The Text of Genesis 17:14

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Genesis 17 plays a pivotal role in providing an accurate understanding of the rite of circumcision in the Hebrew Bible, early Judaism, and early Christianity. This is for at least two reasons: this text is the first canonical occurrence of the command to circumcise, and it is the only text in the Hebrew Bible that provides an explicit rationale for Israel's performance of circumcision its male infants.1 Consequently, it behooves the scholar attempting to assess the significance of circumcision to pay careful attention to the text-critical problems of this passage. One misstep here and the whole enterprise is bound to go astray. Although there are a number of variant readings in the ancient textual witnesses to the chapter, this article will focus what is arguably the most important textual matter-v. 14.2 Given the disconcerting fact that scholars have almost universally overlooked the textcritical issue of Gen 17:14, it is hoped that the careful attention to the external and internal evidence for the verse provided here will lay a sound foundation for further interpretation of Genesis 17 and the function of circumcision in ancient Israel, and subsequently in early Judaism and Christianity. I. REASSESSING THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE TEXT OF GENESIS 17:14 According to Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the MT of Gen 17:14 reads as follows: ... This reading is supported by a number of the minor versions, including the Vulgate, the Syriac, and the Targumim.3 Modern Bibles render the passage accordingly, as the selection of translations below demonstrates: RSV: Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant. NEB: Every uncircumcised male, everyone who has not had the flesh of his foreskin circumcised, shall be cut off from the kin of his father. He has broken my covenant. NIV: Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant. NJB: The uncircumcised male, whose foreskin has not been circumcised-that person must be cut off from his people: he has broken my covenant. Yet, as the textual apparatus of BHS alerts the reader, other early manuscript witnesses to Gen 17:14 provide a somewhat different reading. So, for instance, the majority of Septuagintal witnesses (LXX) read as follows: ... the uncircumcised male, who shall not be circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin the eighth day, that soul shall be cut off from his people for he has broken my covenant. In Wevers's critical edition of the LXX translation of Genesis, the reader can see that the Greek manuscripts are in unanimous agreement the fact that the phrase on the eighth occurs in 17:14. Nonetheless, there are minor differences in a small number of LXX manuscripts: (1) the b family has the preposition ... preceding the phrase ... and (2) MS 370, an eleventh- century manuscript from the t family, has a slightly different phrase: ... Despite these variations, all the LXX witnesses to Gen 17:14 refer to the eighth day.6 The evidence of a number of early writers confirms that, at an early date, the LXX contained this reference to the eighth day. For instance, Philo (QG 3.52) cites LXX Gen 17:14 and discusses whether a child is really cut off from his people if he is not circumcised the eighth day.7 Further, Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho twice alludes to a version of Gen 17:14 in which the eighth day is mentioned (chs. 10, 23). Also following the LXX, Old Latin witnesses to Gen 17:14 contain a reference to the eighth day.8 Presumably, such strong early evidence for the LXX reading could lead some scholars to the conclusion that the MT reading is secondary and that the text should therefore read: And the uncircumcised male, who shall not be circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin the eighth day, that soul shall be cut off from his family for he has broken my covenant. …