published by Patricius Junius, 1637, furnish little more than could be expected. If there by any Old Testament book whose comprehensive meaning is now first understood according to the external and internal conditions of its gradual advance to maturity, it is the book of Job. The Greek fathers were confined to the lxx, without being in a position to test that translation by the original text; and it is just the Greek translation of the book of Job which suffers most seriously from the flaws which in general affect the lxx. Whole verses are omitted, others are removed from their original places, and the omissions are filled up by apocryphal additions.[1]
Origen was well aware of this (Ep. ad Afric. 3f.), but he was not sufficiently acquainted with Hebrew to give a reliable collation of the lxx with the original text in his Tetrapla and Hexapla; and his additions (denoted by daggers), and the passages restored by him from other translators, especially Theodotion (by asterisks), deprive the Septuagint text of its original form, without, however, giving a correct impression of the original text. And since in the book of Job the meaning of the whole is dependent upon the meaning of the most isolated passage, the full meaning of the book was a perfect impossibility to the Greek fathers. They occupied themselves much with this mysterious book, but typical and allegorical could not make up what was wanting to the fathers, of grammatical and historical interpretation. The Italic, the next version to the lxx, was still more defective than this: Jerome calls the book of Job in this translation, Decurtatus et laceratus corrosusque. He revised it by the text of the Hexapla, and according to his own plan had to supply not less than about 700-800 versus (στίχοι). His own independent translation is far before its age; but he himself acknowledges its defectiveness, inasmuch as he relates,
- ↑ On this subject vid., Gust. Bickel's De indole ac ratione versionis Alexandrinae in interpretando l. Iobi, just published (1863).
