David Knoll (forum)
http://community.logos.com/forums/p/24648/189391.aspx
You can only do textual criticism of the LXX if you get the variants. For that you need the Göttingen Septuagint. But you need to distinguish between textual criticism of the LXX and textual criticism of the OT. You can do some sort of critical work on the text of the OT using an eclectic edition of the LXX that has already been prepared for you (Like the Rahlfs edition) but your data are limited to one LXX variant for each OT reading. So it depends on the amount of data you wish to evaluate and the text you wish to reconstruct :LXX , OT or the LXX as a preliminary step for the reconstruction of the OT.
Vincent Setterholm Replied: Tue, Oct 12 2010 5:38 PM
http://community.logos.com/forums/p/8393/182035.aspx
I have a hard time imagining the reader who can make good use of Rahlfs but is incapable of making good use of Göttingen. Both require knowledge of Greek to read with ease, both have critical apparatuses that discuss variants. Göttingen include more texts that aren’t found in other editions (such as the Alpha-/L-Text of Esther) so even if you aren’t worried about apparatuses, but you want access to the texts that commentaries deal with, Göttingen is worth considering.
The Göttingen text is the next generation Septuagint. If you look at new scholarship on the Septuagint (including the NETS translation), work generally follows Göttingen where it is available, and then Rahlfs for those books where Göttingen is incomplete. So I don’t really understand the notion that Göttingen is only for advanced text critical work. That’s sort of like saying that the NA27 (or the forthcoming NA28) is only for advanced text critical work, and for lay people, Stephanus or Erasmus or Westcott & Hort are good enough. All of those are usable Greek New Testaments, but surely there are many people who benefit from the text critical work that went into producing the NA27 without being text critics themselves.
If you want to read the LXX today, Rahlfs is still a solid choice, since it is complete. But Göttingen is the direction things are heading.