Texts in Conversation
Leviticus 11 lists the raven with other unclean birds, while the Greek Septuagint removes it. This omission is found in several Greek manuscripts and reflects an early Hebrew version that did not include it, indicating it was added to the Masoretic text.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Leviticus 11:15
Hebrew Bible
13 “‘These you are to detest from among the birds—they must not be eaten, because they are detestable: the griffon vulture, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, 14 the kite, the buzzard of any kind, 15 every kind of crow, 16 the eagle owl, the short-eared owl, the long-eared owl, the hawk of any kind, 17 the little owl, the cormorant, the screech owl,
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Leviticus 11:15
Septuagint
13 And these are the things which you shall abhor of birds, and they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle and the ossifrage, and the sea-eagle. 14 And the vulture, and the kite, and the like to it; 15 [and the raven, and the birds like it,] 16 and the sparrow, and the owl, and the gull, and the like to it, and the hawk and his like, 17 and the night-raven and the cormorant and the ibis,
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In the case of the birds of Leviticus 11, however, B’s reading finds the support of the recently published Greek manuscript of Leviticus from the Schøyen collection (MS 2649). With only one exception, the list preserved by the two texts is strictly identical. This observation implies, in turn, that the list preserved by B largely goes back to a pre-uncial version of this list, which is still reflected in MS 2649, and which de facto represents one of the earliest attainable stages (if not the earliest stage) of the Greek version of Leviticus 11:13-19. For the rest, in the absence of additional evidence, we can only speculate about what earlier forms of this chapter in Greek may have looked like ... The first difference concerns the raven, which is listed as bird number 6 in the Masoretic and Samaritan texts of both Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but which is consistently missing from the Greek text of these books represented by A and B (with MS 2649), as well as from several other Greek manuscripts. Most likely, therefore, the raven was omitted from the Old Greek of Leviticus and Deuteronomy ..."
Anna Angelini and Christophe Nihan, “Unclean Birds in the Hebrew and Greek Versions of Leviticus and Deuteronomy,” in The Text of Leviticus: Proceedings of the Third International Colloquium of the Dominique Barthélemy Institute, ed. Innocent Himbaza (Leuven: Peeters, 2020), 39–68.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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