hi Susan :o) ... Two questions, thank you for your time. (1) When you say, "...despite any evidence that any text critical issue is at stake," are you saying there is no uncertainty about the original Hebrew text -that those terms ARE used in the oldest manuscripts? (2) What is the minor discrepancy with the Greek in 7:22?

@Daisy (1) Yes, although rather than "no uncertainty" we might say, "no evidence of uncertainty". I would encourage you to read Emanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible if you're interested in learning bout the types of evidence we're dealing with.

When you ask about "oldest manuscripts" we can look at the Dead Sea Scrolls (3rd C. BCE - 2nd C. CE) for readings that may be different from the Masoretic Text (10th C. CE) on which modern translations are based. In this case the DSS include fragments of 2:7 and 6:17 but do not include the words of interest. (Some websites may reconstruct the entire verse based on the MT.)

We can also look at the Septuagint (translated ~2nd-3rd C. BCE; earliest complete mss 4th C. CE, but substantial earlier fragments) for evidence of an alternative Hebrew Vorlage (i.e. the Hebrew from which the Greek was translated). In this case the only difference is 7:22, where LXX has ὅσα ἔχει πνοὴν ζωῆς (presumably כל אשר נשמת חיים באפיו ). This is lacking the redundant נִשְׁמַת־רוּחַ "breath of breath" of the Heb.

BHS, the standard edition of the Hebrew Bible, makes mention of the fact that ruach is missing in the Greek (also Latin), which if I understand correctly means they think there's at least a possibility that this reflects a text that is superior to the MT.

(1) I can't understand which term you think is best: No Uncertainty OR No Evidence of Uncertainty. (2) The only difference is 7:22 --are you saying that's the only verse we have available? (3) What Hebrew term are you quoting there; don't know parts of it, only recognize the 5th line up on the left.

(4) lacking the redundant breath of the Hebrew --where is THAT redundant breath -which manuscript? I'm interpreting that to be way significant. (5) they think ruwach is missing from the Hebrew and they think this reflects a text superior to the MT --> sorry again, it's hard to read through all these lines-- are you saying that the scholars think the superior text HAS ruwach? Which verse?

I will have to get the book -thank you for that. I saw the DDS (parts of it) and was looking for Genesis 2:7 and it was almost there but missing so I wrote to the Leon Levy library and they said it wasn't in the caves. :o(

@Daisy (1) "No evidence of uncertainty." We are missing evidence for the first x00 years of the text, depending on your opinion about when that was written. Many of us think the text was faithfully transmitted prior to that, but that's a personal decision.

(2) None of those verses is in the DSS. We have the LXX, from which I reconstructed the minor change difference in the Hebrew.

(3) The Hebrew of 7:22 has nishmat ruach ḥayyim (I think the "w" in "ruwach" is a mistake of automated transliterations -- the word is one syllable in Hebrew, formally nišmat rûaḥ ḥayyı̂m). This "breath of breath" is redundant. The LXX only has pnoē, the standard translation of neshamah (of which nishmat is a a form), so missing any representation of ruach.

(4) "The Hebrew" is the Masoretic text (MT), of which "L" (Leningrad Codex) is the standard exemplar, 10th C. CE.

(5) BHS has a footnote that simply notes the variant in the LXX. I took a brief look at the standard commentaries, which don't seem to be particularly interested in this. Speiser accepts the MT, translating:

> the faintest breath of life.

And then notes:

> Literally "the breath of the spirit of life."

("Spirit" is a common translation of ruach.)

I'm getting there, slowly but surely... (1) I'm hearing you say that you think the question is a good one, despite "no evidence of uncertainty," which means that you are pretty sure that it is certain -that those Hebrew words ARE what I wrote they are in the verses that I quoted. Am I right?

(2) Do we only have 7:22 in oldest Hebrew manuscripts (MT is fine)? (3) I hear you saying that "breath of breath" is redundant but I'm also hearing you say that it's like that in the Leningrad Codex but not in the Greek -am I right?

(4) Septuagint actually has a tiny footnote (variant) that says what the Leningrad Codex says? If I'm getting this right, I do not think this is redundant.

@Daisy (1) 7:22 wasn't in the question at the time that comment was made. Other than that, I see no evidence of any difference from MT. (2) I don't think I understand the question.

(3) L has two different words sometimes translated "breath" -- "breath of breath" or, if you like "breath of spirit". It's probably being used poetically somehow, and Hebrew uses lots of redundancy for various nuances, so it's not to say it's somehow bad or wrong -- pleonastic may be a better term than redundant. But right, LXX only has one word there despite having available in Greek two different words that consistently match up with those two Hebrew words.

(4) What sort of LXX are you looking at? Greek? (Rahlfs, Swete, etc) English? (NETS or Brenton). Some texts will footnote it just because it's different from MT. Other times it's actually a text critical note about extant LXX manuscripts.

Got most of them... So we only have 7:22 in older manuscripts?

It seems right to me, if they wrote "neshamah ruach chay" that they knew what they were doing, they were aware they could have written neshamah chay or ruach chay if they were appropriate. What would a scholar, etc. need in order to derive something significant from a passage like this, where the Hebrew terms are translated as one?

@Daisy No, the manuscript evidence is the same for all of them -- the DSS are missing these verses, or only contain fragments without the words of interest, so we're left with the MT as far as the Hebrew witnesses go.

7:22 is different only because the Greek text does not appear to reflect precisely the Hebrew of the MT, possibly indicating that the Greek translator was looking at a Hebrew text that was different. There are myriad factors which I'm not qualified to consider when deciding whether this was truly a variant in the (hypothetical) Hebrew parent text or whether the translator introduced the change. (A third possibility is that it showed up during the transmission of the Greek.)

Of note, 2 Sam 22:16 and Ps 18:16 (Eng. v. 15) also have that pair nišmat rûaḥ where it seems to mean "blast of breath" or some such.

How do I get a hold of the MT? Thank you for all of your help.