Texts in Conversation
The Hebrew version of Nehemiah sets Ezra's reading of the Torah at the square before the Water Gate. The Greek Septuagint removes the reference to the Jerusalem landmark and uses a rare word for sunrise, turning a well-known place into a measure of time.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Nehemiah 8:3
Hebrew Bible
2 So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly which included men and women and all those able to understand what they heard. (This happened on the first day of the seventh month.) 3 So he read it before the plaza in front of the Water Gate from dawn till noon before the men and women and those children who could understand. All the people were eager to hear the book of the law. 4 Ezra the scribe stood on a towering wooden platform constructed for this purpose. Standing near him on his right were Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Masseiah. On his left were Pedaiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam.
LXX Nehemiah 8:3
Septuagint
2 And Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, from man to woman and everyone who understands, to listen on the first day of the seventh month. 3 And he read in it from the time the sun rose until half the day, opposite the men and the women, and they were understanding, and the ears of all the people were to the document of the law. 4 And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform, and there stood beside him Mattithiah and Shemaiah and Hananiah and Uriah and Hilkiah and Maaseiah on his right, and on his left, Pedaiah and Mishael and Malchijah and Zechariah.
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Notes and References
... There is a variety of small minuses of one to three words, but there are also more significant differences, such as at 4.14 where ‘Now because we share the salt of the palace’ is lacking in the Greek, and at 18.3 where ‘facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning’ becomes ‘from the hour the sun dawned until half the day’, owing both to a minus in the Greek and to the expansion of “from the light” to a phrase meaning ‘from the hour of the dawning of the sun’ (‘to dawn’ being a hapax legomenon, a word occurring only once, in the Septuagint canon). ...
Wooden, R. Glenn
"2 Esdras" in Aitken, James K. (ed.) 2 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint
(p. 200) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
* 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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