Invitation to the Septuagint

Jobes, Karen H., Silva, Moisés

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781493400041
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Crítica e interpretación bíblicas

This comprehensive yet user-friendly primer to the Septuagint (LXX) acquaints readers with the Greek versions of the Old Testament. It is accessible to students, assuming no prior knowledge about the Septuagint, yet is also informative for seasoned scholars. The authors, both prominent Septuagint scholars, explore the history of the LXX, the various versions of it available, and its importance for biblical studies. This new edition has been substantially revised, expanded, and updated to reflect major advances in Septuagint studies. Appendixes offer helpful reference resources for further study.

Part 1
The History of the Septuagint

In this first part of the book, the reader is introduced to the basic facts and concepts related to Septuagint studies. We begin in chapter 1 by defining our terms and describing the historical origins of the Septuagint. We then discuss in chapter 2 the complications that developed in the following centuries as the Greek text underwent various revisions. Chapter 3 provides a summary of the manuscripts that have survived and of the printed editions available today, followed by a description of the contents of the Septuagint in the light of historical developments regarding the biblical canon. Finally, chapter 4 is devoted to the nature of the Septuagint as a translation document.

These chapters are written with the general reader and the beginning student in mind. Although most readers will probably have a basic familiarity with biblical studies, no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew is assumed in this part of the book, and a special effort has been made to explain new terms as they appear. These terms are also included in the glossary and are set in small caps on their first appearance in the text.

1
The Origin of the Septuagint and Other Greek Versions

Defining Our Terms. The term Septuagint, which is used in a confusing variety of ways, gives the inaccurate impression that this document is a homogeneous unit. Important distinctions sometimes need to be made, such as the contrast between the initial translation of the Pentateuch (the Septuagint proper), the earliest translation of other books (the Old Greek), and the modern printed volumes (e.g., Rahlfs).

The First Greek Translation. The Letter of Aristeas, in spite of its legendary character, seems to preserve some valuable information. The Pentateuch was originally translated in Alexandria around the year 250 BCE, and the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures were translated within the following two or three centuries. The precise reason for the translation of the Pentateuch at that time is debated by scholars. Later traditions, which provide little help in sorting out the origins of the Septuagint, are in part responsible for the present terminological confusion.

The Later Greek Translations. For several reasons, such as dissatisfaction with the Septuagint, other attempts were made to render the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Aquila was a Jewish proselyte who tried to represent almost every detail of the Hebrew text consistently. The translation associated with Theodotion has some points of contact with that of Aquila, but its origin is the subject of much scholarly debate. Symmachus produced a careful translation that can be characterized as moderately “literal” while showing sensitivity to Greek idiom. We know little about the Other Versions from antiquity.

Defining Our Terms

Strictly speaking, there is really no such thing as the Septuagint. This may seem like an odd statement in a book titled Invitation to the Septuagint, but unless readers appreciate the fluidity and ambiguity of the term, they will quickly become confused by the literature.1

One might think that the Septuagint is the Greek version of the Bible in the same way that the VULGATE, for example, is the Latin version. The difference between them, however, is much greater than simply the language used. The Vulgate was largely the work of one man (Jerome) at one time (the end of the fourth century) in one place (Bethlehem).2 As a result, the Latin Vulgate as a whole displays considerable unity. Not so with the Septuagint, which was produced by many people unknown to us, over two or three centuries, and almost certainly in more than one location. Consequently, the Greek OT does not have the unity that the term the Septuagint might imply.

Because the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures has such a long and complicated history, most of which is unknown today, the term Septuagint is used to refer to several different things. In its most general sense, the term refers to any or all ancient Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible, just as one might now refer in general to the “English Bible,” with no particular translation in mind. This is the sense in which the term is used in the title of our book—a book about the ancient Greek version(s) of the Hebrew Scriptures. Often, the term (or its abbreviation LXX) is also used to refer to a particular printed edition of the Greek text, whether that edition reproduces the text of a particular manuscript or prints a reconstructed text.3

Given these typical uses of the term Septuagint, one might understandably, though mistakenly, infer that the Greek translation found in a given ancient manuscript or modern edition is a homogeneous text produced in its entirety at one point in time. In fact, no such homogeneity exists in any collection of the Greek books of the OT. Each edition—whether an ancient, hand-copied manuscript such as VATICANUS or a modern, printed book such as the Rahlfs edition—is an amalgam, with each section of the Bible having a long and separate textual history.

The books of the Hebrew Scriptures were originally translated independently into Greek by different translators over several centuries. What we call books were at that time written on individual scrolls. Typically no longer than thirty-five feet, a single scroll could not contain the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures in their entirety, and so each book was usually written on a separate scroll. A different format, the CODEX,4 came into use in the second century of the Christian era. This format made it possible to bind originally separate texts (which would fill many scrolls) into one volume, giving a false impression of homogeneity. Just because the texts were bound together, one should not infer that they shared a common origin. In fact, there was no one uniform Greek version of the entire Hebrew Bible—just individual scrolls that had been copied from other scrolls through the ages. For instance, a medieval Greek codex might contain the text of Genesis copied from a manuscript produced in the first century of our era and containing the translation originally made in the third century BCE in Alexandria, while the text of Esther bound in the same codex may have been copied from a manuscript produced in the fourth century of our era and containing a translation made in the first century BCE in Jerusalem.

The particular collection of Greek texts of the biblical books that compose the earliest one-volume Bibles, such as Codex SINAITICUS and Codex Vaticanus, usually came to be by the historical happenstance of whatever texts were at hand, irrespective of their origin and character. Therefore, whatever one may say about the history and characteristics of the Greek text of one biblical book may not be true of the others, even though they are bound together in one codex. Because modern CRITICAL EDITIONS of the Septuagint are based on the ancient manuscripts, the same misleading appearance of homogeneity exists today.

When one enters the highly specialized world of textual criticism, the term Septuagint takes on a more precise and technical sense. It may be used specifically to distinguish the oldest Greek translation from subsequent translations and revisions of the Greek. If the term is used in this narrower sense, it refers only to the original Greek version of the Pentateuch, for that was the first part of the Hebrew Bible translated in the third century BCE. The remaining books of the Hebrew canon were translated by different people in different places during the next two or three centuries. It has become customary, however, to extend the term Septuagint to refer to the complete Greek corpus of the Hebrew Scriptures (plus some additional books) as found in codices of the Greek Bible (e.g., Codex Vaticanus) and in modern printed editions (e.g., Rahlfs).

It is probably better to refer to the original translation of books other than the Pentateuch as the OLD GREEK (OG) so as to distinguish them from the original translation of the Pentateuch and from the later revisions and new translations. (So, for example, we use OG Daniel to distinguish it from Theodotion Daniel.) When referring to these initial Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures as a whole, some scholars prefer the combined abbreviation “LXX/OG” as a continual reminder of the diversity that characterizes the corpus. Specific citations of the critical editions (Rahlfs or Göttingen) are conventionally specified as, for instance, LXX Psalm 23, though some writers might use OG Psalm 23.

However, when the Greek version of a biblical book survives in more than one form, it is not always poss...