Isaiah's Syrian translators

Recently Zhan Chen for PhD did "an investigation into the Peshitta of Isaiah" (pdf). I'm here to continue its musings upon the division of this Syriac text.

Chen's dissertation argues that the Peshitta translation-team broke out Isaiah into two volumes, chs 1-33 and then 34f. It sees a parallel with 1QIsa^a by Qumran. And the divisor was based on verses; if it had been done from words, the split should have been at ch. 35. Chen was unaware that Egypt witnesses a tripartite split, one sure division at ch. 46 and maybe - important here - the earlier one at 30:5.

Over both his putative volumes Chen finds two translators at work. One was a sort of Syrian Jerome, translating from the Masoretes excepting where he found the Hebrew text difficult, where he brought in the Greek (with exceptions like 25:6-8 - more, anon). This work went up to ch. 29 (and not to 33). The other translator - working at least from ch. 40 on - was fine with the Greek so just translated what he felt like.

From chs. 30-39 things get more hairy for Chen. An observation is conceded that the overlap with a putative two-volume scroll-set is imperfect.

The most pro-Greek translation covers chs. 30-33 which should complete that first scroll of two. I'll inject this in Egypt starts second scroll of three. As to the section from ch. 33 on, Chen admits chs. 36-39 is prosaic; this translation could be churned out by any Hebrew-reader with a NW-Semitic language as his mother-tongue. The Greek, itself, wasn't so far from a literal Hebrew translation and MT at that - this ain't Jeremiah.

Chen proposes that first translator was a Christian. Especially 25:6-8 is parallel with 1 Corinthians 15; which it should not be, for this translator elsewhere keen to follow the Hebrew. Although, even here: the translator isn't going to the Greek Isaiah.

I propose that one Vorlage was in three volumes and the other in two. That 1QIsa^a presumes a two-volume text, and the Egyptian three, and that a Hebraising two-volume product was intended: all suggest that the three-volume basis was Greek and the two-volume basis, Hebrew. The translators worked from this split, agreeing for the first (Christian) translator to work on the first third upon a fresh scroll or codex with space for half the full Isaiah. Then the second translator filled out that first half, up to ch. 33. Anybody could have put their oar into chs. 34-9; but the second translator took over from ch. 40 onward. If, as in Egypt, another break cropped up ch. 46; that second translator simply bypassed it.