A literary critical comparison of the Masoretic Text and Septuagint of Daniel 2-7

• Main Author: Meadowcroft, T. J.
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1993
• Subjects: 230
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.657659

This thesis applies the tools of literary or narrative criticism to a comparison of the Masoretic Text (MT) and Septuagint versions of Daniel 2-7, the chapters which MT preserves in Aramaic. The approach treats both versions as literary creations with their own integrity, as a means of discovering more about both versions, their relationship to one another, and their provenance. The thesis is structured on the premise that chs 2-7 form a chiasm in the Aramaic. Accordingly, the central pair, chs 4-5, is treated first, followed by chs 6 and 3 and finally the outer pair, chs 2 and 7. At each stage, the relationship of the particular story in question to the rest of chs 2-7 is also compared. As a result of the study three types of conclusion are drawn: literary, thematic and historical. In literary terms, the MT narrator is more covert. As a result motivation and point of view are conveyed in MT by a variety of literary devices including the use of irony, the manipulation of dialogue and deployment of characters in the stories. The more overt Septuagint tends to anticipate the story and to attribute motives and emotions to characters. These differences are most acute in Daniel 4 because of the presence of Nebuchadnezzar as first person narrator, but can be observed in all the other narratives of Daniel 2-7. There is greater internal consistency evident in MT, and a greater congruency with other bibilical narratives. All of this suggests that MT is a more deliberately crafted form than its counterpart. There is also literary evidence for a differing structure within the wider narrative unit. MT binds the central pair of stories (chs 4 and 5) together primarily with the common Nebuchadnezzar material. This is not the case in Septuagint, where chs 4 and 5 have less in common with one another yet chs 3 and 4 are more closely linked than in MT. This gives some credence to the view that the more chronological chapter order in P967 - chs 7 and 8 between chs 4 and 5 - may have been original to the Old Greek.