While looking into a question about the Greek phrase "ο ων" ("the one being") as a title for Yahweh in Koine Greek literature, I ran across this appellation in LXX Jeremiah. It occurs three times in Swete's edition, each time as a vocative:
Ὁ ὢν [δέσποτα] Κύριε
See Jer 1:6, 14:13, and 39:17 (= 32:17 in Hebrew/English). However, ο ων does not appear in the Rahlfs-Hahart edition. There's no mention of this in Swete's apparatus; Rahlfs-Hanhart does give, "ο ων mss.", acknowledging the existence of the variant but without further explanation of its exclusion. Although I don't have access to Ziegler's edition, I gather that the phrase is included there (also 4:10), since NETS gives:
You That Are, [Sovereign], Lord!
I have found thorough discussions of LXX text critical issues hard to come by. Can anyone offer a summary of the internal and external evidence on which this text critical decision is based?
This question seems important to me because 1) there is no corresponding phrase in any Hebrew manuscript as far as I am aware; 2) LXX Jeremiah is widely considered to be a largely isomorphic representation of the translator's source text[s]; and 3) this would be the earliest (again, to my knowledge) use in Greek literature (outside of LXX Ex 3:14 whence it was drawn) of a phrase which was recycled extensively in later Jewish literature, most notably by Philo.