Abstract
In Chapter 1 I introduce the study and explain that virtually all of the past major treatments of the LXX of the Minor Prophets were essentially atomistic in nature and made no effort to treat the Greek text as a coherent, unified literary and theological work with its own independent integrity. I argue that the nature of the LXX of these books and the function of the LXX in history both constitute compelling reasons to treat the text as something other than a more or less defective witness toward a reconstructed Hebrew V o r/a g e which might be useful in the text- criticism of the Hebrew Old Testament.
In Chapter 2 I undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the K e th ib /Q e r e variants, the S e b ir in, the J iQ Q u n e S o p h e rim and the variants attested directly or indirectly in the manuscripts discovered in the Dead Sea region as these might bear upon the Hebrew text of the Minor Prophets. I conclude that there is no evidence of systematic conformity to a proto-septuagintal text-type and that the textual evidence suggests a stream-like history with a constant intermixing of texts.
In Chapters 3 and 4 I provide a detailed textual commentary on Haggai and Malachi. In this commentary, I typically address the relation of the LXX's V o r/a g e to the MT, the meaning of the V o r/a g e , the meaning of the MT, the translator's understanding of the meaning of his V o rla g e , the reasons the translator translated as he did and the significance of his Greek language without any concern for the motives or confusion which might be behind the Greek.
In Chapter 5 I conclude the study with an argument that the LXX of the Minor Prophets illustrates that an ancient translation could be both highly literal and yet reflect a high degree of hermeneutical intentionality by the translator. This possibility certainly complicates the matter of assessing the literalness of ancient translations. Furthermore, I offer an assessment of some of the central hermeneutical principles which influenced the translator in his re-shaping of the biblical text. I also argue that this study constitutes further evidence that much of the ancient interpretation of the Old Testament and many of the ancient versions of that text regularly employed palaeographically tendentious citation or translation and that a widespread program of paronomasia such as is in evidence in the LXX of the Minor Prophets can utterly confound text-criticism if incautiously defined.
