Nothing could be clearer than the burden of evidence calling for the emendation of the Masoretic Text (MT) of Deut 13:7. That evidence includes not simply the Septuagint, Peshitt a, and Samaritan Pentateuch but the attestation of the Septuagint (LXX) reading in Hebrew among the biblical manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The latter, in particular, seem decisive. They strongly suggest that the LXX translator, working in mid-third-century B.C.E. Alexandria, must have based his Greek rendering directly on a Hebrew Vorlage. Chronologically speaking, the argument for the originality, priority, and superiority of the LXX variant seems irrefutable. Most important, with the biblical manuscripts preserved at Wadi Qumran, there is objective evidence for the antiquity, in Hebrew, of that variant: a manuscript whose "typical Hasmonean book hand" suggests a dating of about 125 B.C.E. (1) The particular case of this reading, then, seems consistent with the more general impression that the LXX reflects an earlier stage of the biblical text than does the MT. Specifically, the earliest fragments of the LXX date as early as the mid to late second century B.C.E.: [4QLXXLev.sub.a], 4QLXXNum, and two Greek papyri (P. Fouad 266 and P. Rylands Gk. 458). (2) More or less complete LXX manuscripts are extant from the fourth (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus) and fifth (Alexandrinus) centuries C.E. By contrast, the MT seems to represent a late witness. Its earliest manuscripts date nearly a millennium and a half after the composition of Deuteronomy: the Aleppo Codex (first half of the tenth century C.E.) and Leningrad Codex B19A (1009 C.E.). Even its earliest indirect attestations are relatively late: the Greek translations, Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus, which "correct" the LXX toward the MT and date to the second century C.E. (3) The purpose of this article is to argue that, despite the apparently overwhelming support for the LXX variant, it is the "late" witness of the MT that, uniquely, preserves the chronologically prior reading. The way scholars have sought to interpret the evidence of the versions in this example raises a series of larger questions about the theoretical and methodological assumptions of biblical textual criticism. On that basis, Deut 13:7 provides a valuable test case to reflect on the discipline itself. The separation of textual criticism from exegesis--as if the former were an ancillary "lower criticism" in relation to a purportedly "higher criticism"--is untenable. Equally indefensible is the separation of the full spectrum of biblical studies from Assyriology, whether in matters of textual criticism or exegesis. The understanding of Deut 13:7--both the text-critical crux and the meaning of the passage--requires recourse to Akkadian on the one hand and to the history of Second Temple biblical interpretation on the other.
