A LEXICON OF SYMMACHUS' TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS Symmachus' translation was one of the early revisions of the Septuagint included in Origen's Hexapla. In ancient times his version was much appreciated for giving the sense of the Hebrew clearly and with reasonable elegance1. Jerome relied on it frequently for his own translation, the Latin Vulgate. Eventually, with the disap- pearance of the Hexapla, Symmachus' translation got lost. Only a few manuscript fragments, marginal manuscript readings, and patristic citations remain. The large majority of these remainders contain parts of the Psalms. Most of the direct evidence of the manuscript fragments of the Psalms has been published successively by C. Taylor (1900)2, C. Wessely (1910)3, and G. Mercati (1958)4, after the completion of F. Field's standard work on the Hexapla5. The editions of Taylor and Wessely were limited to a few verses, Ps 21,15-24 and 68,30-33; 80,11-14 respectively. The materials published by Mercati, in an impressive volume, are much more substantial: 17,26-48; 27,6-9; 28,1-3; 29,1-13; 30,1-10.20-25; 31,6-11; 34,1-2.13- 18; 35,1-6; 45,1-12; 48,1-15; 88,26-53. Recently the whole lot has been collected in a critical edition by J.R. Busto Saiz6. Additional fragments were published by A. Schenker7: Ps 77,30-66; 78,1-13; 79,5-20; 80,8-16; 81,1-8; 82,2-16. Recent studies of Symmachus' translation techniques have been produced by J.R. Busto Saiz for the Psalms, J. González Luiz for the Major Prophets8, and A. Salvesen for the Pentateuch9. The latter offers a more general introduction into Symmachus, giving a critical reassessment of the exegetical peculiarities in his translation and of his religious identity, topics researched in the earlier works of A. Geiger10, H.J. Schoeps11, and D. Barthélemy12. 1. For these introductory remarks see especially A. SALVESEN, Symmachus in the Pen- tateuch (JSS Monographs, 15), Manchester, 1991, pp. V-VII. 2. C. TAYLOR, Hebrew-Greek Cairo-Genizah Palimpsests, Cambridge, 1900. 3. C. WESSELY, Un nouveau fragment de la version grecque du Vieux Testament par Aquila, in Mélanges offerts à M.E. Châtelain, Paris, 1910, pp. 224-229. 4. G. MERCATI, Psalterii hexapli reliquiae, Rome, 1958. 5. F. FIELD, Originis Hexapla quae supersunt, sive veterum interpretum graecorum in totum Vetus Testamentum fragmenta, vol. II, Oxford, 1875. During the Rich Seminar on the Hexapla, held at Oxford in 1994, it was agreed that a new collection of Hexapla frag- ments was a desideratum. Field's impressive work is no longer up to date, if only because new sources have come to light since then. 6. J.R. BUSTO SAIZ, La traducción de Simaco en el libro de los Psalmos (Textos y Estudios “Cardenal Cisneros”), Madrid, 1978 (doctoral dissertation). 7. A. SCHENKER, Hexaplarische Psalmbruchstücke. Die hexaplarischen Psalmenfrag- mente der Handschriften Vaticanus graecus 752 and Canonicianus graecus 62 (OBO, 8), Freiburg – Göttingen, 1975. 8. J. GONZÁLEZ LUIZ, La Versión de Símaco a los Profetas Mayores, Madrid, 1981 (doctoral dissertation). 9. See n. 1. 10. A. GEIGER, Symmachus der Übersetzer der Bibel, in Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wis- senschaft und Leben 1 (1862) 39-64. 11. H.J. SCHOEPS, Symmachusstudien I-III (CNU, 6), Uppsala, 1942; Biblica 26 (1945) 100-111; 29 (1948) 31-51; reprinted in Aus frühchristlicher Zeit. Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, Tübingen, 1950, pp. 82-119. 12. D. BARTHÉLEMY, Qui est Symmaque?, in CBQ 36 (1974) 451-465. About the iden- tity of Symmachus see also A. VAN DER KOOIJ, Die alten Textzeugen des Jesajabuches 88 J. LUST 1. Vocabulary Symmachus often uses a vocabulary different from, and more accurate than, that of the Septuagint. Many of his words do not occur in the Septuagint, and some of them are neologisms. There is no up-to-date Lexicon of this interesting vocabulary. In as far as they were available in his days, J. Schleusner incorporated the readings of Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion in his Thesaurus13. It should be clear that his work is in need of revision, not only because of the new data that have been discovered after the publication of the Thesaurus, but also because it translates the Greek vocabulary into Latin, which is not much of a help for many modern scholars and students. The Concordance to the Septuagint of E. Hatch and H.A. Redpath (1897)14 lists a good deal of the new materials, especially in the third part of the Supplement published in 190615. The use of these data, however, is not without problems. First of all, the Concordance does not give a translation of the vocabulary. Second, in as far as the hexaplaric materials are concerned, no contexts are given, and the Hebrew equivalents are not provided. In our Lexicon16 we confined ourselves to the vocabulary of the Septuagint, postponing the treatment of the vocabulary of “The Three” to a later occasion. Now that the first edition of that lexicon has been completed, “The Three” call for renewed attention. According to our planning, the lexicon of “The Three” has to list all the words used in these revisions that do not occur in the Septuagint. The reason for the limitation to this special vocabulary is purely pragmatic. For the vocabulary shared with the Septuagint, the reader is referred to our Lexicon. Of course, “The Three” may have given new meanings to some of these terms, meanings that are not dealt with in the Septuagint lexicon. The treatment of these nuances is, how- ever, to be confided to the editors of a more complete and final Lexicon of the Septuagint and its revisions. As a rule, for each word the following data will be provided: (1) the reference to the passages in the Psalms where the lemma occurs, together with its Hebrew equivalent; (2) the immediate context in which the term occurs (s'), as far as available, with the Septuagint rendition of that context (o'); (3) an English equivalent based on the use of the term in its context. Some of these elements are to be left open in cases where the context is lacking. When the Greek lemma and its context are known only through retro-translation from the Syro-hexapla by (OBO, 35), Freiburg – Göttingen, 1981, pp. 221-230; ID., Symmachus, “de vertaler der Joden”, in NTT 42 (1988) 1-20. 13. Novus thesaurus philologico-criticus sive Lexicon in LXX et reliquos interpretes graecos ac scriptores apocryphos Veteris Testamenti, Leipzig, 1820-1821 (re-editions: Glasgow, 1822; London, 1829). Anastatic reprint of the edition of 1822: Turnhout, Brepols, 1995, with an Introduction by J. Lust: J.F. Schleusner's Lexicon of the Septuagint. See also J. LUST, J.F. Schleusner and the Lexicon of the Septuagint, in ZAW 102 (1990) 256-262. 14. A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testa- ment (including the Apocryphal Books), 2 vols., Oxford, 1897. 15. Supplement by H. REDPATH, Part III: Additional Words and Occurrences of Words in Hexaplaric Fragments, Oxford, 1906, pp. 199-216. 16. A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint. Part 1: A–I. Part 2: K–W (in collaboration with E. EYNIKEL and K. HAUSPIE), Stuttgart, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1992, LIII-217 p. and 1996, LXVI-311 (= pp. 218-528) p. Cf. ETL 69 (1993) 118-124 (Part I), and above, pp. 83-86 in this fascicule. SYMMACHUS' TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS 89 Field17, then the whole text is italicized. Lemmas with a context preserved in the direct manuscript evidence are marked with an asterisk (*)18. Lemmas that also occur elsewhere in “The Three” are signalled by an exclamation sign (!). The numbering of chapters and verses is that of the Septuagint in the edition of Rahlfs. The translation of the Psalms was chosen as a test case. The reasons for that selection are double. First, most of the direct evidence pertains to the domain of the Psalms. Second, a lexicon of “The Three” for the Psalms may be a useful instrument for those who prepare the critical edition of the Septuagint of the Psalms. The test case is limited to the vocabulary of Symmachus. The reasons are again twofold. First, the in-depth studies of his Psalms translation by G. Mercati, A. Schenker, and J.R. Busto Saiz present an excellent basis for a lexicographical investigation. Especially the lists dressed by Busto Saiz come in very handy. Second, Symmachus' vocabulary is most interesting because of the judicious character of his selection of equivalents for the Hebrew words. 2. Samples The following samples represent the first eight lemmas of the special vocabulary lexicon: âbébaiov unreliable fma-al (hifil) 77,8 s' genea aproairetov tjÇ kardiaç kai abebaiov prov ton ‡eon twç pneumati twç eautjv o' genea jtiv ou katju‡unen tjn kardian autjv kai ouk epistw‡j meta tou ‡eou to pneuma autjv ägíwv holy ›dq 133,2 s' agiwv o' eiv ta agia âgláflsma! ornament wvwm 47,3 s' ap arxjv afwrismenwç aglaismati pasjv tjv gjv o' eurihwn agalliamati pasjv tjv gjv hraph 88,18 s' oti aglaisma ajttjton autwn ei su o' oti to kauxjma tjv dunamewv autwn ei su âglaflsmóv! ornament fvww 44,8 s' elaiou aglaismou para touv etairouv sou o' elaion agalliasewv para touv metoxouv sou âdjmonéw! to be sorely dismayed, to be in anguish uty (qal) 60,3 s' en twç adjmonein tjn kardian mou o' en twç akjdiasai tjn kardian mou zph (qal) 115,2 s' kai eipon adjmonwn pav an‡rwpov diaceudetai o' egw de eipa en tjÇ ekstasei mou pav an‡rwpov ceustjv 17.