New Dead Sea Scroll Fragments

Haaretz, the New York Times, and the AP (among others) report on some new Greek Minor Prophets fragments from the Nahal Ḥever Cave of Horrors, including a few nice images. Presumably these are from the same scroll as the famous Kaige Greek Minor Prophets scroll.

Genizah Research Newsletter

In the latest newsletter of the Genizah Research Institute, Stefan Reif reports on a conference on the Hebrew texts of Ben Sirah.

They also highlight a new book on Greek translations in Byzantine Judaism, which will be of interest to those interested in the Greek Bible:

Nicholas de Lange, Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Greek Bible Translations in Byzantine Judaism (Mohr Siebeck, 2015).

Revelation and the LXX

I just read a good article by Juan Hernández on the text of the LXX in allusions in Revelation,  "Recensional Activity and the Transmission of the Septuagint in John's Apocalypse: Codex Sinaiticus and Other Witnesses", in Die Johannesoffenbarung: Ihr Text und ihre Auslegung (eds. Michael Labahn and Martin Karrer; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012). Juan argues that (with a few minor exceptions), the allusions in Revelation do not appear to have been made to conform to the Old Greek. Instead, the initial text of the Apocalypse is at times good evidence for the existence of precursor texts to the later Greek revisions of the LXX (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion). The most interesting example? Revelation 15:3 may provide the earliest evidence for a longer Greek text (parallel to the MT) including Jeremiah 10:7 (not in the Old Greek).