A critical edition of the Book of Proverbs in Ethiopic

The manuscript Add. 1570 (Cambridge) has been chosen as the base text for this edition of Proverbs. Against it twenty one Ethiopic manuscripts have been collated, as well as the printed texts of the Bassano edition and the and'm commentary. Add. 1570 has been selected as the base for reasons of date and textual type. The base text has been translated in a literal manner to retain, where possible, the idiosyncrasies of the Ethiopic version. The apparatus criticus records all the significant variants of the twenty one manuscripts and two printed texts. Points of interest relating to matters within Ethiopic, as well as to the relationship of one group of manuscripts to another and of these groups to likely original texts, are dealt with verse by verse in the notes. The data in the apparatus provide evidence for four distinct textual traditions. The introduction brings together and analyses the data from these traditions, in relation to the antecedents and history of the Ethiopic Old Testament version. The following conclusions are drawn;- No "pure" Ethiopic text is found â namely one which can be related to one textual Vorlage only. All groups of manuscripts Show a deep and thorough-going amalgamation of Greek and Semitic textual features. The Semitisms are found to be Hebraisms, with very scarce evidence of Syriac influences. The nature of the Hebraic element is considered such an integral part of the Ethiopic tradition that it cannot be considered to be the product of revision alone, but must go back to the earliest stage of translational activity. No evidence is found to prove that the Hebrew sources used in Ethiopic were different from the Masoretic text known to us. The structure and layout of the book are found to depend on the LXX (arrangement of chapters and verses). The Greek source used in the translation is identified with the main LXX tradition; influence from the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion is not found. But no particular strand of the LXX tradition is identified as influential upon Ethiopic. The particular Ethiopia tradition in the text of Proverbs is investigated. An editorial process of implification (even at the expense of fidelity to the original texts) is noticed in later manuscripts; this takes the form of additions, explanationâ and a tendency to make explicit what is thought to be implicit in the text. Questions which remain unanswered include the date and authorship of the Ethiopic text, and the reconstruction of the plurality of stages through which the text must have passed. These questions, it is thought, cannot be answered in isolation for the Book of Proverbs alone; even tentative conclusions must await further analysis of the data in many more books of the Ethiopic Old Testament.