The Vocabulary of the Septuagint and Literary Criticism: The Case of Numbers 27,15-23 The text of the Greek canon of Scripture is not uniform, each book requiring individual consideration as a separate unit of translation. Nonetheless, the majority of the Septuagintal books share a broad base of equivalents, whose origin lies in the Greek translation of the Pentateuch. The acceptance of this translation led to the adoption of this base of equivalents by the translators of the rest of the biblical books (1). An examination of the degree to which the Septuagintal translators exhibit consistency in their choice of vocabulary can assist us in establishing the level of confidence with which we can reconstruct the Hebrew Vorlage which lay before the translators. In those places where the translators chose their Greek equivalents freely, any reconstruction of the original Hebrew text must be tentative. In contrast, in those places where the translators were consistent in their choice of equivalents, such consistency enables us to reconstruct the original Hebrew text with a high degree of confidence (2). Several scholars have demonstrated that in some cases, the translators employ variant sets of Greek equivalents to translate the same Hebrew word(s) (3). This tendency has been taken as evidence of the work of various translators, some scholars appealing to such differences to support literary-critical arguments regarding the biblical texts. One such instance is the description of the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus 35–40. Numerous scholars have pointed to the divergences which exist between the manner in which the command to build the Tabernacle (Exodus 25–31) is translated and the description of the implementation of the command (Exodus 35–40). These disparities have led them to conclude that the two units were translated by different hands (4). (1) E.g. E. TOV, “Studies in the Vocabulary of the LXX: The Relation between Vocabulary and Translation Technique”, Tarbiz 47 (1977-1978) 121 (Hebrew). (2) On the use of equivalents to reconstruct the Hebrew Vorlage which lay before the translators, see E. TOV, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research (Jerusalem 1997) 60-71. For a survey of the question of the heterogeneity of the Septuagint, see I.L. SEELIGMANN, “Problems and Perspectives in Modern Septuagint Research”, Textus 15 (1990) 181-201 [Dutch original, 1940]. On the variety between translation styles with respect to technical terms, see, e.g., D.W. GOODING, The Account of the Tabernacle: Translation and Textual Problems of the Greek Exodus (Cambridge 1959), 8-13. Rabin has argued that the translators only exercised strict consistency with regard to terms of theological significance: C. RABIN, “The Translation Process and the Character of the Septuagint,” Textus 6 (1968) 24. (3) For a survey of the scholarship until 1940, see SEELIGMANN, “Problems and Perspectives in Modern Septuagint Research”, 192-194. For a survey of the literature on the use of equivalents to determine the number of translators of the books of the Pentateuch into Greek, see H. KIM, “Multiple Authorship of the Septuagint Pentateuch” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2006) 3-9. (4) A survey of the scholarship on this issue can be found in KIM, “Multiple Authorship of the Septuagint Pentateuch”, 35-38.