A NOTE ON THIS RENDERING

THE WITNESS

This volume is rendered from the SEPTUAGINT — the Greek Scriptures of Alexandria, the Bible the apostles carried and quoted. Where the Masoretic Text differs and the difference bears weight, the difference is noted below rather than silently absorbed. THE SEPTUAGINT READINGS THAT STAND IN THIS BOOK 2:2 — the work is finished on the SIXTH day, not the seventh. 4:7 — the offering not rightly DIVIDED; a reading found in no Hebrew text. 4:8 — "Let us go out into the field," where the Masoretic has a lacuna. 5:3, 5:6, 5:9 — the longer chronology: Adam 230, Shet 205, Enosh 190. 6:2 — the b'nei Elohim. 11:12–15 — KENAN son of Arpakhshad, who is absent from the Masoretic Text and present in the genealogy of the Mashiach at Lukas 3:36. 47:31 — Ya'akov worships leaning upon his STAFF, the very reading quoted at Ivrim (Hebrews) 11:21. 49:10 — CORRECTED TO THE GREEK The consonants are שלה. The Masoretes pointed them Shiloh, a place. The Seventy read shello — that which is his — and rendered ta apokeimena auto, the things laid up for him. The final clause is not the obedience of the peoples but PROSDOKIA ETHNON, the expectation of the nations. The verse as it stood in the working text followed the Masoretic reading. It has been restored to the Greek. FOUR VERSES RESTORED The working text wanted four verses, and they are supplied here from the Septuagint: 2:25, the nakedness without shame — without which 3:7 has nothing to answer to; 5:32, Noach at five hundred years, and the begetting of Shem, Cham, and Yafet; 11:27, the remaining years of Nachor; and 11:28, TERACH AT SEVENTY YEARS, AND THE BEGETTING OF AVRAM — the single verse that anchors the whole Avrahamic reckoning, without which the chronology from Adam cannot be closed. Because the Septuagint gives Kenan, this chapter runs to thirty-four verses and not the Masoretic thirty-two. THREE NUMBERS COLLATED TO THE GREEK At 11:13 the working text reads that Arpakhshad lived four hundred years after Kenan; at 11:19, that Ever lived two hundred and seventy years after Peleg; at 11:26, that Nachor lived one hundred and seventy-nine years and begot Terach. These have now been collated against the Septuagint and found to stand — they are the readings of the Greek, offset only by the giving of KENAN, and no longer await verification. The blessings of Ya'akov in the forty-ninth chapter have likewise been restored to the Greek: Yissakhar who has desired that which is good, Naphtali the spreading stem, and Yosef the son increased, whom the House had earlier read with the Hebrew. And the division of the thirty-first and thirty-second chapters now follows the Greek, so that Lavan rising in the morning opens the thirty-second and not closes the thirty-first. THE TONGUE Hebrew terms are set in the House's green and glossed in parentheses at their first appearance in this book, then left to stand bare. The Name YAHUAH is never glossed, for a name is not a title. Where the Greek put its own word in the place of a Hebrew one, the Hebrew is restored — for the Septuagint is itself a translation, and behind it stood a Hebrew Vorlage. We restore what was translated. We do not invent what was not. RULE X.4 The text is rendered as it stands. The translation is never adjusted to fit a conclusion. Interpretation belongs to the introductions and the notes — never to the verse.