Information AboutSeptuagint |
|
The Septuagint (), or simply "'''LXX'''", is the name commonly given in the West to the Koine Greek version of the Old Testament , translated in stages between the 3rd to 1st Century BC in Alexandria . Karen Jobes and Moises Silva, ''Invitation to the Septuagint ISBN 1-84227-061-3, (Paternoster Press, 2001). - The current standard for Introductory works on the Septuagint. It is the oldest of several ancient translations of the ; but the prophetic collection changed its aspect by having various Hagiographa incorporated into it. Some of the newer works, those called '' Anagignoskomena '' in Greek, are not included in the Hebrew canon. Among these books are Maccabees and the Wisdom Of Ben Sira . Also, the Septuagint version of some works, like Daniel and Esther , are longer than the Hebrew.Rick Grant Jones, ''Various Religious Topics,'' " Books of the Septuagint ," (Accessed 2006.9.5). Several of the later books apparently were composed in Greek. The authority of the larger group of writings, out of which the Kethuvim were selected, had not yet been determined, although some sort of selective process must have been employed because the Septuagint did not include other well-known Jewish documents such as Enoch or Jubilees or other writings that are now part of the Pseudepigrapha . It is not known what principles were used to determine the contents of the Septuagint beyond the Law and the Prophets. The Septuagint was held with great respect in ancient times; New Testament and by the Apostolic Fathers . While Jews have not used the LXX in worship or religious study since the Second Century AD , recent scholarship has brought renewed interest in it in Judaic Studies. Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls attest to Hebrew texts other than those on which the Masoretic Text was based; in many cases, these newly found texts accord with the LXX version. The oldest surviving codices of LXX date to the Fourth Century AD . NAMING AND DESIGNATION The Septuagint derives its name from ''') . The Latin title refers to a legendary account in the pseudepigraphic Letter Of Aristeas of how seventy-two Jewish scholars were asked by the Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the 3rd century BC to translate the Torah for inclusion in the Library Of Alexandria . A later version of that legend narrated by Philo Of Alexandria states that although the translators were kept in separate chambers, they all produced identical versions of the text in seventy-two days. Although this story may be improbable, it underlines the fact that some ancient Jews wished to present the translation as authoritative. A version of this legend is found in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud (pages 9a-9b), which identifies fifteen specific unusual translations made by the scholars. Only two of these translations are found in the extant LXX. TEXTUAL HISTORY Modern scholarship holds that the LXX was written during the 3rd through 1st centuries BCE. But nearly all attempts at dating specific books, with the exception of the Pentateuch (early- to mid-3rd century BCE), are tentative and without consensus. Later Jewish revisions and ( 128 AD ), Symmachus , and Theodotion . The Three, to varying degrees, are more literal renderings of their contemporary Hebrew scriptures as compared to the Old Greek. Modern scholars consider one or more of the Three to be totally new Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible.Compare Dines, who is certain only of Symmachus being a truly new version; with Würthwein, who considers only Theodotion to be a revision, and even then possibly of an earlier non-LXX version. Around and Hesychius . The oldest manuscripts of the LXX include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BC fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). Relatively complete manuscripts of the LXX postdate the Hexaplar rescension and include the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th Century and the Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th Century . These are indeed the oldest surviving nearly-complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language; the oldest extant complete Hebrew texts date 700 years later, from around 1000 . While there are differences between these three codices, scholarly consensus today holds that one LXX — that is, the original pre-Christian translation — underlies all three. The various Jewish and later Christian revisions and recensions are largely responsible for the divergence of the codices. Relationship between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text The sources of the many differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text have long been discussed by scholars. The most widely accepted view today is that the Septuagint provides a reasonably accurate record of an early Semitic textual variant, now lost, that differed from ancestors of the Masoretic text. Ancient scholars, however, did not suspect this. Early Christians—who were largely unfamiliar with Hebrew texts, and were thus only made aware of the differences through the newer Greek versions—tended to dismiss the differences as a product of uninspired translation of the Hebrew in these new versions. Following the Renaissance , a common opinion among some humanists was that the LXX translators bungled the translation from the Hebrew and that the LXX became more corrupt with time. The discovery of many fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls that agree with the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text proved that many of the variants in Greek were also present in early Semitic manuscripts.Jones, Table: Dead Sea Scrolls-Septuagint Alignments Against the Masoretic Text . These issues notwithstanding, the text of the LXX is in general close to that of the Masoretic. For example, Genesis 4:1-6 is identical in both the LXX and the Masoretic Text. Likewise, Genesis 4:8 to the end of the chapter is the same. There is only one noticeable difference in that chapter, at 4:7, to wit:
This instance illustrates the complexity of assessing differences between the LXX and the Masoretic Text. Despite the striking divergence of meaning here between the two, nearly identical consonantal Hebrew source texts can be reconstructed. The readily apparent semantic differences result from alternative strategies for interpreting the difficult verse and relate to differences in vowelization and punctuation of the consonantal text. The differences between the LXX and the MT thus fall into four categories.See, Jinbachian, ''Some Semantically Significant Differences Between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint'', {Link without Title} . I) ''Different Hebrew sources for the MT and the LXX''. Evidence of this can be found throughout the Old Testament. Most obvious are major differences in Jeremiah and Job, where the LXX is much shorter and chapters appear in different order than in the MT, and Esther where almost one third of the verses in the LXX text have no parallel in the MT. A more subtle example may be found in Isaiah 36.11; the meaning ultimately remains the same, but the choice of words evidences a different text. The MT reads ''"...al tedaber yehudit be-'ozne ha`am al ha-homa"'' not the Judean language in the ears of (or - which can be heard by) the people on the wall . The same verse in the LXX reads according to the translation of Breton "and speak not to us in the Jewish tongue: and wherefore speakest thou in the ears of the men on the wall." The MT reads "people" where the LXX reads "men". This difference is very minor and does not affect the meaning of the verse. Scholars at one time had used discrepancies such as this to claim that the LXX was a poor translation of the Hebrew original. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, variant Hebrew texts of the Bible were found. In fact this verse is found in Qumran (1QIsa''a'') where the Hebrew word "haanashim" (the men) is found in place of "haam" (the people). This discovery, and others like it, showed that even seemingly minor differences of translation could be the result of variant Hebrew source texts. II) ''Differences in interpretation'' stemming from the same Hebrew text. A good example is Genesis 4.7 shown above. III) ''Differences as a result of idiomatic translation issues'' (i.e. a Hebrew idiom may not easily translate into Greek, thus some difference is intentionally or unintentionally imparted). For example, in Psalm 47:10 the MT reads "The shields of the earth belong to God". The LXX reads "To God are the mighty ones of the earth." The metaphor "shields" would not have made much sense to a Greek speaker; thus the words "mighty ones" are substituted in order to retain the original meaning. IV) ''Transmission changes in Hebrew or Greek'' (Diverging revisionary/recensional changes and copyist errors) USE OF THE SEPTUAGINT Jewish use By the and Josephus show a reliance on the Septuagint in their citations of Jewish scripture. Starting approximately in the 2nd Century , several factors led most Jews to abandon the LXX. Christians naturally used the LXX since it was the only Greek version available to the earliest Christians; and since Christians, as a group, had rapidly become overwhelmingly Gentile and, therefore, unfamiliar with Hebrew. The association of the LXX with a rival religion may have rendered it suspect in the eyes of the newer generation of Jews and Jewish scholars. Perhaps more importantly, the Greek language—and therefore the Greek Bible—declined among Jews after most of them fled from the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire into the Aramaic-speaking Persian Empire when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Instead, Jews used Hebrew/Aramaic manuscripts later compiled by the Masoretes; and authoritative Aramaic translations, such as those of Onkelos and Rabbi Yonathan Ben Uziel . Greek-speaking Judaism survived, however, on a smaller scale into the medieval period. Cf. Natalio Fernández Marcos, ''The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Bible,'' Leiden: Brill, 2000. What was perhaps most significant for the LXX, as distinct from other Greek versions, was that the LXX began to lose Jewish sanction after differences between it and contemporary Hebrew scriptures were discovered. Even Greek-speaking Jews — such as those remaining in Palestine — tended less to the LXX, preferring other Jewish versions in Greek, such as that of Aquila , which seemed to be more concordant with contemporary Hebrew texts. Christian use The early Christian Church continued to use the Old Greek texts since Greek was the Lingua Franca of the Roman Empire at the time, since Greek was the language of the Church, and since the Church Fathers tended to accept Philo's account of the LXX's miraculous and inspired origin. Furthermore, Christ and his Apostles in the New Testament quoted from the Old Greek. H. B. Swete, ''An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek,'' revised by R.R. Ottley, 1914; reprint, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1989. When of his Vulgate from Hebrew rather than Greek. His choice was severely criticized by Augustine, his contemporary; a flood of still less moderate criticism came from those who regarded Jerome as a forger. But with the passage of time, acceptance of Jerome's version gradually increased until it displaced the Old Latin Versions. The Vulgate was finally declared the authentic bible of the Catholic Church in the 1546 Council Of Trent . The Hebrew text diverges in some passages that Christians hold to prophesy Christ, and the Eastern Orthodox Church still prefers to use the LXX as the basis for translating the Old Testament into other languages. The Orthodox Church Of Constantinople , the Church Of Greece and the Cypriot Orthodox Church continue to use it in their Liturgy today, untranslated. Many modern critical translations of the Old Testament , while using the Masoretic text as their basis, consult the Septuagint as well as other versions in an attempt to reconstruct the meaning of the Hebrew text whenever the latter is unclear, undeniably corrupt, or ambiguous. Many of the oldest Biblical verses among the Dead Sea Scrolls , particularly those in Aramaic, correspond more closely with the LXX than with the Masoretic text (although the majority of these variations are extremely minor, e.g. grammatical changes, spelling differences or missing words, and do not affect the meaning of sentences and paragraphs).Timothy McLay, ''The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research ISBN 0-8028-6091-5.'' - The current standard introduction on the NT & LXX.V.S. Herrell, ''The History of the Bible'', " Qumran: Dead Sea Scrolls. " This confirms the scholarly consensus that the LXX represents a separate Hebrew-text tradition from that which was later standardized as the Masoretic text. William Priestly, " The Dead Sea Scrolls ." - A detailed explanation with scholarly apparatus. Of the fuller quotations in the New Testament of the Old, nearly one hundred agree with the modern form of the SeptuagintJones, Table: " Instances where the New Testament agrees with the Septuagint ." and six agree with the Masoretic Text.Jones, Table: " Instance where the New Testament agrees with the meaning of the Masoretic texts ." The principal differences concern presumed Biblical prophecies relative to Christ. LANGUAGE OF THE SEPTUAGINT Some sections of the Septuagint may show Semiticism s, or idioms and phrases based on Semitic languages like Hebrew and Aramaic . Other books, such as LXX Daniel and Proverbs , show Greek influence more strongly. The book of Daniel that is found in almost all Greek bibles, however, is not from the LXX, but rather from Theodotion's translation, which more closely resembles the Masoretic Daniel. The LXX is also useful for elucidating pre-Masoretic Hebrew : many proper nouns are spelled out with Greek vowels in the LXX, while contemporary Hebrew texts lacked vowel pointing.Hoffman, Book Review, , 2004. One must, however, evaluate such evidence with caution since it is unlikely that all ancient Hebrew sounds had precise Greek equivalents. Paul Joüon, SJ, ''A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew,'' trans. and revised by T. Muraoka, vol. I, Rome: Editrice Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 2000. BOOKS OF THE SEPTUAGINT See also Table Of Books below. All the books of western Canons of the Old Testament are found in the Septuagint, although the order does not always coincide with the modern ordering of the books. The Septuagint order for the Old Testament is evident in the earliest Christian Bibles (5th century). Some books that are set apart in the Masoretic text are grouped together. For example the Books Of Samuel and the Books Of Kings are in the LXX one book in four parts called Βασιλειῶν ("Of Reigns"); scholars believe that this is the original arrangement before the book was divided for readability. In LXX, the Books Of Chronicles supplement Reigns and it is called Paraleipoménon (Παραλειπομένων—things left out). The Septuagint organizes the minor prophets as twelve parts of one Book of Twelve. Some scripture of ancient origin are found in the Septuagint but are not present in the Hebrew. These include additions to Daniel and Esther . For more information regarding these books, see the articles Biblical Apocrypha , Biblical Canon , Books Of The Bible , and Deuterocanonical Books . The New Testament makes a number of allusions to and may quote the additional books (as Orthodox Christians aver). The books are Tobit , Judith , Wisdom Of Solomon , Wisdom Of Jesus Seirach , Baruch , Epistle Of Jeremy (sometimes considered part of Baruch), additions to Daniel ( The Prayer Of Azarias , the Song Of The Three Children , Sosanna and Bel And The Dragon ), additions to Esther , 1 Maccabees , 2 Maccabees , 3 Maccabees , 4 Maccabees , 1 Esdras , Odes , including the Prayer Of Manasses , and Psalm 151 . The canonical acceptance of these books varies among different Christian traditions, and there are canonical books not derived from the Septuagint; for a discussion see the article on Biblical Apocrypha . PRINTED EDITIONS All the printed editions of the Septuagint are derived from the three recensions mentioned above.
TRANSLATIONS OF THE SEPTUAGINT The Septuagint has been translated into English. The Translation Of Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton , published in 1851, is a longtime standard. For most of the time since its publication it has been the only one readily available, and has been in print continually since. It is based primarily upon the Codex Vaticanus and contains the Greek and English texts in parallel columns. Recently, Brenton's translation has inspired a modern-language version by Paul Esposito, The Apostles' Bible , which is significantly abridged by the omission of the Deuterocanonical material. Peter A. Papoutsis has translated a substantial amount of the Septuagint into English in his translation called ''The Holy Orthodox Bible''. This translation is based on the standard Greek Orthodox biblical and liturgical Septuagint texts. This work is ongoing, and is published in sections as they are completed. Currently there are four volumes that are available as e-books from www.peterpapoutsis.com. The e-book volumes are: Volume I, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deutronomy; Volume II, Jesus son of Naui, Judges, Ruth and 1st Kingdoms; The Psalms that are a revision of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery old English translation of the Psalms used by permission; and Volume IV, which are all twelve of the Minor Prophets. Only Volume I is available in book form. A recent , and set in Monotonic Orthography . Included in the printed edition is a lexical concordance and English-Greek index of both Testaments. On-line there is also an analytical concordance, comprehensive concordance and a grammar. A new translation into English is currently underway for use as the Old Testament portion of the Orthodox Study Bible . This version is expected to be released in Spring 2008, along with extensive commentary from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. "Orthodox Study Bible Old Testament Project The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) has produced the '' New English Translation Of The Septuagint '' (NETS), an academic translation based on standard critical editions of the Greek texts. It is currently in press, and will be published by Oxford Press in late 2007. A provisional edition of the translation is available at the project website. DEFINING ''SEPTUAGINT'' Although the integrity of the Septuagint as a text distinct from the Masoretic is upheld by Dead Sea scroll evidence, the LXX does show signs of age in that textual variants are attested. There is at least one highly unreliable nearly complete text of the LXX, Codex Alexandrinus. Nearly complete texts of the Septuagint are also found in the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, which do not perfectly coincide. But the LXX is a particularly excellent text when compared to other ancient works with textual variants. To reject the existence of a ''Septuagint'' merely on the basis of variation due to editorial recension and typographical error is unjustified. Priestly "A New Look at the Septuagint" The title "Septuagint" is of course not to be confused with the seven or more other Greek versions of the Old Testament, most of which do not survive except as fragments. These other Greek versions were once in side-by-side columns of , Symmachus , and Theodotion , which are identified by particular Semiticisms and placement of Hebrew and Aramaic characters within their Greek texts. One of two Old Greek texts of the Book of Daniel has been recently rediscovered and work is ongoing in reconstructing the original form of the Septuagint as a whole. TABLE OF BOOKS
|