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[AS 3.2 (2005) 205-13] DOI 10.

1177/1477835105059094

RENDERING 'FLESH AND BONES': PAIR REVERSAL AND THE PESHITTA OF JOB 2.5* David J. Shepherd
Briercrest College and Seminary

Over the last few years, the rather curious phenomenon of pair reversal in the Old Testament Peshitta has been noted with respect to various books by A. Gelston\ R.A. Taylor^, M.D. Koster^ G. Greenberg^ and P.J. Williams.^ In returning to the topic in his recent monograph on the Syriac versions of the Gospels, the latter finds the translators' reversal of source text pairs to be widespread in these texts as well. Indeed, Williams' approach suggests the possibility that the phenomenon of pair reversal in the Old Testament Peshitta may best be explained by a combination of factors including the translator's idiom, differing perceptions of logical and chronological sequence and the desire to
'While any shortcomings in what follows remain the responsibility of the author, the present study has benefited from the questions, comments and collected wisdom of P.J. Williams and those attending The Bible of Edessa, a symposium convened by the Peshitta Institute under the auspices of the meeting of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament in Leiden, 2004. ^A. Gelston, The Peshitta of the Twelve Prophets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 71. See also pp. 135-36, 149. 2R.A. Taylor, The Peshitta of Daniel (MPIL, 7; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), pp. 320-21. Similarly, p. 77: '... it should be noted that there is in Syr of Daniel a tendency to reverse the order of matched pairs.' ^M.D. Koster, The Peshitta of Exodus (SSN, 19; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977), pp. 55-56, 583 n. 374. ""G. Greenberg, Translation Technique in the Peshitta to Jeremiah (MPIL, 13; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002), p. 53. ^P.J. Williams, Studies in the Syntax of the Peshitta of 1 Kings (MPIL, 12; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002), p. 155, notes pair reversals in the Peshitta of 1 Kgs 8.29 and 8.59.
2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, and New Delhi)

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harmonize the word order of particular pairs.^ While Williams' work represents a significant step forward, his study does not afford him the luxury of grappling with the question of how one might know whether a particular pair reversal actually reflects, in his words, a 'natural' or 'preferred' word order in Syriac.'' What, we might wonder, are the textual, historical and linguistic factors which conspire in any given case to produce one word order rather than another? The present study takes up a particular instance of pair reversal in the Peshitta of Job with a view to addressing these questions. The beginning of the second chapter of Job finds Satan keen to pick up the gauntlet thrown down yet again by the LORD, as we can see from verse 4 and following: ''And Satan answered the LORD, and said. Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. ^But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh (nO3 " X ICi'^iV "X ::3l), and he will curse 71 P thee to thy face. ^And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life. ^So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. While the Satan's invocation 'Skin for skin' remains an obscure rhetorical flourish, the explicit physical affliction of Job we find narrated in verses 6 and 7 makes it clear that the LORD acquiesces to the Satan's demand to 'touch his bone and his flesh'.* When we turn to the Peshitta of Job, we see that the translation diverges from the Hebrew by rendering cn^otv^ or<f tnirosiX ^atoo 'touch his fiesh or his bone'. While the provision of at< 'or' in place of a 'and' is patient of various explanations, our primary interest in the

^While P.J. Williams, Early Syriac Translation Technique and the Textual Criticism of the Greek Gospels (Texts and Studies 3.2; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2004), pp. 210-13, offers six possible explanations for the reversal of paired items in the Syriac Versions of the Gospels (Error, Relative clause in Second Position, Influence of Tatian's Diatessaron, Preferred Order, Assimilation, Ad hoe Explanations) only the latter three seem germane to the present discussion. While this study offers an explanation of the pair reversal in Job 2.5, instances of pair reversal such as those found in 1 Kings 8 (see n. 5 above) make it unlikely that this explanation will be able to account for all instances of pair reversal in the Peshitta. '^WiUiams, Early Syriac T'ranslation Technique, p. 211. *For a survey of various explanations of the expression 'skin for skin', see D.J.A. Glines, Job ISO (Dallas; Word Books, 1989), pp. 43-45.

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Peshitta's rendering lies in its reversal of the Hebrew pair such that Syriac rtoDt^'bone' now follows t<\sD=i 'flesh'.^ We may begin by observing that the Hebrew presents a word order (nS3--D:iJJ 'bone'-'flesh') here in Job 2.5 which is found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible only in the so-called 'relationship formula' identified by Reiser in passages such as 2 Sam. 19.13, where David instructs Zadok and Abiathar to say to the men of Judah: D X nsjm " U D K 'nx; H Qi H U 'You are my kinsmen; you are my bone and my flesh.'^ Given the apparent incongruity of such a relational expression here in Job 2.5 where the context seems, on the contrary, to be concerned with the affliction of Job's own literal flesh and bones, one might well wonder whether the Syriac translator has not attempted to eliminate any hint of this relational idiom by reversing the order of the pair in his Syriac translation.^^ While this explanation is indeed possible and, on first blush, perhaps even plausible, we will see that evidence from elsewhere in the Peshitta renders it improbable. It is perhaps predictable that in several instances of this idiom (Gen. 2.23; 29.14; and Judg. 9.2), the word order of the Hebrew ("103D:^:: 'bone'-'flesh') is reproduced faultlessly by the Peshitta. However, when we turn to the three appearances of this same expression in 2 Samuel, we discover the very same pair reversal in the Peshitta of Samuel that we encounter in the Syriac of Job. Whereas in the Hebrew of 2 Sam. 19.13, we have seen that David's message to the Israelites is, Dns nO31 'Q^U nnK 'nx 'You are my kinsmen; you are my bone and my flesh,' in Syriac it is )'t\a .'tmao ^ ^ K T .unir 'You are my kinsmen
^Perhaps the Satan's estimation is that a God as powerful as the LORD would not need to touch both Job's bone and flesh to prompt the anticipated curse. It may also be that the translator favoured ari 'or' over o 'and' in order to make sense of the fact that while Job's flesh is exphcitly afflicted in the verses which follow, his bones are not as obviously abused. iW. Reiser, 'Die Verwandtschaftsformel in Gen 2:23', TZ 16 (1960), pp. 1-4. Reiser's conviction is that this shorter idiom (found in Gen. 29.14; Judg. 9.2; 2 Sam. 5.1; 19.13, 14; and 1 Chron. 11.1) was adapted by the Yahwist for use in Gen. 2.23. W. Brueggeman, 'Of the Same Flesh and Bone (GN 2,23a)', CBQ 32 (1970), pp. 532-42, concurs that the Genesis usage is derivative, and that it must be understood in light of what he sees to be the original idiom's primarily covenantal connotations rather than blood connection or kinship. ^^ Amongst those who hear in the present passage an intentional allusion to Adam's exclamation in Gen. 2.23, the suggestion of S. Meier, 'Job 1-2: a Reflection of Genesis 1-3', VT 39 (1989), pp. 184-92, that 'bone and flesh' points to Job's wife, is to be preferred to that of Glines, Job 1-20, pp. 45-46, who sees Job's slain children as the object of the allusion.

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and my flesh and my bone.' So too in the following verse David reminds Amasa: tsoi^a hur^ ,\ta=> r^m 'See, you are my flesh and bone' rather than reproducing the order (or rhetorical question) of the Hebrew: Tim nC3i 'D^:: Xl'^n 'Are you not my bone and my flesh?' Finally in verse 1 of chapter 5, the Israelites come to David in Hebron, no longer proclaiming 13n]X -[icm -jn^:; ^m 'See we are your bone and your flesh' but rather y\^'C^p ^ tri'tm= r<rcn 'See we are your flesh and your bone'.^^ That the Syriac translators insist on reversing the order of this pair not only in Peshitta Job, but also in Peshitta Samuel where the idiom is admirably integrated into contexts of covenant and/or kinship, suggests that we must look further afield for an explanation of this transposition in the Peshitta of Job.^^ Continuing our search requires a return to the English translation with which we began. While the Authorized Version (1611) reproduces the order of the Hebrew of Job 2.5 by supplying 'his bone and his flesh', the much more recent New International Version (1984) reverses the Hebrew pair in the very same way the Syriac does by rendering 'his flesh and bones'. Why the NIV translators preferred 'his flesh and bones' to 'his bone and his flesh' will be quite obvious to any native speaker of the English language: for the same reason most say 'salt and pepper' instead of 'pepper and salt', or 'flsh and chips' instead of 'chips and flsh'. Simply put, they sound better.^"* In other words, while 'bone and flesh' does not collocate in this order in English, 'flesh and bones' certainly doesits separate parts functioning here as a compound synecdoche for the whole of Job's body.^^ That the NIV unn. 25 below for the textual variant (plural: oyioTi^) found in the 12al family of witnesses. ^^While Brueggeman, 'Of the Same Flesh and Bone', pp. 536-37, rightly observes that the idiom must have the connotation of covenant rather than kinship in 2 Sam. 5.1, he also admits that the blood-ties may well be in view in 2 Samuel 19 and in Judg. 9.2. ^''That word order is one component of a definition of collocation is suggested by Y. Choueka, 'Looking for Needles in a Haystack or: Locating Interesting Expressions in Large Textual Databases', in Proceedings of the RIAO International Conference on User-Oriented Content-Based Text and Image Handling (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), pp. 609-23, who defines collocation as '... a sequence of two or more consecutive words, that has characteristics of a syntactic and semantic unit, and whose exact and unambiguous meaning or connotation cannot be derived directly from the meaning or connotation of its components.' ^^E.W. Bullinger's 19th century compendium. Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1898 [repr. Baker, 1987]) does not refer to 'flesh and bones' but does include the comparable collocation 'flesh and blood' (pp. 644-

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derstands Job's body as the intended reference of 'his flesh and bones' in 2.5 is evident from the way it renders the relationship formula in 2 Samuel. In chapter 5 verse 1, for instance, the children of Israel remind David not that they are his 'flesh and bones' but his 'flesh and blood' which is of course the most idiomatically appropriate way of expressing in Enghsh the kind of relationship or kinship suggested by the Hebrew "ira-D^:; collocation.^^ Of course the conclusion that 'flesh and bone/s' resonates in English in a way that 'bone and flesh' does not, begs the question why. While acknowledging that the origins of idioms are often inscrutable, we may point to the answer suggested by the data of the Oxford English Dictionary. According to this redoubtable resource, the collocation 'flesh and bone/s' first appears in English courtesy of the AngloSaxon gospels and their rendering of Lk. 24.39: 'Gast naesb flaesc & ban'.^'^ It seems very plausible that this and Wycliffe's 14th-century Enghsh version of the end of Eph. 5.30 ('And we ben membris of his bodi, of hisfleisch,and of his boonys') may offer at least a partial explanation for why 'flesh and bone/s' sounds more natural than its inverse in English: the expression has been encountered in this order over and over again in arguably the most influential text in the English language over the last thousand years, the New Testament.^^ While these earliest English versions of the New Testament and indeed all others before
45), perhaps because it is a more common idiom in both the New Testament (Mt. 16.17; 1 Cor. 15.50; Gal. 1.16; Eph. 6.12; and Heb. 2.14) and in English. Bullinger understands 'flesh and blood' as one of four varieties of synecdoche of the part, in which a part of a thing is put for the whole thing. Specifically, 'Flesh and Blood is put for the human nature as distinct from the Divine Nature: or for the body of man as animal, mortal, and corruptible.' ^"According to the Oxford English Dictionary (ed. 1989) the earliest occurrence of 'flesh and blood' as a synecdoche for human corporeality in English is to be found in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels (c. AD 1000) rendering of Mt. 16.17: 'Hit be ne onwreah flaesc ne blod'. The same collocation is used to denote 'near kindred' in Cursor M. 4129 (Cott.) 'He es your aun fiess and blod.' (al300) and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice II. ii. 98 (1596). ^''OED 'c.lOOO Ags. Cosp. Luke xxiv.39 Gast naesb flaesc & ban.' (ed. Skeat, 1871-87). For the prevailing influence of religion on the development of language see Mario Pei, The Story of Language (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1965), pp. 206-14. ^^J. Forshall and F. Madden (eds.). The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions Made from, the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850). For further reading, see the expansive bibliography on the influence

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Tyndale were of course versions of the Vulgate, it is also clear that the Latin faithfully followed and thus transmitted to the English, the word order found in the Greek, ^^ Given Luke's facility with Greek, it would be strange if , , , TCveu[xa CTapxa xal oCTxea oux ijzi... ' , , , a spirit does not have flesh and bones,..' in Lk, 24,39 represented anything other than bona fide Greek idiom,^ Indeed, the interference of precisely such a Greek idiom provides an explanation for a curious and previously inexplicable departure in the allusion of Eph, 5,30 to the Septuagint of Gen. 2.23: , , , OCTXouv ex xwv OCTXCMV [XOU xal CTap^ ex XT]^ aoi.py.6c, [xou,,. 'bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh',^^ While the latter follows the Hebrew of Genesis ( , . , nE^Q nom 'D^i^JQ U)iS ... 'bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh'), the influence of contemporary Greek idiom is the most likely explanation for why either Paul or a later glossator reverses the order of the Septuagint when it is cited in the letter to the Ephesians: ex X ] CTapxo? auxou xal ex xwv oaxewv auxou 'from/of his Y? flesh and from/of his bones',^^ Indeed, the Greek preference for plac-

of the Bible on English literature in D,L, Jeffrey, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), pp, 929-36, ^^R, Weber et al. (eds,), Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983) ' , , , spiritus carnem et ossa non habet sicut me videtis habere,,,' (Lk, 24,39) ' , , , de carne eius et de ossibus e i u s , , , ' (Eph, 5,30), For background on the Early English versions see G, Shepherd, 'English Versions of the Scriptures before Wycliff', in G,W,H, Lampe (ed,). The Gambridge History of the Bible, II (Gambridge: Gambridge University Press, 1969), pp, 362-86, and B, Metzger, 'The Anglo-Saxon Version', in his The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford: Glarendon Press, 1977), pp, 443-55, ^See J, Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (Garden Gity: Doubleday, 1981), pp, 107-27, for an analysis of Luke's Greek and a nuanced endorsement of Jerome's early assessment that Luke was 'among all the gospel writers, the most gifted writer of Greek' {inter omnes evangelistas graeci sermonis eruditissimus fuit, Ep. ad Damasum 20,4,4; GSEL, 54,108), ^^According to A, Rahlfs (ed,), Septuaginta id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes (Stuttgart: Wiirttemburgische Biblanstalt, 1935) and compared with A,E, Brooke et al. (eds,). The Old Testament in Greek, According to the Text of Godex Vaticanus: Supplemented from Other Uncial Manuscripts, with a Gritical Apparatus Gontaining the Variants of the Ghief Ancient Authorities for the Text of the Septuagint (Gambridge: Gambridge University Press, 1906-40), ^^See M, Barth, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation and Gommentary (Garden Gity: Doubleday, 1974), pp, 720-38, and P, Rodgers, 'The Allusion to Genesis 2:23 at Ephesians 5:30', JTS 41 (1990), pp, 92-94, for a discussion of the textual status of this clause (attested in (K^) D F G (K) F S lat Ir) and its significance for the K reading of Ephesians 5 (if original) or the history of the chapter's interpretation

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ingCTap^'flesh' before OCTTEOV 'bone' in this collocation will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the diction of Aristotle, who uses the expression quite liberally in, for instance, his Metaphysics.'^^ In light of all this, what then can we say about the preference we see in both the Peshitta of Job and Samuel for t^tma 'Hesh' to come before rsia't^bone'?^'' It seems quite possible that just as in English 'flesh' sounds more natural before 'bone' than after it, so too r^tma sounded more natural to the ancient Syriac ear before rtfast^ rather than after. Why this might have been the case is of course impossible to answer for certain but it is worth noting, I think, that where 'flesh and bones' does appear in Syriac, it seems to do so often in connection with precisely the New Testament texts we have been discussing. So for instance, Ishodad of Merv agrees with the various versions of the Syriac Gospels by supplying rtf^ii^a nfima 'flesh and bones', faithfully following the word order found in the Greek of Lk. 24.39 and apparently imported into the Syriac of Job 2 and 2 Samuel.^ Unburdened by doubts regarding the end of Eph. 5.30 in the Greek,
(if a later gloss). While J.A. Bengel, New Testament Word Studies, 5.2 (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1971 [repr. ed. 1864]), p. 416, suggests that the reversal of the order in Ephesians reflects the prioritizing of the new creation of Christ's 'flesh' over the old natural structure of the 'bones', it is interesting to note that Aquinas {Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians [Albany: Magi Books, 1966]) alludes to the parallel order of this pair in Lk. 24.39 in his explanation of the inversion in Eph. 5.30. ^^See for instance Arist. Metaph., 1058b (transl. H. Tredennick; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1933, 1989): 'For we are now regarding "man" as matter, and matter does not produce difference; and for this reason, too, individual men are not species of "man", although the flesh and bones (al aapxs? xal xi. OCTTS [ed. W.D. Ross; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924]) of which this and that man consist are different.' See also 993al, 1034al, 1035a, 1036b, 1058bl, 1070b. ^'*See M.P. Weitzman, The Syriac version of the Old Testament: An Introduction (University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 56; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 164-205, for a helpful discussion of the relationship between the various books of the Old Testament Peshitta. The fact that here both P-Job and P-Samuel reverse the order of the pair found in the Hebrew text while P-Genesis does not, is simply one more amongst a multitude of interconnections which may be traced between the books of the Old Testament Peshitta. ^^For the former, see M.D. Gibson, The Commentaries of Ishodad of Merv, 1 and 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), ad loc. Regarding the latter, the work of G.A. Kiraz, Comparative Edition of the Syriac Cospels (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), indicates that the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshitta and Harklean versions speak with one voice on the matter. The appearance of the plural (oy.a)'!^ 'your bones') in later textual traditions of 2 Sam. 5.1 (12al family) points to the

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the Syriac tradition cites it in its own tongue more widely and indeed more frequently than any other part of Ephesians 5.^^ Indeed, if the original translators of the Old Testament Peshitta were as familiar with the Syriac versions of these New Testament passages as were the many commentators and interpreters who would later cite them, then the analogy of the English tradition may well be instructive. Perhaps in fact, the Syriac translator or translators responsible for the Peshitta versions of Job and Samuel preferred r<;>3'ti^ 'bone' to follow '*'*m-. 'flesh' for the very same reason that the English translator of the NIV did centuries later, namely, because the Greek of the New Testament itself had influenced the Syriac idiom in much the same way it would later influence English and other European languages. Of course, if the translation of the Old Testament Peshitta was accomplished by Jews in the vicinity of Edessa before they converted to Christianity, as Weitzman suggests, this preference we see in some parts of the Old Testament Peshitta for irrtxaa 'flesh' to come before t<aj'ti^bone' may well be httle more than a vestige of the linguistic legacy of the Hellenism which flowed through Antioch to Edessa. ^^ If, however, as Ter Haar Romeny quite convincingly argues, the Edessan Jews produced the Old Testament Peshitta at some point after their conversion, it seems quite plausible that when the proselytes turned to translate the sacred scripture of their ancestral fathers, it was the writings of their new-found faith which prompted them to reverse this particular pair of words where they encountered them in Job and Samuel.^* Whichever explanation is finally found more persuasive, the present discussion bears witness not only to the complex interplay of idiom and linguistic/literary influence which may lead to transpositions in the Bible versions of any era, but also to the importance of attending carefully even to transpositions as apparently trivial as when, instead
possibility that it is not only the translation of the Old Testament Peshitta which has been influenced, but also its transmission. ^^B. Aland and A. Juckel, Das Neue Testament in syriseher Uberlieferung, 2. Die Paulinischen Briefe, 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), list no less than twentythree citations amongst 14 different sources. In every case, the Syriac faithfully follows the order of the Greek. ^^Weitzman, The Syriac Version of the Old Testament, pp. 258-62. ^*R.B. ter Haar Romeny, 'Hypotheses on the Development of Judaism and Ghristianity in Syria in the Period after 70 CE' in: H. van de Sandt (ed.), Matthew and the Didache: Two Documents from the Same Jewish-Christian Milieu? (Assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. 13-33.

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of bone and flesh, the Syriac translators render the flesh before the bone.

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