One of the exercises in my Biblical Hebrew textbook is translating verses, its really interesting and gives great satisfaction once you see your translation fits with other english translations. I noticed that my translations often look alot like the one’s of Artscroll and sometimes the KJV.
This time the exercise was on Exodus 3:1
ומשה, היה רעה את-צאן יתרו חתנו–כהן מדין; וינהג את-הצאן אחר המדבר, ויבא אל-הר האלקים חרבה
Which I translated as: And Moses was tending the flock of Yitro his father-in-law, priest of Midian and he led the flock beyond/through the desert and he came to the mountain of God, Horev.
The textbook pointed to a little superscript “a”, (in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia edition), attached to האלקים (God), which is a footnote that says: >G*, which indicates that this word is not found in the original Septuagint, and then asks what the difficulty is with “God” in this context.
Obviously the difficulty is that the mountain Horev only became known as mountain of God after the revelation of the Torah was given there, which is still some 16 chapters away from us.
Rashi also notes this and says the Torah already calls it as such because of its role in the future. But what interests me is that its not present in the original LXX.
I mean why would that be the case? Would it be an attempt on the part of the translators of the LXX to make it more logical and call it only the mountain of God after the revelation of the Torah?
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