The editors of the books of Samuel and Kings (= 1-4 Kings LXX) will have a real interest in knowing the earliest and most authentic text that can be found using, according to A. E. Housman ‘the application of thought to textual criticism’2. That said, and given that we do not have a critical edition of the Greek text in the maior series of Göttingen, we have no other option but to continue our tasks of textual criticism with the Hebrew and Greek documents and the other ancient versions which we have at our disposal. Indeed, the editor of the Greek Pentateuch, John W. Wevers, was right when he said that before using the Septuagint for textual comparison with the Hebrew we should ask ourselves if we are really using the ancient LXX (the Old Greek), or, at the least, the eclectic text closest to the original, which can be reconstructed by philological means, and not that of a later stage of language or a concrete recension limited to a specific geographical or chronological framework different from that of the original.

Peer reviewed