The Evidence from Hippolytus

As already stated, the crucial argument for the primacy of 1 Sam 18:1, 3–4 in the Septuagint was Hippolytus’s sermonDe Davidi et Goliath. Indeed, the text of the sermon is very close to Codex Vaticanus: in addition to omitting the same sections as B (with the exception of 18:1b.4), it shares some characteristic Old Greek readings, in contrast to the Masoretic text, such as ‘four’ pro ‘six’ (17:4), ‘Hebrews’ pro ‘servants’ (17:8), ‘my lord’s’ pro ‘man’s’

(17:32), ‘stick and stones’pro ‘stones’ (17:43). The text is also early enough (2nd c. CE) to be free from Hexaplaric influences. Nevertheless, it is claimed that the sermon refers to 18:1, 3–4, which could indicate that these verses were part of the original Septuagint, even if all other pluses in the Masoretic text would be later.

The sermon itself has a complex textual history but was most likely originally written in Greek, then translated to Armenian and, later, from Armenian to Georgian. Besides some Ar-menian catena fragments, the text has been preserved in Georgian (a translation of a transla-tion). Although the original GreekVorlagemight be impossible to reconstruct, some valuable observations can be made. The crucial section which refers to 1 Sam 18:1, 4b is De Davidi 16.1. The Georgian and Armenian text has been edited by Gérard Garritte.⁴²¹ Besides the Georgian and Armenian text, the editor gives his Latin translations. For the sake of conveni-ence, I will use these modern Latin translations to compare the text.

16.1 (Georg.)

Illo tempore, ut vidit Davidem Ionathan, filius Saulis, quia ferebat manu sua caput alienigenae, dilexit eum in corde suo, et exuit Ionathan ornatum suum et imposuit Davidi et cingulum et instrumentum suum et gladium et arcus pharetram suam.

16.1 (Arm.)

Et anima Ionathanae alligata est cum David, et dilexit eum corde suo; sustulit vestem et cingulum et loricam et ensem et arcum, et dedit Davidi.

In the Georgian version, the phrase ‘ferebat manu sua caput alienegenae’ seems to combine 17:54 with the beginning of chapter 18. However, it is impossible to decide if the following phrase ‘dilexit eum in corde suo’ refers to the end of 18:1 or 18:3. The final part ofDe Davidi 16.1 corresponds quite literally to 18:4.

The Armenian version is a bit shorter. It does not have the same connecting phrase ‘ferebat manu sua caput alienegenae’ but instead quotes the last part of 18:1 (‘Et anima Ionathanae al-ligata est cum David’). In this case, it is more natural to interpret the phrase ‘dilexit eum corde suo’ as representing 18:1b rather than 18:3b. The remaining part of the section is a paraphrase of 1 Sam 18:4, not as much a verbatim translation as the Georgian version.⁴²²

421. Garritte 1963; 1965.

422. Lust 1986, 8–9: ‘However, it is perfectly possible that the Vorlage of our scribe did not have all the

This evidence leads Lust to consider 18:1b, 4—and possibly 18:3 as well—as having been part of the Old Greek text. Lust observes traces of homoeoteleutonin 17:54 and 18:6 in sev-eral codices of Vetus Latina, which—in his opinion—suggest that a parablepsis had taken place in the Septuagint.⁴²³Lust does not state explicitly whether or not he regards 18:3 as part of the original Greek text. At the end of his article, Lust does tend to be more and more con-fident of its originality,⁴²⁴and he does perhaps end up with this conclusion, because it would solve the problem in the Septuagint that 1 Sam 20:8 refers to a covenant that had been made earlier.

Are there other alternatives to this interpretation of the role of Hippolytus’s sermon in the tex-tual history of the Setuagint? The text in Hippolytus is rather early, so it should be reasonable to surmise that it is free from Hexaplaric readings.⁴²⁵However, it is possible, and even likely, that attempts to supply the missing sections in the Old Greek had been made before Origen (cf. other Greek traditions such as Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion). Even in the Septua-gint manuscript evidence, more than one tradition adding 18:1, 3–4 can be found:⁴²⁶

1° codex A + Mss 2° Hexaplaric Mss (247 376) 3° L + 55 56 125 246 (554) en tw agapan auton kata thn yuchn autou

4 kai exedusato iwnaqan ton ependuthn ton ep autw (A: ton epanw) kai edwken auton tw

esth da¯d enwpion saoul kai h yuch iwnaqan tou uiou saoul en tw agapan auton kata thn yuchn autou

verses which we find in the MT. It is more likely that it had a couple of verses only, namely the ones re-ferred to by Hippolytus in his homily. If this is correct, the original Greek text must have omitted 17,55–

58, but not 18,1b.(3).4. The latter verses were omitted later on, through parablepsis.’

423. Lust 1986, 8: ‘Several VL codices and ancient editions of the Latin text have . . . at the beginning of 18,6: ‘When David returned from slaying the Philistine, bringing his head to Jerusalem.’ This has to be compared to verse 17:54: ‘And David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem.’ In my opinion, the additions in 18:6 in the Latin texts are just harmonizations, not traces of parablepsis.

424. On p. 9, Lust still encloses v. 3 in parentheses, while on, p. 14, he omits the parentheses.

425. Hippolytus lived ca. 170–236 and Origen ca. 185–254. It is possible that Origen attended one of Hip-polytus’s sermons in 212. However, the Hexapla was not made by that time but only after Origen had fled to Caesarea in 231.

426. Pluses are marked in red, differences in blue.

The first observation is that version 1° is an almost verbatim translation of the Masoretic text (the most evident divergence is the omission of ‘covenant’ in some Mss). Secondly, it is likely that versions 1° and 2° are dependent on each other and are probably Hexaplaric in ori-gin. Version 3° may just be a Lucianic stylization but may also reflect a different Greek tradi-tion (possibly Symmachus?).

Comparing these Greek texts to the Latin translations of the Georgian and Armenian versions of De Davidi, one can observe that the Georgian version resembles the Lucianic recension, adding ‘Jonathan seeing David’ (εἶδεν αὐτὸν Ἰωναθαν – ut vidit Davidem Ionathan) and omitting a few cases ofἕως and one of αὐτοῦ in v. 4. The Georgian version also has the ad-dition ‘the son of Saul’, as do the Hexaplaric manuscripts, albeit in different places somehow.

All in all, these similarities do not prove dependence between De Davidiand the Greek ma-terial marked with asterisk in the manuscript: the additions above can be, in either case, inde-pendently made (harmonizing/explaining) extrapolations, and the few omissions could have derived from the translation process (Greek→Armenian→Georgian). It is also possible that the Georgian and/or the Armenian version of Hippolytus’s text was modified according to the Georgian and Armenian translation of the Bible, respectively.

In conclusion, De Davidi16.1 certainly refers to verse 18:4. With the evidence from the Ar-menian version, it also refers to verse 18:1b more likely than it does to verse 18:3b. A refer-ence to these verses does not, however, imply that the Old Greek also had the same verses. It is more likely that Hippolytus knew about the story detailed in 18:1b, 4 from some other Greek source (oi g’).⁴²⁷However, considering its value in so far as covenant-making, it is in-teresting thatDe Davidimakes no reference to 18:3a and thus no reference to explicit coven-ant-making. Nevertheless, the symbolic act in which Jonathan gives his armours over to Dav-id can be interpreted as a sure sign of a covenant.

3.4.5 Conclusions

I have now studied the passages related to the covenant of David and Jonathan. A summary of the results is presented in Table 22. The main difference is that, in the Masoretic text, the cov-enant is presented three times but only once in the Septuagint—why this difference, and why is the covenant in the Septuagint made later than the first reference to it (20:8)?

427. Cf. Josephus, who seems to know the Masoretic plus 17:12–31, whether from Hebrew or some Greek tradition other than the Septuagint.

Section MT LXX Conclusion

1 Sam 18:1,3–4 Covenant 1 Omitted Omitted in LXX and

its Vorlage 1 Sam 20:8 Refers to an earlier

covenant Refers to an earlier 1 Sam 23:17–18 Covenant 3 Covenant

Table 22. Passages on the Covenant of David and Jonathan in 1–2 Samuel.

On 1 Sam 20:12–17, I arrived at the conclusion that the Septuagint represents the more ori-ginal reading. The Masoretic text is here corrupt; oriori-ginally, there was no covenant. What about covenant 1? Hippolytus’s De Davidi does not indicate that 18:1–4 would have been part of the original Septuagint. Furthermore, no indication of an unintentional shortening, such as aparablepsis, can be found. The proposition according to which the Septuagint omit-ted 18:1–4 to harmonize the text by removing the doublet concerning the covenant of David and Jonathan in 18:3 // 20:16 or rather 18:3 // 23:17 (A3.9, A3.9’) I have already shown above to be untenable, because this ‘harmonization’ would generate tension with 20:8 (refer-ence to an earlier covenant). Thus, it is highly probable that the Old Greek and itsVorlagedid not contain 1 Sam 18:1–4.

As for A2.7—which claims that 18:3–4 must be part of the original text because, without the verses, the reference in 20:8 to an earlier covenant does not make sense—this argument would only be acceptable, if the ancient editor had had a motive to omit 18:3–4 other than that of harmonization. However, almost all other arguments for the primacy of the longer text somehow rely on the general view that an editor aimed at harmonizing the text (cf. ‘umbrella argument’ A4). One must decide first whether or not an editor aimed at harmonizing the text.

If the objective of the editor was to harmonize the story, one can explain some other cases but not the omission of 18:3–4; if the objective of the editor was not to harmonize the story, the omission of 18:3–4 is still possible, but one fails then to explain the other omissions. At the first glance, this might seem to be trivial detail, but, in fact, this constitutes a serious flaw in the abridgement theory. Indeed, another way to verbalize this flaw is B2.6.

How, then, is it possible to explain the origin of verses 18:1, 3–4 and the tension concerning the earlier covenant alluded to in 20:8? One reasonable solution would be that the reference to a covenant in 20:8 induced a more detailed description of the covenant in another suitable place. For the editor, the beginning of chapter 18 was a sensible place to add the richer ac-count of the covenant for several reasons: it is natural that Jonathan met David after the great victory over Goliath; the act of stripping of Jonathan’s clothes and armours and giving them over to David constitutes a nice pair with a similar act by Saul in 17:38; finally, it removes

the tension that remains if no covenant had been made before verse 20:8 (not after it as claimed in 23:18).

In the Septuagint, the tension concerning the reference to the covenant in 20:8 remains. On the other hand, this is not really a problem. Biblical texts, including the Books of Samuel, are full of inconsistencies. The Vorlage of the Septuagint has not been homogenous in itself but clearly emerged as the result of a long process of development. The idea of a covenant between David and Jonathan had not arisen all at once. There probably were first mere men-tions or references to it (23:18; 20:8), and only later on did the tradition become more and more detailed (18:1, 3–4).