What was edited, and not edited

Earlier I wanted to get out-there a few more examples of diachronic Hebrew. Here's the payload: Juha Pakkala. Orthodox corruption, not language shift.

This comes under two headings. One is where the Greeks and/or the Samaritans took a problem text and edited the Hebrew, which Hebrew is now better preserved in MT. The other is the reverse.

There exists rather a lot of the former, famously, particularly in what we Occidentals call "the LXX" - this is the Greek Torah. Take the several places after the Exodus where all Israel is to come and see what Raiders has insisted we must never see. We are unsurprised to find in Exodus 23:17 (Covenant Code, 20:22-23:19) ἐναντίον Κυρίου τοῦ Θεοῦ σου, which mucks with Exodus' grammar here. The Samaritans were clumsier: to summon all Israel to the Ark of YHWH, presumably shut tight and safe. The Ark is supposed to host, exactly, the Covenant Code which would neither, then, have existed nor been commanded outright. (Gotcha!) Pakkala brings further post-Code 24:10-11, where indeed the assembly sees at (which means... "at") Israel's elohîm, which the Greeks change to "the place of Israel's God". And, yanno... ish/gabur again.

The Jews have been more reluctant to change the rasm. For Exodus' parallel Deuteronomy 16:16 see the face (pny) of YHWH they revocalise "appear before" this "face", the "face" then being dismissible as a fossil grammatical term. Smells like Qere u-Kethib to me, but in the Masorah; one might also consider "bosheth"'s vowels appearing in "Ashtoreth" (sic).

Although even in MT rasm-mucking can happen. MT Exodus 23:17 sneakily swaps at from under the Deuteronomist's nose, for al. Exodus' people do not gaze "at" the Face but instead must, per the rasm, appear "before it", so al Him.

The Masoretes seem more free in other parts of the Tanakh. Like, Judges - especially if we expand it to 1 Samuel/Reigns which remains prekaige - knew of a temple at Shiloh. The MT has deleted this from its 1 Samuel 1:9-14. Booo

Pakkala brings "Lucian" to 2 Samuel/Reigns 15:8, that Absalom asked David to see YHWH in Hebron. This implies a Temple there in King David's own lifetime. Pakkala could well have brought 4Q51 too. Its overall "Absalom cycle" is considered subject to the kaige revision, Thackeray-Barthélemy "βγ"; 2 Sam 1-8 are considered not so adulterated. Yea even at the time of the revision, which may have been postTemple but wasn't Lucian's (postOrigen) work. So Lucian didn't translate the "βγ" part; he inherited a Jewish text that still had it well into Herodian times if not later. As to why to delete Hebron; arguably it was unnecessary. Waddn't Absalom the baddie?

Where dealing with baddies, the Jews seem to restrained themelves to mere qere on the kitab. 3 Reigns 16:32 is in γγ so later still than kaige. Here, in Greek, is Jewish alteration which had not been done back in βγ. Per MT, Ahab visits a temple of Baal. Again, Lucian is unlikely to have cared that a bad king is visiting the wrong god. Everyone knew which god it was. Jews - by then - didn't want so much as to utter this boshethic name. More exactly abominable: τῶν βδελυγμάτων is also in the Greek Daniel.