical theories concerning the textual evolution of Kings have been proposed solely on the basis of the Masoretic text (MT). There are, however, serious questions to be raised about this approach when investigating these often highly problematic texts and their witnesses.

The biggest reason to doubt such an approach is the re-emergence ² of the appreciation of the so-called “documented evidence” of the evolution of different textual witnesses in the recent research. In the wake of the Dead Sea Scrolls findings, it has become evident that documented ³ evidence has to be taken into account on an even larger scale: all textual evidence now has to be assessed on its own terms, without any presumptions about the priority of certain text forms or manuscripts. The text of the MT is, using the words of Eugene Ulrich, simply “a chance collection from a wide pool of circulating texts,” ⁴ and cannot thus be taken as the sole basis of the research. The plurality and multiplicity of texts, edited even as late as during the first century CE, have to be accepted and truly appreciated in the contemporary research. At the same time, the complexity of ancient scribal revisional techniques has become apparent. ⁵ Thus, there is a high demand for text-critical assessment of the evidence – all of it. ⁶

The methodological problems – or possibilities – do not end here, however. The need for a new evaluation of the textual evidence also has its impact on the redaction-critical theories of Kings. If it can be shown, for example, that, at least in some passages, the MT seems to reflect a textual stage posterior to that of the Septuagint (LXX), this would in turn necessitate a reassessment of the usually completely MT-based redactional theories concerning such passages as well. Or, if the passage in question is integral to the foundations of these theories, a reassessment of the whole redactional picture of Kings might be in order. ⁷ The establishment of the most ancient text is thereby not only a purely theoretical matter of textual preferentiality, but it also has much more far-reaching consequences.

Indeed, with the re-emergence of the appreciation of text-critical evidence it has also become clear that the classic redactional model that assumes overarching redactional strata that encompass entire books may no longer be sustainable as such; ⁸ from a methodological standpoint, all the evidence in our possession seems to speak against such vast and overarching, unified redactional strata in whole books – and even more so in series of books – as has traditionally been proposed. ⁹ The evidenced changes, even when larger in scale, are much more local, usually concerning only certain passages, chapters, or characters. ¹⁰ At least concerning the evidence in our possession, “revision” (or a steady cumulation of individual scribal revisions on top of each other) ¹¹ would be a more apt term to use than “redaction” – arguably this applies even to the massive differences introduced to the one-seventh longer proto-MT edition of Jeremiah. ¹²

This is, of course, not to say that the classic idea of overarching redactions is wrong per se. Vast reforming and rewriting of the text may have (and likely even must have) still taken place, especially during the so-called “paradigm shifts” when the text had to be substantially changed due to contemporary events, such as the exile to Babylon. ¹³ If a text was comprehensively revised, it is questionable to what extent it is possible to reconstruct the earlier redaction history since this kind of radical and possibly clearly stratified reforming of the text (and possibly also the cult at the same time) would have sup...