by Martin A. Childs
There is a book entitled "Ancient Library of Qumran & Modern Biblical Studies
" by Frank Moore Cross, Jr.
which is now in its third edition, published just in 1995.
I am presently unable to lay hold of this revised edition,
although I have located several copies in nearby libraries and
the work is still in print. What I was able to immediately
lay hold of is the first edition of this work, published in
1956. Much of the discussion centers around the identity of
the Qumran community, but a good deal of attention is paid to the
findings within Cave IV.
At that fairly early point after the
discovery of the fragments, there seems to have been little
question that the Septuagint
in general
preserves a superior textual tradition than that known to us
through
The Masoretic
tradition.
Earlier findings of a nearly complete copy of Isaiah in Cave I at
first seemed to indicate that the MT was a highly accurate
preservation of the underlying "original" text.
However, the Septuagint version of that book is not derived from
a text which varied greatly from the MT, and additionally, it is
widely recognized as being one of the poorest translations in the
LXX.
All of the findings in Cave IV are older than this copy of Isaiah, which itself was the oldest in Cave I, and the oldest ever found to that point. This is significant because there are Hebrew versions which more closely match the Greek and Samaritan translations (these two themselves being closely related) than that preserved as the Hebrew "textus receptus." Included in Cave IV was a nearly complete copy of the Greek translation of the twelve Minor Prophets. It is quite meaningful that such a work has been discovered in Palestine.
That said, the work in this early edition woefully neglects that Greek scroll, or indeed, any great discussion of Greek works found there in Cave IV. The book also spends considerable time musing over potential manuscript families, which while interesting, inevitably leads to mere speculation.
Swete's "Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek
" yielded a particularly
helpful footnote on the subject of the Tetragrammaton which gave
a citation to, of all things, the Hatch-Redpath
Concordance to the Septuagint
, which I do own. From there,
the matter became more transparent.
The later Greek versions do not contain the Tetragrammaton per se, but instead a kind of peculiar transliteration of it - in caps, Pi-Iota-Pi-Iota - which of course approximates the Hebrew orthography. The Hatch-Redpath Concordance lays out the occurrence of this oddity in numerous non-LXX Greek versions.
Below I will describe the versions as best as I am currently able. Let me also make note here, however, that the Concordance does NOT record a uniform appearance in every location of each version. Copies of Aquila's version have the largest number of this PIPI form, which was originally rendered in primitive Hebrew. It is impossible to tell from the information I now have before me whether this is due to the incompleteness of those copies, or due to some intentional departures within the versions so affected.
Aquila - (during the reign of Hadrian, 117 - 138 A.D.) "The purpose of his translation was to set aside the interpretation of the LXX, in so far as it appeared to support the views of the Christian Church." - Swete, Introduction, p. 31. Aquila's version is principally known to us through Hexapla fragments and in some palimpsest scraps found in the Cairo Genizah, dating back to the sixth century A.D.
Theodotion - (The Paschal Chronicle, following Epiphanius, dates the work of Theodotion 184 A.D. but this is questionable.) "Theodotion seems to have produced a free revision of the LXX rather than in independent version. The revision was made on the whole upon the basis of the standard Hebrew text." - Swete, Introduction, p. 43. It is unclear from Swete if there are sources for this text other than what parts were used by Origen to fill lacunae in his Septuagint text. The specimen given by Swete, from Jeremiah 40 (39) 14-26, employs the Kurios form.
Symmachus - (Perhaps under Commodus, 180 - 192, A.D., in any event, before 228 A.D. when Origen wrote his earliest commentaries.) "But if Symmachus had any antagonist in view, it was probably the literalism and violation of the Greek idiom which made the work of Aquila unacceptable to non-Jewish readers. So far as we can judge from the fragments of his version which survive in Hexaplaric MSS., he wrote with Aquila's version before him, and in his efforts to recast it made free use of both the LXX and Theodotion." - Swete, Introduction, p. 51.
Origen's Hebrew Text (a transliteration)
Origin's Fifth Column (Quinta)
Origen's Sixth Column (Sexta)
Other Unknown Sources
"Other Ancient Greek Versions. The researches of Origen (A.D. 185 - 235) brought to light three anonymous versions besides those of Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus; from their relative position in the columns of his great collection they are known and the Quinta, Sexta, and Septima respectively." - Swete, Introduction, p. 53.
Swete also gives an extensive catalog of manuscript and fragments of the LXX (p.122 ff.), all of which yield dating more recent than Origen's testimony, however ancient those Hexaplaric fragments might themselves be. Always keep in mind, however, that Origen heavily harmonized his Alexandrine text to conform as closely as possible to the "original" Hebrew. But even in the Aquila version, there is evidence that the Tetragrammaton was READ Kurios, in that when a column was short, "ku" appeared instead. See especially note 4, pp. 39-40, Swete, Introduction. Swete also makes reference to the Cairo Genizah Palimpsest and this old manuscript contains the Tetragrammaton in some fashion, but the hand is sixth century uncials.
Finally, the Greek texts at Cave IV did indeed employ the Tetragrammaton in its Paleo-Hebrew form, as apparently did documents in all languages represented there. These would be the oldest manuscripts of Septuagint sources in existence.
You could investigate this further by seeing volume VIII of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990 - "The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever". This volume apparently contains both a brief discussion of this peculiar feature as well as plates displaying the characteristic.
We now have print
versions of the LXX in 
Range Four - Septuagint Studies
