Introduction

Summary

THE first volume of this manual edition of the Cambridge Septuagint was prefaced by a brief sketch of its history and plan. In publishing a second volume it will suffice to call attention to fresh details. Some of these have been treated in the introduction to a separate issue of the Psalter; but as the Psalms in Greek may escape the notice of readers who use the complete edition, such anticipations of the present volume are reprinted here together with other particulars which belong to its contents.

1. It is well known that the ninth and tenth Psalms of the Hebrew Bible form a single Psalm in the Greek of the Septuagint, and that this is also the case with the Hebrew Psalms cxiv., cxv. On the other hand each of the Hebrew Psalms cxvi., cxlvii., falls into two Psalms in the Greek. Consequently, there is a double numeration of the Psalms from ix. 22 to cxlvi. 11 (Gk); and in the particular Psalms which are differently divided, there is also to some extent a double numeration of the verses. In this edition the ‘Hebrew’ numbers are added to the ‘Greek’ and distinguished from the latter by being enclosed in brackets.

The Psalter has been broken up into its five books—a division which though not directly recognised in the Greek MSS. is sufficiently marked by the doxologies with which the first four conclude. The twenty-two stanzas of Psalm cxviii. (= cxix.) are parted by slight breaks in the type.