Textorah

Ben Sira 46

1
גבור בן חיל יהושע בן נון, משרת משה בנבואה. אשר נוצר להיות בימיו, תשועה גדולה לבחיריו.
A warrior, son of valor, Yehoshua son of Nun, minister to Moshe in prophecy; who was made a guardian in his days, a great salvation to His chosen ones.
Κράταιος ἐν πολέμοις Ἰησοῦς Ναυῆ, καὶ διάδοχος Μωυσῆ ἐν προφητείαις· ὃς ἐγένετο κατὰ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ μέγας ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ ἐκλεκτῶν αὐτοῦ, ἐκδικῆσαι ἐπεγειρομένους ἐχθροὺς, ὅπως κληρονομήσῃ τὸν Ἰσραήλ.
Joshua the son of Nave was valiant in the wars, And was the successor of Moses in prophecies, Who according to his name was made great For the saving of the elect of God, And taking vengeance of the enemies that rose up against them, That he might set Israel in their inheritance.
2
להנקם נקמי אויב, ולהנחיל את ישראל. מה נהדר בנטותו יד, בהניפו כידון על עיר.
To avenge vengeance on the enemies, and to inherit Israel. How admirable when he stretched his hand, when he waved his javelin at a city.
Ὡς ἐδοξάσθη ἐν τῷ ἐπᾶραι χεῖρας αὐτοῦ, καὶ τῷ ἐκκλῖναι ῥομφαίαν ἐπὶ πόλεις;
How great glory got he, when he did lift up his hands, And stretched out his sword against the cities!
3
מי הוא לפניו יתיצב, כי מלחמות יהוה נלחם.
Who is it who could stand against him? For the wars of ADONAI were fought.
Τίς πρότερον αὐτοῦ οὕτως ἔστη; τοὺς γὰρ πολεμίους Κύριος αὐτὸς ἐπήγαγεν.
Who before him has so stood? For the Lord himself brought his enemies over to him.
4
הלא בידו עמד השמש, יום אחד כשנים היה.
Was it not by his hand that the sun stood still, a single day as if it were two?
Οὐχὶ ἐν χειρὶ αὐτοῦ ἀνεπόδισεν ὁ ἥλιος, καὶ μία ἡμέρα ἐγενήθη πρὸς δύο;
Did not the sun go back by his means? And was not one day as long as two?
5
כי קרא אל אל עליון, כאכפה לו אויביו מסביב. ויענהו אל עליון, באבני ברד ואלגביש.
For he called to God the Highest, as his enemies surrounding forced him; and God the Highest answered him, with stones of ice and hail.
Ἐπεκαλέσατο τὸν ὕψιστον δυνάστην, ἐν τῷ θλίψαι αὐτὸν ἐχθροὺς κυκλόθεν· καὶ ἐπήκουσεν αὐτῶν μέγος Κύριος.
He called upon the most high Lord, When the enemies pressed upon him on every side; And the great Lord heard him.
6
השליך על גוי אויב, ובנוסם האביד כולם. למען דעת כל גוי חרם, כי צופה יהוה מלחמתם.
He threw them down on the enemy nation, and as they fled destroyed them all; so that all battling nations knew, that ADONAI guards their wars.
Ἐν λίθοις χαλάζης δυνάμεως κραταιᾶς· κατέῤῥαξεν ἐπʼ ἔθνος πόλεμον, καὶ ἐν καταβάσει ἀπώλεσεν ἀνθεστηκότας· ἵνα γνῶσιν ἔθνη πανοπλίαν αὐτῶν, ὅτι ἐναντίον Κυρίου ὁ πόλεμος αὐτοῦ, καὶ γὰρ ἐπηκολούθησεν ὀπίσω δυνάστου.
And with hailstones of mighty power He made the battle to fall violently upon the nations, And by their falling he destroyed them that resisted, That the nations might know all their strength, Because he fought in the sight of the Lord, And he followed the Mighty One.
7
וגם כי מלא אחרי אל, ובימי משה עשה חסד. הוא וכלב בן יפנה, להתיצב בפרע קהל.
And he also was fully following God, and in the days of Moses did piety; he and Kalev son of Yefuneh, to hold fast against the wild assembly.
Καὶ ἐν ἡμέραις Μωυσέως ἐποίησεν ἔλεος, αὐτὸς καὶ Χαλὲβ υἱὸς Ἰεφοννῆ, ἀντιστῆναι ἔναντι ἐχθροῦ, κωλῦσαι λαὸν ἀπὸ ἁμαρτίας, καὶ κοπάσαι γογγυσμὸν πονηρίας.
In the time of Moses also he did a work of mercy, He and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, In that they withstood the enemy, And withheld the people from sin, And appeased the wicked murmuring.
8
להשיב חרון מעדה, ולהשבית דבה רעה. לכן גם הם בשנים נאצלו, משש מאות אלף רגלי. להביאם אל נחלתם, ארץ זבת חלב ודבש. ויתן לכלב עצמה, ועד שיבה עמדה עמו.
To turn anger from the congregation, and to end their evil report; thus the two of them were spared from the six hundred thousand infantry. To bring them to their inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey; and He gave to Kalev wisdom and until old age it stayed with him.
Καὶ αὐτοὶ δύο ὄντες διεσώθησαν ἀπὸ ἑξακοσίων χιλιάδων πεζῶν, εἰσαγαγεῖν αὐτοὺς εἰς κληρονομίαν, εἰς γῆν ῥέουσαν γάλα καὶ μέλι.
And of six hundred thousand people on foot, they two alone were preserved To bring them into the heritage, Even unto the land that floweth with milk and honey.
9
Καὶ ἔδωκεν ὁ Κύριος τῷ Χαλὲβ ἰσχὺν, καὶ ἕως γήρους διέμεινεν αὐτῷ, ἐπιβῆναι αὐτὸν ἐπὶ ὕψος τῆς γῆς, καὶ τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ κατέσχε κληρονομίαν·
The Lord gave strength also unto Caleb, Which remained with him unto his old age: So that he entered upon the high places of the land, And his seed obtained it for a heritage:
10
להדריכו על במתי ארץ, וגם זרעו ירש נחלה. למען דעת כל זרע יעקב, כי טוב למלא אחרי יהוה.
To guide him upon the heights of the land, and also his seed took an inheritance; that all the seed of Yaakov know that it is good to fully follow after Adonai.
ὅπως ἴδωσι πάντες οἱ υἱοὶ Ἰσραὴλ, ὅτι καλὸν τὸ πορεύεσθαι ὀπίσω Κυρίου.
That all the children of Israel might see That it is good to follow the Lord.
11
והשופטים איש בשמו, כל אשר לא נשא לבו. ולא נסוג מאחרי אל, יהי זכרם לברכה.
And the judges, each man by his name, every one who didn't self-glorify; and didn't durn away from following God, may their memories be blessed.
Καὶ οἱ κριταὶ ἕκαστος τῷ αὐτοῦ ὀνόματι, ὅσων οὐκ ἐξεπόρνευσεν ἡ καρδία, καὶ ὅσοι οὐκ ἀπεστράφησαν ἀπὸ Κυρίου, εἴη τὸ μνημόσυνον αὐτῶν ἐν εὐλογίαις·
And concerning the judges, every one by name, Whose heart went not a-whoring, Nor departed from the Lord, Let their memory be blessed.
12
[תפרחנה עצמותם כשושנה], ושמם תחליף לבניהם.
[May their essences flower as a rose], and may their names pass on to their children!
τὰ ὀστᾶ αὐτῶν ἀναθάλοι ἐκ τοῦ τόπου αὐτῶν, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτῶν ἀντικαταλλασσόμένον ἐφ υἱοῖς δεδοξασμένων αὐτῶν.
Let their bones flourish out of their place, And let the name of them that were honored be continued upon their children.
13
אוהב עמו ורצוי עושהו, המשואל מבטן אמו. נזיר יהוה בנבואה, שמואל שופט ומכהן. בדבר אל הכין ממלכת, וימשח נגידים על עם.
Beloved of his people, desired of deeds, chosen from the womb of his mother; a nazirite of ADONAI in prophecy, Shmuel, the priestly judge. At the word of God he established a monarchy, and he anointed princes over hte people.
Ἠγαπημένος ὑπὸ Κυρίου αὐτοῦ Σαμουὴλ προφήτης Κυρίου κατέστησε βασιλείαν, καὶ ἔχρισεν ἄρχοντας ἐπὶ τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ.
Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, beloved of his Lord, Established a kingdom, and anointed princes over his people.
14
במצות יהוה צוה עדה, ויפקד אלהי יעקב.
With the commandment of ADONAI he commanded the congregation, and the God of Yaakov took note of them.
Ἐν νόμῳ Κυρίου ἔκρινε συναγωγὴν, καὶ ἐπεσκέψατο Κύριος τὸν Ἰακώβ.
By the law of the Lord he judged the congregation, And the Lord had respect unto Jacob.
15
באמונת פיו דרוש חזה, וגם בדברו נאמן רועה.
In his faithful mouth he expounded a vision, and in his trusted word guidance.
Ἐν πίστει αὐτοῦ ἠκριβάσθη προφήτης, καὶ ἐγνώσθη ἐν πίστει αὐτοῦ πιστὸς ὁράσεως.
By his faithfulness he was found a true prophet, And by his word he was known to be faithful in vision.
16
וגם הוא קרא אל אל, כאפכה לו אויביו מסביב. בעלתו טלה חלב, וירעם משמים יהוה.
And he also called to God, as his enemies surrounding forced him; as he offered up a lamb's suet, ADONAI thundered from heaven.
Καὶ ἐπεκαλέσατο τὸν Κύριον δυνάστην, ἐν τῷ θλίψαι ἐχθροὺς αὐτοῦ κυκλόθεν, ἐν προσφορᾷ ἀρνὸς γαλαθηνοῦ.
He called upon the mighty Lord, When his enemies pressed upon him on every side, When he offered the sucking lamb.
17
בפרע אדיר נשמע קולו, ויכנע נציבי צר, ויאבד כל סרני פלשתים.
With a mighty crash His voice was heard, and He subdued the nobility of the enemy, and destroyed all the Philistine tyrants.
Καὶ ἐβρόντησεν ἀπʼ οὐρανοῦ Κύριος, καὶ ἐν ἤχῳ μεγάλῳ ἀκουστὴν ἐποίησε τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ.
And the Lord thundered from heaven, And with a great noise made his voice to be heard.
18
Καὶ ἐξέτριψεν ἡγουμένους Τυρίων, καὶ πάντας ἄρχοντας Φυλιστιείμ.
And he destroyed the rulers of the Tyrians, And all the princes of the Philistines.
19
ועת נוחו על משכבו, העיד יהוה ומשיחו. כפר ונעלם ממי לקחתי, וכל אדם לא ענה בו. וגם עד עת קצו, נכון נמצא בעיני יהוה.
And when it came time for his final rest, he testified to ADONAI and His anointed. Did I take bribes or secret payments from anyone? And not one person answered him. And until the the end of his time, he was found right in the eyes of ADONAI.
Καὶ πρὸ καιροῦ κοιμήσεως αἰῶνος ἐπεμαρτύρατο ἔναντι Κυρίου καὶ χριστοῦ, χρήματα καὶ ἕως ὑποδημάτων ἀπὸ πάσης σαρκὸς οὐκ εἴληφα· καὶ οὐκ ἐνεκάλεσεν αὐτῷ ἄνθρωπος.
And before his long sleep he made protestation in the sight of the Lord and his anointed, I have not taken any man’s goods, so much as a shoe: And no man did accuse him.
20
ובעיני כל חי, וגם אחרי מותו נדרש. ויגד למלך דרכיו, וישא מארץ קולו בנבואה.
And in the eyes of all life, and also after his death he expounded. And he told the king his ways and lifted from the ground his voice in prophecy.
Καὶ μετὰ τὸ ὑπνῶσαι αὐτὸν προεφήτευσε, καὶ ὑπέδειξε βασιλεῖ τὴν τελευτὴν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἀνύψωσεν ἐκ γῆς τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ, ἐν προφητείᾳ ἐξαλεῖψαι ἀνομίαν λαοῦ.
And after his death he prophesied, And showed the king his end, And lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy, To blot out the wickedness of the people.

How it works

A parallel reader for the Hebrew Bible and its oldest witnesses: the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, each with an English translation where one is available.

Reading a chapter

Choose a book and chapter at the top, or type a reference into Go to (Isa 53:11, 1 Sam 3, sam 3:4, ii kgs 2, ben sira 51). Book names can be abbreviated; a name shared by numbered books (sam, kings, chr, macc) opens the first of them unless you add the number. The arrow keys move between chapters, and the address bar keeps a link to the verse you clicked, so you can bookmark or share a place.

Each row is one verse. Rows follow the Masoretic verse numbering, so the Hebrew, JPS and Samaritan columns line up exactly. The Septuagint is numbered differently in many places (Psalms, Jeremiah, Exodus 35–40, parts of Kings, Proverbs, Daniel, and dozens of chapter boundaries). Its verses are placed against their Masoretic counterparts, and a small tag such as 50:3 shows the Septuagint's own number when it differs. Greek verses that have no Masoretic counterpart (for example the Prayer of Azariah in Daniel 3) appear in reading order as separate rows marked LXX.

Columns

The chips at the top switch columns on and off. Drag a chip (or a column heading) to reorder; with a chip focused, the ← → keys move it. Your choice is remembered. The Samaritan columns appear only in Genesis–Deuteronomy; the scrolls column appears wherever a manuscript survives, including Ben Sira. Columns marked † are licensed for non-commercial use only.

Words: lexicon and concordance

Hover over any Hebrew word (Masoretic, Samaritan or scroll) or any Greek word to see its dictionary form, Strong's number, a short gloss and its grammar. Click the word to open the concordance on the right: the full lexicon entry, then every occurrence, grouped by book — for Hebrew, separately for the Masoretic text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the scrolls (with the manuscript named). Click a reference to go there; every form of the word in the chapter is highlighted. You can also type a word or a Strong's number into Lexicon at the top.

In the Masoretic text, a Ketiv (the written form, unpointed) is shown in grey immediately before its Qere (the form read aloud); both carry the Qere's dictionary entry.

Variants

The Samaritan Pentateuch and every scroll are compared word by word with the Masoretic text of the same verse:

In the scrolls, letters in brackets are a modern editor's reconstruction and are never counted as variants; letters with a dotted overline are uncertain; ◦ is a trace of an unreadable letter. Manuscripts written in paleo-Hebrew script, and divine names that square-script scrolls write in paleo-Hebrew, are shown in paleo-Hebrew letters (switchable under Display). Hover a manuscript to see its edition. Display → Dead Sea Scrolls can hide the manuscripts that agree with the Masoretic text, or strip the reconstructions to show only what survives.

The comparison is automatic. It aligns words by spelling, so a transposition or a long rewritten passage can be marked imperfectly, and the spelling rule cannot tell a suffix from a vowel letter. Treat the colours as a finding aid and check a critical edition before building an argument on a reading.

Books outside the Hebrew Bible

Besides the Septuagint-only books, the book list has 1 Enoch and Jubilees (“Other ancient books”), shown in R. H. Charles's English with the Qumran copies beside them, and Psalms has a chapter 151. Their scroll copies — like those of Tobit and Ben Sira — have no verse numbers in the data: each fragment is placed by its published identification, and its lines are spread over those verses, so treat the exact verse boundaries as approximate. Aramaic copies (Tobit 4Q196–199 and all of Enoch) are marked “Aramaic” and have no word lookups.

Rabbinic citations

The small ❝ under a verse number opens the passages of rabbinic literature that cite that verse — Mishnah, Tosefta, both Talmuds, Midrash, Targum and Kabbalah (and, if you tick the box, later halakhah, liturgy and thought) — fetched live from Sefaria, so it needs an internet connection. Each passage is listed with Sefaria's date for the work it comes from and a link to read it there. Sefaria's links include allusions and discussions as well as quotations; those it classes as quotations are marked. It works for the Hebrew Bible, Ben Sira (by Kahana's numbering, e.g. the Talmud's quotations of Ben Sira), Tobit and Jubilees. For 1 Enoch, which the rabbis do not quote, it lists instead the Zohar's passages about a “Book of Enoch”.

How the Septuagint is aligned

Each Greek verse is placed by combining three things: the standard table of Septuagint–Masoretic verse correspondences (SIL's lxx.vrs), the table of Masoretic–English numbering differences, and a comparison of the English of Brenton's Septuagint with the JPS English, which confirms each pairing and catches displaced verses. Where no Masoretic verse is similar enough, the Greek verse stands on its own row.

The Greek word data

No openly licensed word-by-word analysis of Brenton's Greek exists, so each Greek word is matched to the most frequent analysis of the same form in the openly licensed Swete Septuagint (Morpheus parser), then to a lexicon entry. About 95% of words are identified. Parses of ambiguous forms (e.g. αὐτοῦ, τοῦ) can be wrong; the card says "automatic parse" as a reminder.

About the texts

What each column is, where it comes from, and what to keep in mind when reading it.

Masoretic Text — Westminster Leningrad Codex

The Masoretic text is the Hebrew Bible as transmitted by the Masoretes, scribal scholars active in Tiberias and elsewhere roughly from the 7th to the 10th century, who fixed its vowel points, accents and marginal notes (the Masorah) around a consonantal text that was already essentially stable by the 1st–2nd century CE. The Leningrad Codex (St Petersburg, Firkovich I B 19 A), copied in 1008/1009 CE in the Ben Asher tradition, is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible; the slightly older Aleppo Codex lost most of the Torah in 1947. It is the base of the standard critical editions (BHK, BHS, BHQ).

The Westminster Leningrad Codex is the public-domain digital transcription of it maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center at Westminster Theological Seminary. In this edition a Ketiv appears as its own unpointed word before the pointed Qere.

JPS 1917 — The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text

The first English Bible translation produced by a committee of Jewish scholars for the Jewish Publication Society of America, under Max L. Margolis as editor-in-chief, published in 1917. Its language deliberately follows the cadence of the King James and Revised Versions, but its renderings follow the Masoretic text and Jewish exegetical tradition, and it keeps the Hebrew chapter and verse numbering. It is in the public domain; its successor, the New JPS (Tanakh, 1985), is not. The electronic edition used here writes the divine names as “HaShem” and “G-d”.

Septuagint — Brenton's Greek text and the Updated Brenton English

The Septuagint is the Jewish translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. The Torah was translated in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE (the Letter of Aristeas tells the legend of 72 translators under Ptolemy II); the other books followed over the next two centuries. Because it was made from Hebrew manuscripts older than the Masoretic text, it often preserves a different Hebrew text: Jeremiah is about one-seventh shorter and differently ordered (a shorter Hebrew text of this type survives at Qumran in 4QJerb,d), Job is about one-sixth shorter, and Esther and Daniel have long additions. It was the Bible of Philo, Josephus and the New Testament writers, and became the Old Testament of the Greek church, which in turn led Jewish translators (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion) to produce closer revisions.

Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton published an English translation in 1844 and a Greek–English edition in 1851. His Greek is essentially the Sixtine (Roman) edition of 1587, which follows the 4th-century Codex Vaticanus. It is older and less critical than the modern editions of Rahlfs (1935) and Göttingen, which are under copyright. The English column is the Updated Brenton (Adam Boyd, 2020), Brenton's translation with modernised spelling and wording, dedicated to the public domain.

Samaritan Pentateuch †

The Torah as preserved by the Samaritan community of Mount Gerizim (Nablus), written in the Samaritan script, a descendant of the paleo-Hebrew alphabet. It differs from the Masoretic text in about 6,000 places, most of them spelling or grammar; in about 1,900 of them it agrees with the Septuagint. Some readings are distinctively Samaritan, above all the commandment to build an altar on Mount Gerizim added after the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:17; Deut 5:21) and “Gerizim” for “Ebal” in Deut 27:4. Many others — harmonising expansions that copy one passage into its parallel — are shared with “pre-Samaritan” Qumran manuscripts such as 4QpaleoExodm and 4QNumb, showing that the text type is older than the Samaritan schism.

European scholars learned of it in 1616, when Pietro della Valle brought a manuscript from Damascus; it was printed in the Paris (1645) and London (1657) Polyglots, collated by Benjamin Kennicott (1776–80) and edited critically by August von Gall (1914–18). The Hebrew here is Aleksandr Sigalov's digital text, based on Kennicott and checked against von Gall; the English is Sigalov's adaptation of the King James Version to the Samaritan readings. For modern scholarship see Abraham Tal's edition of MS Shechem 6 and Stefan Schorch's critical editio maior.

Dead Sea Scrolls and other Judean Desert manuscripts †

Between 1947 and 1956 the remains of about 950 manuscripts were found in eleven caves near Khirbet Qumran. Some 230 are biblical — every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther is represented, from tiny fragments to the complete Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) — dating from about 250 BCE to 68 CE. They are a thousand years older than the Leningrad Codex. Most are close to the ancestor of the Masoretic text (“proto-Masoretic”), but others agree with the Septuagint (4QJerb, 4QSama in places), with the Samaritan text type, or with neither — evidence that several forms of the text circulated side by side before the Masoretic text prevailed.

Manuscripts from other sites fill out the picture: Masada (before its fall in 73/74 CE; excavated by Yigael Yadin, 1963–65) and the Bar Kokhba refuges of Wadi Murabba'at and Naḥal Ḥever (132–135 CE), whose biblical texts are already virtually identical with the Masoretic text, as well as Naḥal Ṣe'elim, Wadi Sdeir and Naḥal Arugot. The official publication is the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series (Oxford, 1955–2010).

The transcriptions here are those of Martin G. Abegg Jr., James E. Bowley and Edward M. Cook, as converted by the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC). Each manuscript is labelled with its siglum (e.g. 4QIsad), its DJD number, its find-site and the column or fragment and line. Besides the biblical manuscripts, the copies of Ben Sira, Tobit, 1 Enoch, Jubilees and Psalm 151 are shown under those books. Not every manuscript is in the dataset — notably the Greek scrolls (such as the Greek Minor Prophets from Naḥal Ḥever) are absent, and the Masada Ben Sira scroll is added separately (see Ben Sira).

Ben Sira

The Wisdom of Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira, composed in Hebrew in Jerusalem around 190–180 BCE and translated into Greek by his grandson in Egypt after 132 BCE (his prologue explains the difficulty of rendering Hebrew into Greek). It belongs to the Septuagint and to the Catholic and Orthodox canons (Latin Ecclesiasticus) but not to the Jewish one, although the Talmud and midrash quote it. Its Hebrew text was lost to the West until 1896, when Solomon Schechter, Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson identified medieval copies in the Cairo Genizah; ancient Hebrew copies then emerged at Qumran and Masada.

About two-thirds of the Hebrew is now known, from six medieval Genizah manuscripts (A–F, 10th–12th century) and three ancient ones: 2QSir (2Q18; Sir 6:14–15, 20–32), the acrostic of Sir 51:13–20, 30 in the Psalms Scroll 11QPsa (columns 21–22), and the Masada scroll (Mas1h), found by Yigael Yadin in 1964 in a casemate room of the fortress and published in 1965: seven columns with Sir 39:27–44:17, copied in the early 1st century BCE, little more than a century after the author. Its agreement with Genizah manuscript B showed that the medieval copies descend from the ancient Hebrew rather than from a translation back from Greek or Syriac.

Here the book is shown in Brenton's Greek and English. The Hebrew column is the Kahana edition, as transcribed on Hebrew Wikisource and distributed by Sefaria (CC BY-SA): a running text built on the Genizah manuscripts, in which words in [brackets] are Kahana's restorations; chapters with no surviving Hebrew are empty. Kahana numbers the verses in the Hebrew order — in the Greek, two blocks of chapters 30–36 are transposed — so his verses have been matched to Brenton's by content for this site, with his own number shown as “Heb.” where it differs. The scrolls column has the three ancient witnesses; the Masada text is Eric Reymond's transcription from bensira.org. Their placement was made for this site by matching the text; there is no Masoretic text to compare them with, so no variants are marked.

Psalm 151

The Septuagint Psalter ends with a short psalm “outside the number”, in which David recalls tending his father's sheep, his anointing and his victory over Goliath. It belongs to the Greek, Syriac and Ethiopic Bibles but not to the Hebrew one, and was long thought to have been composed in Greek — until the Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa, published by James Sanders in 1965) turned out to contain a longer Hebrew original in its 28th column, as two poems (151A on David's music and anointing, 151B, broken off, on Goliath). The Greek is a condensed translation of them. The psalm is shown as chapter 151 of Psalms, with the scroll's lines under the Greek verses they correspond to.

Tobit

A Jewish novella of the Eastern diaspora (probably 3rd–2nd century BCE): the pious exile Tobit, blinded in Nineveh, sends his son Tobias to recover money in Media, guided by the angel Raphael in disguise; on the way Tobias marries Sarah and drives off the demon Asmodeus. It is in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Orthodox canons. It survives in two Greek forms — a shorter one (Codices Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, printed by Brenton) and a longer one (Codex Sinaiticus) — and the Qumran copies, four in Aramaic (4Q196–199) and one in Hebrew (4Q200), published by Joseph Fitzmyer in 1995, side with the longer form, which is now generally taken as nearer the original. Their verse placement here follows Fitzmyer's identifications.

1 Enoch

A collection of five works ascribed to Enoch, the seventh from Adam who “walked with God” (Gen 5:24): the Book of the Watchers (ch. 1–36, 3rd century BCE), on the angels who descended to the daughters of men; the Parables (37–71); the Astronomical Book (72–82); the Dream Visions (83–90), with the “Animal Apocalypse” of Israel's history; and the Epistle of Enoch (91–108). It is quoted in the Letter of Jude (1:14–15) and is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, whose Ge'ez version is the only complete text; Greek survives for about a third. Józef Milik published the Aramaic fragments from Qumran Cave 4 in 1976: eleven copies, covering every part except the Parables, the oldest from around 200 BCE. The English is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation from the Ethiopic (public domain). The Astronomical scrolls (4Q208–211) contain a much longer calendar than the Ethiopic; only their few passages that match chapters 76–82 are placed.

Jubilees

A retelling of Genesis and Exodus 1–14 as revealed to Moses on Sinai by an “angel of the presence”, dated by a calendar of 49-year jubilees and a 364-day solar year (mid-2nd century BCE). Like 1 Enoch it is canonical only in the Ethiopian church, whose Ge'ez version is the only complete text; parts survive in Latin, Syriac and Greek quotations. Fragments of about fifteen Hebrew copies were found at Qumran, more than of most biblical books, and are published in DJD 13 (VanderKam and Milik, 1994) and DJD 23. The English is R. H. Charles's 1917 translation (public domain).

Lexicon and concordance data

Hebrew words carry the analysis of STEPBible's Translators Amalgamated Hebrew OT (Tyndale House, Cambridge): extended Strong's numbers — James Strong's 1890 numbering, subdivided to follow the Brown–Driver–Briggs lexicon (1906) — with morphology from the ETCBC and an abridged BDB for definitions. Samaritan and scroll words take the analysis of the Masoretic word they correspond to, or, where they differ, of the same written form elsewhere in the Masoretic text. Greek words are matched through the Swete Septuagint and the Morpheus parser to STEPBible's Greek lexicon, which draws on Abbott-Smith (1922) and Liddell–Scott–Jones.

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