THE SEPTUAGINT IN CONTEXT
Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible BY
NATALIO FERNANDEZ MARCOS
TRANSLATED BY WILFRED G.E. WATSON
BRILL LEIDEN - BOSTON - KOLN 2000
‘This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Published with financial support from the Direccidn General del Libro, Archivos y Bibliotecas del Ministerio de Educacién y Cultura, Spain
Library of Congress Cataloging~in Publication data
Fernandez Marcos, Natalio, 1940- [Introduccion a las versiones griegas de la Biblia. English] The Septuagint in context : introduction to the Greek version of the Bible / by Natalio Fernandez Marcos ; translated by Wilfred G.E. Watson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9004115749 1. Bible. Greek—Versions. {. ‘Title.
BS38.F4713 2000 221.4°8—de21 00--041378 CIP
Deutsche Bibliothek — CIP-Einheitsaufmahme
Fernandez Marcos, Natalio : The Septuagint in context : introduction to the Greek version of the bible / by Natalio Fernandez Marcos. Transl. by Wilfred G.E. Watson. Leiden ; Boston ; Kéin : Brill, 2000 ISBN 90-04-11574-9
ISBN 90 04 115749
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CONTENTS
Foreword xi Acknowledgements xv PART ONE : THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING 1 Biblical Greek and its Position within hoiné 3
a. History of Research oe «33 b. Comparison with the Papyri 6 c. The New Approach of Bilingualism 9 d. The Technical Language of Hellenistic Prose .... 12 c. Conclusions 13 Select Bibliography... 16
2 The Septuagint as a Translation .. 18 a. An Unprecedented Event .......... 18 b. A Range of Translation Techniques .. 22 c. Modern Linguistics and the Translation Process 26 Select Bibliography 30
PART TWO THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
3 The Letter of Pseudo-Aristeas and Other Ancient Sources ...... 35 a. The Jews of Alexandria ......ceceeeeeceeseseeteeeeeteeneees . 35 b. Description and Contents of the Letter ..... . 36 6 FSROTI TY ec esneivisian ceria binecoenyeneteen 39 d. Date of Composition and Sources 41 c. Purpose of the Leiter 43 f. The Letter in Jewish Tradition .. 44 g. Later Legend concerning the Origin of the
Septuagint h. The Completion of the Septuagint .... 4 Select Bib tiograbloy: “ui sccsevaseoccnsoncncasseteantidoerssutissesisusnscesatveeusbendesd
vi
CONTENTS
Modern Interpretations of the Origins of the
Septuagint ox. ce yeeedieediccaveeiei escent ntienedgieeentansaee 53
a. The Septuagint as a Greek Targum (P. Kahle)
b. An Alexandrian Origin but in the Maccabean Period (€. 146 BOE) o......cscssesessssssesseecnesceeeeerenenteneeeneneees 57
c. A Palestinian Origin ... 58 d. A Liturgical Origin 59 e. The Transcription Theory ... 61 f. Other Theories 62 g. The Proto-Septuagint .... a 64 elect Bibliography ....ececcececeeereccee . 66 The Septuagint and the Hebrew Text «...cccceeeceeies 67 a. Two Texts Face to Face 67 b. Qumran and the Septuagint .. 70 c. The Use of the Septuagint in Hebrew Textual
Criticism 76 d. Textual Criticism and Literary Criticism cn Select Bibliography ....cecccccscssosccecesesssssneseneneereseseeneneneneneeneseneents 83 The Double Texts of the Greek Bible and Targumism 85 a. Introduction ... . 85 b. Double Texts in the Septuagint 0.0... 88 C. Targus o....secescecssesesessesesscseesssssnsesesecseenensessencareersntanes 101 Select. Bibliography .... 103
PART THREE
THE SEPTUAGINT IN JEWISH TRADITION Aquila and his Predecessors_ .... 09 a. Ancient Witnesses ............. li b. The Sources of this Version . 113 G. Characteristhes. <0) 0dtnerdieiensr «LBD d. Current Research and Future Prospects 19 Select Bibliography .........1cssssssesessessessessensseeeseeseseeeeneneaeonsnenenees 21 Symmachus the Translator 23 a. Ancient: Witnesses: 2s..c222...ccesesscccucscit cect cacbierabesetcacesonsts 23
10
11
13
CONTENTS
b. Sources for Symmachus .
c. Characteristics oc. d. Current Research and Future Prospects .... we Select Bibliography .......cccccccccetscse estes teste tetereeeenereeenenecenenes
Theodotion and the xatye Revision 00... eeeeenerereeeee a. Ancient Witnesses .... b. Sources ....ceeee c. Characteristics .........
d. Current Research and Future Prospects Select Bibliography
Other Ancient Versions a. The Quinta (E’) b. The Sexta (2°)
c. The Septia .......... d. The Hebrew .... e f. g.
. The Syrian
The Samariticon . Josephus the Translator ... Select Bibliography
Jewish Versions into Mediaeval and Modern Greek ...... a. WiMeSSES oo. eececeeeeeeeceetaeeeneneteeeetentnenes
b. Relationship to Earlier Jewish Versions Select Bibliography
PART FOUR THE SEPTUAGINT IN CHRISTIAN TRADITION
Transmission and Textual History 0... a. Introduction ote b. External Transmission .. c. Internal Transmission ..... d. Textual Restoration .. Select Bibliography
Origen’s Hexapla a. Origen and his Knowledge of Hebrew .
viii
17
CONTENTS
bi “THe Hexele it cetireicopere sie dnimemseinndonsitanmas c. The Fifth Column of the Hexapla and the secunda .... Select Bibliography
The Lucianic Recension
a. Ancient Witnesses ........
b. History of Research
c. Characteristics
d. Current Research and Future Prospects: The Proto-Lucianic Text ..
Select Bibliography
232 236
Hesychian Recension or Alexandrian Group of Manuscripts? a. Ancient Witnesses .... ce b. The History of Research 0.0... eececeeceeeeeeseeneenes 241 c. Hesychian Recension or Alexandrian Revision? Select Bibliography
Other Revisions a. Pre-Hexaplaric Revisions ... b. Para-Hexaplaric Revisions .... Select Bibliography
Indirect Transmission: Biblical Quotations 1.0.0.0 258 a. The Septuagint in Hellenistic Jewish Historians ........ 260 b. The Septuagint in the Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha
2
. The Septuagint in Philo and Josephus d. The Septuagint in the New Testament, Apostolic
Fathers and Apologists e. The Septuagint in Inscriptions and Papyri / f. Quotations from the Fathers and the Septuagint ...... 269 Select Bibliography ..eccccsccccecserecrerecrecssssssesseseseesseneesennisenanetnens 271
Aporiai and Biblical Commentaries a. Aporiat b. Commentaries ... Select Bibliography
CONTENTS
19 The Literature of the Catenae
a. Formation of the Literary Genre . b. Formal Aspects of Catenary Manuscripts d
. Textual Contents of the Catenae . Methodology for Studying the Catenae e. Catenary Manuscripts in Spanish Libraries Select Bibliography
Cc
PART FIVE THE SEPTUAGINT AND CHRISTIAN ORIGINS
20 The Religion of the Septuagint and Hellenism a, Introduction: ssac.acincsaeaoads b. The Hellenisation of the Jews eed c. The Hellenisation of the Septuagint «0.0...
d. The Formal Hellcnisation of the Wisdom WHEN GS, csssecesssdigesssccisiuss sdetotnideteentedhcasuatanstesiveaVoignsingesee Select Bibliography. 2:2: .c.ctdticescuist i cpictescnsesenedachstetuctnve aeteecencae
21 The Septuagint and the New Testament a. Introduction’ -cicccamunetnoncdosaaniee b. Quotations of the Old Testament in the New .......... c. Other Areas of Influence Select Bibliography
22 The Septuagint and Early Christian Literature ... a. The Bible of the Fathers... b. The Septuagint and Christian Greek c. The Septuagint Translated Select Bibhography
Glossary of Technical Terms .... Index of Modern Authors Index of Biblical Quotations Abbreviations
305 305 306 311
314 318
320 320 323 332 335
338 338 343 346 361
363 369 382 389
FOREWORD
When the first edition of this work, published in 1979, ran out it seemed like a good opportunity to prepare a second edition, revised and brought up to date. Every field of biblical research, but particu- larly the history of the biblical text, has undergone profound changes over the last twenty years as a result of the new information pro- vided by the documents from Qumran. In addition, recent studies on the Septuagint as a literary work have helped to give vital stimu- lus to study of the Greck versions of the Bible.
The title of this book expresses the main concern that, as a selec- tive criterion, has been my guide during the course of its produc- tion. I am aware that the Septuagint is not a translation but a “collection of translations”, but I also think that an introduction of this kind should include other translations of the Bible into Greek — some better known, others preserved only as fragments — whose authors turned to the Hebrew text with more or less success but with the firm resolve of transmitting the original better than their predecessors. This activity of correcting and improving the first ver- sion of the Bible, the Septuagint, began the day after the transla- tion, as can be conjectured judging by the Jewish papyri we have, and went on until the Byzantine cra. We can even extend this process to the publication of the trilingual Pentateuch of Constantinople in 1547. The special history of the text of the Greek Bible, which cul- minated in the production of Origen’s Hexapla, precludes separat- ing these two sources of a single channel of transmission.
Tt is mandatory to mention here two classics in this area of research: H. B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (revised by R. R. Ottley, Cambridge 1914), which is a mine of information and assimilated knowledge, indispensable even today as a reference work, although, of course, obsolete in many respects; and S. Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study (Oxford 1968), produced to complement and update the previous work. To these must be added the recent publication by the French specialist scholars M. Harl, G. Dorival and O. Munnich, La Bible grecque des Seplante: Du judaisme hellenistique au christianisme ancien (Paris 1988). These three works are present in this Introduction. Hence it often refers to them for information and
xi FOREWORD
aspects of research which they include, whereas I am more expan- sive in those chapters that include cither recent achievements or the questions most discussed in recent years. A mere glance at the list of contents is enough to give some idea of the new topics or those points which, while not completely new, are tackled from a different perspective.
Nor should there any need to say that this Introduction claims to be selective rather than exhaustive. It does not treat systematically such important topics as the language of the Septuagint, the manu- scripts, the papyri and the principal editions of the Greck Bible, the problems peculiar to each book or the history of research on the Septuagint. Most of these points are studied extensively in the introductions by Swete, Jellicoc or Harl et af. mentioned above. On the other hand, the specialised bibliographies by S. P. Brock, Ch. T. Fritsch, 8S. Jellicoe, A Classyied Bibliography of the Septuagint (Leiden 1973), and C. Dogniez, Bibliography of the Septuagint: Bibliographie de la Sepiante 1970-1993 (Leiden 1995), can be used for guidance on most of these topics (I will refer to these two works respectively as CB and Dogniez BS throughout this volume}. However, in the last chap- ter I have inserted a short guide to the secondary versions, some of which, like the Old Latin or the Coptic versions, are of primary importance for restoring the Old Greek.
I could also have tackled in a more systematic way such significant topics as:the translation techniques of the various books, the manu- script illustrations, or the Greck Bible and information technology. However, it was necessary to circumscribe in some way the frame of reference of this Introduction in order to keep to a logical plan and to remain within reasonable limits, particularly with regard to the length of the book. Instead, space has been given to material that, in my opinion, has so far not been properly discussed, such as the double texts of the Greck Bible and Targumism, the Jewish versions into mediaeval and modern Greek, and several chapters in section IV such as those on other revisions, biblical quotations, the com- mentaries, and the calenae. Also, I have considered it useful to include two new chapters in this second edition, one on the Septuagint and the Hebrew text and other on the Scptuagint and early Christian literature, in view of the special attention given to these topics in recent publications.
To conclude, I hope that this modest contribution to the study of the Greek text of the Bible will be useful not only to a small and
FOREWORD xiii
select group of Septuagintalists but also to biblical scholars in gen- eral, philologists and historians of antiquity, and for all those inter- ested in this important cultural legacy.
I would like to thank M* Isabel Tejero, research assistant in the Departamento de Filologia Biblica y de Oriente Antiguo in the Instituto de Filologia del CSIC, for her work in putting the first edi- tion of this book into computerised format.
Natalio Fernandez Marcos
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Wilfred G. E. Watson for his willingness to trans- late this Introduction from the Spanish. During the translation process we have been in frequent contact in order to clarify the meaning of difficult passages. Kristin De Troyer read the English manuscript and made some valuable suggestions. Although the original manu- script was completed in 1996, some subsequently published titles have been incorporated into the English edition, especially in the notes and bibliography.
I am grateful to Brill Academic Publishers, especially to Mr Hans van der Meij and Annick Mcinders-Durksz, for their interest in this translation and their friendly cooperation to carry it out.
Madrid, January 2000 Natalio Fernandez Marcos
“icing taprcadeeiliaes si wise = 2 Z % “ zi ace iercpeyn Ane ae
PART ONE
THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
CHAPTER ONE
BIBLICAL GREEK AND ITS POSITION WITHIN KOINE
a) History of Research
Until the close of the 19th century, biblical Greek was understood to be the Greek of the Bible as opposed to secular Greek. Some theologians, impressed by the peculiaritics of these texts, the Semitic loans, the Hebraising constructions etc., had reached the conclusion that it was a special language of the Bible, which in some way had come under divine inspiration.’ And although since Deissmann’s stu- dies this expression has fallen into disfavour, it continues to be used to indicate in a concise way some typical elements of the language of the LXX, the pseudepigraphic writings preserved in Greck and the New Testament, such as syntactic Semitisms, and the neologisms coined to express Jewish~Christian concepts. In any event, it would be preferable to speak of translation Greek since although not all the writings included are strictly translations, they arose conditioned by the bilingualism of their authors or are influenced to a different extent by a translation language, the language of the LXX.
The New Testament writings began to appear in the sccond half of the Ist century ce? at the same time as the apogee of the Attic movement® and of the literary komé of a Plutarch or the historian Flavius Arrianus. Attention was only paid to the past as the litera- ture of the golden century and the literary writers of the Hellenistic
' See, for example, R. Rothe, Zur Dogmatik, Gotha 1863, 238: “Therefore we can with reason speak of a language of the Holy Spirit. Because in the Bible it is evi- dent how the divine Spirit operating in revelation takes the language of a particu- lar people, chosen to be the recipient and makes it a characteristic religious variety by transforming linguistic elements and existing concepts in a mould specially suited for the Holy Spirit. This process is clearly evident in NT Greek.” An idea which the theologian H. Cremer promotes in the foreword to his Biblisch-theologisches Worterbuch der neutestamentlichen Gracitét, Gotha 1893, 8.
? See P. Feine, J. Behm and W. Kiimmel, Minleitung in das Neue Testament, Heidelberg 1964,
5 See W. Schmid, Der Attizismus in seinen Hauptertretem, 1-5, Stuttgart 1887-97, 1, Vil, and M. Michaelis, “Der Attizismus und das Neue Testament”, ZNW 22 (1923), 90-121.
4 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
period such as Polybius.* It is not surprising therefore that the Greek of the Bible would look like a foreign body and the attacks on Christianity by Celsus, Porphyrius, Hierocles and Julian were fre- quently peppered with contemptuous allusions to the barbaric lan- guage of the Bible.
The Fathers of the Church reacted in different ways to this uncom- fortable fact. Most of them accepted the differences between the New Testament works and the literary works of contemporary pagan authors, and attempted to justify theologically the low artistic level of the language of the Greek Bible. According to them this simple and plain language was chosen so that the whole world, without exception, could understand it, since the Christian message is directed to all men without distinction of culture or social class.° Slightly different arguments were adopted by Origen in his Contra Celsum.® Finally, the resort to the simple language of scripture would become one of the most recurrent topics in the rhetorical prologues of the works of the Fathers.’ Another movement among Christian writers, the minority, tried to defend the artistic perfection and elegance of biblical language and some even claimed to sce applied to biblical compositions not only the rules of classical metrics but even various stylistic devices.®
The distance between the Fathers and biblical Greek is evident not only in their statements about the language of scripture but pri-
* On the channelling of culture from antiquity along lines which today are known to us, see L. Gil, Censura en ef mundo antiguo, Madrid 1961, and W. Speyer, “Biichervernichtung”, JAC 13 (1970), 122-53.
° For example, Isidore of Pelusia: Av 3 koi t Tpagh thy GAnBerav mel Adyo hputivevoey, Ivo. Kai iSiato1 Kol Go@ol Koi noiSeg Kai yovaikes udOorev (PG 78,1124). Jerome appeals to the example of the Romans who in translating Greek coined very many neologisms without anybody being scandalised, even though in trans- lating Greek into Latin there is less difference than in translating Hebrew to Greek (see PL 26, 347ff).
5 Contra Celsum 1, chap. LXIT. If the apostles had used the rhetorical and dialec- tical devices of the Greeks they would have given the impression that Jesus Christ was the founder of a new school of philosophy. However, in this way it is proved that the force of persuasion comes from something superior and divine.
7 It has been called “die christliche Unfihigkeitstopik” (see K. Thraede, “Unter- suchungen zum Ursprung und zur Geschichte der christlichen Poesie” II, in JAC 5 [1962] 138), which means that these authors in the prologues to their works con- stantly make decisive pronouncements about not using the rhetorical and brilliant language of the classics keeping instead to the simple language of Scripture. Nevertheless, after this declaration of principles they automatically use in their writ- ings all the figures of literary language.
® See, for example, Augustine, De doctrina Christiana I, TV, 14.
BIBLICAL GREEK AND ITS POSITION WITHIN KOLVE 5
marily from analysing their own writings, in particular their expla- nations of voces biblicae which claim most attention. This new per- spective provoked by recent studies stresses the uncase they felt with a translation language that, to some extent detached from the orig- inal, has been made unintelligible within the Greek system.’
During the Middle Ages the use of the Vulgate became general in the West. In Eastern Christianity, instead, the LXX remained in force, but we have no information that studies of its language were a concern. It should not be forgotten however, that this is a period in which most of the biblical manuscripts we now have were copied and that around this activity of transmission, the avatars of the texts can be seen and also the impact made upon it by the linguistic development of Greek, in variants, glosses and all kinds of comments. With the advent of Humanism, we can appreciate a renaissance first of classical studies and somewhat later of biblical Hebrew stu- dies. In 1520 the main edition of the Greek Bible was published in the imner column of the Alcala Polyglot.’ Yet again the differences from the Greek of the classics make the debate on biblical Greek leap onto the literary stage, to continue latent in the dispute between Hellenists and Hebraisers. The division deepened through dogmatic questions and inspirationist theories, in that one would be a purist or Hebraiser depending on whether or not one considered the pres- ence of Hebraisms in biblical Greek irreconcilable with the dignity of scripture. Prominently for the Hebraist camp are J. Drusius and D. Heinsius, and for the Hellenist, S. Pfochen and Ch. S. Georgius, one of the most fanatical purists. The writings of the Hebraists were published by J. Rhenferd in Leenwarden (1702), and the writings of the Hellenists by T. van der Honert in Amsterdam (1703)."'
® See M. Harl, “Y-a-t-il une influence du ‘grec biblique’ sur la langue spi des chrétiens?”, in La Bible et les Péres, Strasbourg 1971, 24363, and N. Fernandez Marcos, “En torno al estudio del griego de los cristianos”, Emerita 41 (1973), 45-56. The linguistic information that patristic literature transmits to us about biblical Greek is very meagre; see G. J. M. Bartelink, “Observations de Saint Basile sur la langue biblique et théologique”, VC 17 (1963), 85-105. Hadrian’s Hisagogué, the first treatise on biblical semantics, merits more attention.
"© It had already been printed in 1517. It took four years lo publish due to the negotiations for obtaining papal approval. The Aldina, printed in February 1518, is later than the printing of the Complutensian, although published earlier.
"' For further details on these two schools, sce J. Ros, De studie van het bybelgrieksch, 52 and 54. Apart from the dogmatic conditioning of this era, this controversy is a good example of the sterility of such discussions if no attempt is made to lower the horizon of one’s own discipline. Even today there are phenomena of biblical Greek
6 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
Unfortunately, so many years of controversy did not produce the results one would have expected at the level of language, since the first attempts at a systematic approach to a grammar of biblical Greek were by Wyss and Pasor.'? Even though there was a wait last- ing two centuries for a grammar of the New Testament, the one by Winer applicd the new methods of linguistics to biblical Greek. In less than a century this grammar ran to eight cditions and it was trans- lated into various European languages.'’ In the area of the LXX, the 18th century produced a very valuable work for its time, the con- cordance by Trom,' undoubtedly the best forerunner to the one by Hatch ~- Redpath and in some respects preferable to it, as for exam- ple in the distribution of the passages according to the various Hebrew meanings to which the Greek word in question corresponds. This century also saw the start of the great edition by Holmes — Parsons."
b) Comparison with the Papyri
However, marginal to this work, an event was taking place that was to revolutionise the study of biblical Greek: the successive discover- ies of papyri. Although the excavation of Herculancum had already begun in 1752, the first finds of papyri in Egypt did not appear until 1778, and this happened by chance. At all events, these isolated dis- coveries did not capture the attention of scholars until the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt in 1798, an expedition which included many scholars. From this period come the collections of papyn that are
fae a Hebraist would explain as the influence of Hebrew~Aramaic, whereas a Hellenist would explain them as due to the diachronic development of his own koiné, since probably both influences were concurrent at a particular moment in the history of Greek.
% Wyssius Casparus, Dialectologia Sacra, Zurich 1650; Georgii Pasoris and Gr. L. Professoris, Grammatica Graeca Sacra Novi Testament, Groningen 1655.
'S G. B. Winer, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Sprachidioms als sichere Grundlage der neutestamentlichen Exegese, Leipzig 1822.
"A. Trom, Concordantiae Graecae versionis vulgo dictae LXX interpretum, 2 vols, Amsterdam 1718.
'S R. Holmes and Jj. Parsons, Vetus Testamentum Graecum cum variis lectionibus \-V, Oxford 1798-1827. Important works from the beginning of the 19th century, before the use of papyri for linguistic purposes, that are worth mentioning are F. G. Sturz, De dialecto macedonica et alexandrina liber, Leipzig 1808, and the lexicon by J. Fr. Schleusner, Novus Thesaurus philologico-criticus, swe lexicon in LXX et reliquos interpretes grae- cos ac scriptores apocryphos Veteris Testamenti, Leipzig 1920, the only one of its kind even today (reprint; Turnhout, Brepols 1994).
BIBLICAL GREEK AND ITS POSITION WITHIN KOLVE i
now to be found in the museums of Paris, Berlin, Leiden, Rome and ‘Turin. However, only in 1877 did the real period of papyrol- ogy begin. In that year, in the ancient city of Arsinoe, in the Fayyum, thousands of fragments appeared. Other places in Egypt were just as productive: Oxyrhynchus, Hermopolis, Aphroditopolis, Panopolis (Akhmim), Elephantine and, more recently, Nag-Hammadi. From the close of the 19th century the biblical papyri were constantly being added to European collections. Probably the most sensational find was in the excavations of Oxyrhynchus, carried out systemati- cally from 1896 to 1906 by P. B. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, students from Oxford. Today we have a considerable collection of papyri
both of the LXX and of the New Testament, which, in addition, is 16
continually growing.
In this heap of finds, next to unknown texts by ancient writers there was a storehouse of letters, wills, administrative documents and other writings which have put us in contact with unknown sectors of life and society in ancient times. Hence they were primarily used for historical and socio-economic study. It was Dcissmann who, for the first time, used them systematically for linguistic purposes, and in this sense his Bibelstudien (Marburg 1895) caused a transcendental change of direction in the approach to biblical Greek.” He com- pared the Greek of the LXX and the New Testament with the lan- guage of the inscriptions, papyri and ostraca of the Hellenistic period, and obtained surprising results. On the one hand he showed the presence in secular documents of terms considered to be specifically Christian, like those called voces biblicae: &yann, &vidnuntop, exioxonos, mpeoPbtepos, npoehtns, Kathyap, dvabenatiCer, iepatedew, vedputos, etc." Even words that Jerome considered peculiar to Scripture such as dxoxéAvyig are due to error or lack of perspective by the Christian writers, since this term and others similar terms are found in Plutarch." As knowledge of the koiné and especially of the papyri and inscrip- tions grew, it could be shown how the percentage of voces biblicae
" See J. O'Callaghan, “Lista de los papiros de los LXX”, Bib 66, 1 (1975), 74°93; K. Aland, Repertorium der Griechischen Christlichen Papyri. I ‘Biblische Papp. Altes Teslament, Neues ‘Testament, Varia, Apokryphen, Berlin-New York 1976; J. van Haclst, Catalogue des papyrus littéraires juifs et chrétiens, Paris 1976; O. Montevecchi, La Papirologia, ‘Turin 1973 (2nd edition, Milan 1988), ‘and F.'T. Gignac, A Grammar of the Greek Papyri. of the Roman and Byzantine Periods, 2 vols, Milan 1976 and 1982.
" To be followed by Neue Bibelstudien in 1897 and Licht vom Osten in 1908.
A, Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, 5817.
Jerome, Comm. in Gal. 1, 12 (PL 26, 34711) and A. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, 61.
8 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
noted by ancient philologists decreased. The clearest example is to be found in the Dictionary by W. Bauer: if we compare the lists in the introduction to those of the second edition, which appeared in 1928, with the lists in the introduction to the fourth edition of 1952, we can see that the number of voces biblicae has been considerably reduced.”
Deissmann was also opposed to the existence of Jewish-Greek as a special language of Hellenised Jews. The introduction of certain technical terms from the new religion docs not justify speaking of a new language and the syntactic Semitisms are due more to the influence of a translation language than to linguistic peculiarities of the group. Each cultural movement, the Stoics, Gnosticism, neo-Platonism, etc., brings lexical neologisms but no-one would consider describing a new language or writing a grammar of neo-Platonic writings.
The analyses of the lexicon carried out by Dcissman were extended by A. Thumb to the field of syntax.) Besides helping to spread his ideas, ‘Thumb set biblical Greek decidedly within the development of koiné. He noted how quite a number of the constructions held to be Semitisms also occur in the papyri. As a result there was no other solution than the distinction between popular kommé on the one hand and literary, written foiné on the other. This literary koiné was the only one known until the discovery of papyri and inscriptions. The Greck Bible and the papyri belong to popular foiné; both sets of docu- ments comprised a sort of advance party within the diachronic devel- opment of the language until modern Greek strengthened ‘Thumb’s idea that these phenomena were due to the normal development of Greck and not to the influence of a foreign language.” In this hypothesis the LXX and the New Testament would be the first writings intended for the people in a plain language that everyone could understand.
2 W. Bauer, Zur Hinfithrung in das Weorterbuch zum Neuen Testament. Coni Neotestamentica 15, Lund 1955. See now the sixth edition of W. Bauer, Griechise deutsches Worterbuch zu den Schrifien des Neuen Testaments und der frithchristlichen Literatur, edited by K. Aland and B. Aland, Berlin~New York 1988.
2" A, Thumb, Die griechische Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus.
2 A. Thumb, “On the Value of the Modern Greek for the Study of Ancient Greek”, CQ 8 (1914), 181-205. For the development of Greek in the papyri, see O. Montevecchi, “Dal Paganesimo al Cristianesimo. Aspetti dell’evoluzione della lingua greca nei papiri dell? Egitto”, Aegyptus 37 (1957), 41-59.
BIBLICAL GREEK AND ITS POSITION WITHIN KOINE
eo
c) The New Approach of Bilingualism
The reaction against Deissmann-‘Thumb began in the sphere of the New Testament. A scrics of specialists set out to find the Aramaic sources of the gospels, starting precisely from the syntactic anom- alies of Greek: the most prominent of these specialists were J. Well- hausen and G. Dalman.”? The latter focused his analyses on the distinction between Hebraisms and Aramaisms in the New Testament. However, apart from other studies that attempt to emphasise the rabbinic roots in the expressions and composition techniques of the gospels, the school most energetically opposed to Deissmann was that of C. C. Torrey and C. F. Burney. On the basis of Aramaisms they tried to prove that a large part of the New Testament (Acts 1:1- 15:35; the Gospel of John; and the Apocalypse) is translated from Aramaic, attributing the mistakes in translation to inconsistencies and obscurities in the Greek text.** This theory had J. A. Montgomery, R. B. Y. Scott and M. Burrows among its followers, but there were also important professors who opposed it, including H.-J. Cadbury, E.-J. Goodspeed and F.-C. Burkitt. However, in my view the best refutation of this hypothesis is by D.-W. Riddle,® because he insists on the lack of objective criteria for distinguishing a real translation from something written by a bilingual person in a language less famil- jar to him.
In spite of Deissmann’s results, biblical philologists continued to look for Semitisms in the New Testament. For even though the data from the papyri had been decisive in the area of the lexicon, the constructions that diverged from classical Greck were so important that the explanation of a few sporadic agreements with the Greek of the papyri was not explanation enough. Moreover, the discussion took on a new twist, turning the argument from the papyri against Deissmann himself: the many Jews residing in the Nile Valley could have influenced the peculiarities of the Greek of Egypt.
Are the non-classical expressions of the papyri not actually Semitisms?
4) J, Wellhausen, Hinleitung in die dret ersten Evangelien, Berlin 1911, and G. Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, mit Beriicksigtigung des nachkanonischen jiidischen Schrifiums und der aramdischen
10 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
To this new direction of study authors such as H.-A. Redpath, R. R. Ottley,” C.-F. Burney,” A~T. Robertson,” P. Jotion®® and others seem to rally.
J. Vergote emphasised the impact and productive nature of this evocative hypothesis which has a precise theoretical formulation in the review by Lefort of Abel’s grammar of biblical Greek." He starts from the fact of bilingualism in Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine Egypt. There is no need, therefore, to resort — as did the authors quoted above — to the presence of Semitisms, which is less prob- able for the Greck of Egypt. What happens is that the same syntac- tic phenomena which in biblical Greek are due to the influence of Hebrew—Aramaic occur in the Greek of the papyri due to the influence of Coptic~Egyptian. In fact the strong linguistic affinity between Egyptian and Hebrew—Aramaic is proved not only in syntax but also in the way reality is structured. Bilingualism, therefore, is responsi- ble both for the syntactic peculiarities of the Greek of the Old and New Testaments, and of the papyri. Some biblical books are too well written to think of vulgarisms or that they express spoken koiné. Some of them, such as the Apocalypse (Revelation), belong rather to the class of esoteric literature. And as for the vulgarisms of the papyri, there should be no exaggeration since their authors, at least, knew how to write, which amounted to something in the socicty
of that time. Vergote notes accurately how in all the cases where a Semitism of biblical Greek has been denied due to the same construction having been found in the papyri, there is an exact par- allel in a Coptic construction: for example, the casus pendens, the construction with «at and finite verb after a participle or infinitive, the pleonastic use of the personal pronoun in oblique cases, the use of the numeral eig instead of the indefinite tg, the repetition of the same word with a distributive mcaning, iSob meaning ‘from’, év with an instrumental meaning, the expression of the vocative by means of the nominative with the article.”
*© In “The Present Position of the Study of the Septuagint”, AZT 7 (1903), 11.
2 In A Handbook to the Septuagint, New York 1920, 165.
* In The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel, Oxford 1922, 4.
* In A Grammar of the Greek New Testament, New York 1923, 91.
* In L’Evangile de Notre-Seigneur Fésus-Christ, Paris 1930, XI
3! J. Vergote, “Grec Biblique”, 1354ff, and F.-M. Abel, Grammaire du grec biblique suivie d i
un choix de papy
§, Paris 1927; L.-T. Lefort, “Pour une grammaire des LXX”, 152-60, rec Biblique”, 1355-59. A study of the papyri from this aspect
BIBLICAL GREEK AND ITS POSITION WITHIN KOLVE 11
In recent years the problem of Semitisms has again been in the foreground and the expression ‘Jewish-Greck’ recurs in both its mean- ings, as literary language and as spoken or colloquial language.” The deeply Semitised nature of translation Greek has again raised old problems as the Hebrew~Aramaic sources from the times of bib- lical Greek become better known (especially through Qumran and the Targums) and more books of Jewish intertestamental literature are published, written in the same Semitised Greek as the canon- ical books. In the 1950s a new reaction against Deissmann is notice- able both from Septuagintalists and New ‘Testament philologists.* N. Turner insists that no-one is completely convinced of Deissmann’s hypothesis, even though so many specialists have followed it, includ- ing his predecessor in New Testament grammar, J. H. Moulton. Some specifically Semitic syntactic uses stand out in contrast to the language of the papyri, and he defends the existence of Jewish-Greck in the first centuries shared by the LXX, the New Testament and the pseudepigraphic and apocalyptic writers. He sets out these ideas in the mtroduction to the third volume of his grammar of the New Testament, on syntax.* The peculiarity of biblical Greck was to become a characteristic feature in the first place in the translation Greek of the LXX and which later was transmitted to other intertes- tamental writers and to the New Testament ~ even if they are not translations — as a sort of sacred language that had to be imitated. At a later stage a distinction has to be made between global Semitisms, Hebraisms and Aramaisms, and Septuagintisms proper. Within this
reveals many other peculiarities of the Greck of Egypt which can be explained by their closeness to Coptic constructions.
3M. Black, “The Semitic Element in the New Testament”, ET 77 (1965-66), 20-23: “And this language, like the Hebrew of the Old ‘Testament which moulded it, was a language apart from the beginning; Biblical Greek is a peculiar language, the language of a peculiar people” (p. 23).
% See P. Katz, “Zur Ubersetzungstechnik der Septuaginta”, Die Welt des Orients 4 (1956), 272ff%; H. S. Gehman, “The Hebraic Character of the Septuagint”, V7
1 (1951), 81-90: “If the LXX made sense to Hellenistic Jews, we may infer that there was a Jewish Greck which was understood apart from the Hebrew language”, p. 90; Gehman, “Hebraisms of the Old Greck Version of Genesis”, V7 III (1953), 141— 48; Gehman, “"Ayiog in the Septuagint, and its Relation to the Hebrew Original”, VT IV (1954), 337-48; N. Turner, “The Unique Character of Biblical Greek”, V7 V (1955), 208-13; Turner, “The Testament of Abraham: Problems in Biblical Greek”, N7'S I (1955), 222%
% J. H. Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek. Vol. HHI: Syntax by N. Turner, Edinburgh 1963, biblical Greek as a whole “is a unique language with a unity and character of its own”.
12 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
tendency must be included recent philological works on the New Testament by Beyer,** Black? and Wilcox.
d) The Technical Language of Hellenistic Prose
From a different perspective, better knowledge of Hellenistic prose has contributed to modifying the conclusions of Deissmann about popular and literary Aoiné in relation to biblical Greck. This starts with the monographs devoted to the language of a particular Hellenistic author such as the one by Durham on Menander,* or the one by Bonhoeffer on Epictetus,” up to more recent studies on late literary and popular Greek carried out chiefly by the Swedish school of Uppsala and Lund. Some of this research is the result of doctoral theses that were never published, such as Arnim’s study of Philo of Byzantium."! Others have had more success, such as Meechar’s work on the Letter of Aristeas” or the study by Adrados on Aesop’s Fables.‘
In the 1946 Tyndale Lecture, E. K. Simpson proposed a series of words from the Greek Bible that the papyri did not illustrate but which instead were explained by comparison with literary usage in
% K. Beyer, Semitische Syntax im Neuen Testament. Band I, Satzlehre Tail 1, Gottingen 1962, 11. For bilingualism in the field of phonology, see F. T. Gignac, 4 Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods. Volume I: Phonology, Milan 1975, 46ff.
3? M. Black, An Aramatc Approach to the Gospels and Acts, Oxford 1954.
38M. Wilcox, The Semitisms of Acts, Oxford 1965. Recent publications such as J. Amstutz, ‘AxAdtnc. Eine begnifigeschichitiche Studie zum jiidisch-christlichen Griechisch. ‘Theophaneia 9, Bonn 1968, while not discussing Jewish-Greek, presuppose at least a certain linguistic unity in this material due to the chronological limitations and the selection of texts that they make (Greek Bible, Jewish-Hellenistic literature, Jewish-Palestinian literature, New ‘Testament and early Christian writings). However, the results make biblical Greek an integral part of koiné, since the only new mean- ing of &rAdtyg in the synagogue-church which was not already represented in the foiné is “simplicity-totality or integrity”, ibid. 14.
% D. B. Durham, The Vocabulary of Menander considered in its relation to the koiné, Princeton 1913 (reprint Amsterdam 1969), where the relationship of the LXX lex- icon with the lexicon of middle and new comedy is clear (p. 103). .
* A. Bonhoeffer, Epiktet und das Neue Testament, Giessen 1911, for the linguistic closeness between Stoic and Pauline parenesis. In this sense the monographs in the series Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti published in Leiden, especially G. Mussies, Dio Chrysostom and the New Testament (1972), and P. W. Van der Horst, Aelius Aristides and the New Testament (1980), can provide interesting comparative data.
“'M. Arnim, “De Philonis Byzantii dicendi genere”. Diss. Greifswald (912.
© H. G. Meecham, The Letter of Aristeas: A Linguistic Study with Special Reference to the Greek Bible, Manchester 1935.
*® F, Rodriguez-Adrados, Estudio sobre el léxico de las fabulas esdpicas. En torno a tos problemas de la koiné klerana, Salamanca 1948.
BIBLICAL GREEK AND ITS POSITION WITHIN AONE 13
Hellenistic prose." And in 1955, J. Palm devoted an impeccable study to the language and style of Diodorus Siculus. In Palm’s opin- ion, the term oiné should be reserved for the popular language of the post-classical period, and the expression ‘normal Hellenistic prose’ for the language used by authors such as Philo of Byzantium, Apollonius of Perge, Polybius and Diodorus Siculus, a prose which became widespread with the flowering and diffusion of the various sciences in the Hellenistic period, consistent and logical, a suitable and functional tool for practical purposes, not very different from the modern prose of administrative language with its own pros and cons.*® This movement culminated in a monograph of Rydbeck, who formulated the thesis that the language of the New Testament is closer to the specialised, scientific and technical prose of its period than to the language of the papyri.”
e) Conclusions
The outright achievement of Deissmann — Thumb, definitive in terms of methodology, has been to rescue biblical Greek from the domain of theology, in order to study it not on its own but as an integral part of Hellenistic Greek. The secular and sterile discussion between Hellenists and Hebraisers has been resolved, as has the idea of bib- lical Greek as a special language, a suitable vehicle for the express- ion of a religious movement. Today, in the paths opened up by Deissmann and Thumb, belong projects such as Horsley’s on the new documents to illustrate primitive Christianity, or studies such as Silva’s which uses the analysis of bilingualism and the approaches of modern linguistics.”
However, the various approaches that we have seen from the close of the 19th century, such as inscriptions, papyri, bilingualism or the
“E. K. Simpson, Words Worth Weighing in the Greek NT. Tyndale Lecture, 1946.
*® J. Palm, Uber Sprache und Stil des Diodoros von Sizilien. Kin Beitrag zur Beleuchtung der hellenistischen Prosa, Lund 1955, The language of Diodorus has many features in common with the second book of Maccabees, p. 199, and L. Gil, “Sobre el estilo del libro segundo de los Macabeos”, Aimerita 26 (1958), 11-32.
© J. Palm, Uber Sprache und Stil, 206-207.
" L. Rydbeck, Bachprosa, vermeiniliche Volksprache und Neues Testament.
* G. H.R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 1-5, Macquarie University, 1981-89, and Horsley, “Divergent Views on the Nature of the Greek Bible”, Bib 65 (1984), 393-403; M. Silva, “Bilinguism and the Character of Palestinian Greek”, Bib 61 (1980), 198-219.
14 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
literary works of Aoiné, came to the fore in research. They show us that we are only beginning to know post-classical Greek. Each mono- graph discovers new contacts between biblical Greek and the lin- guistic area being explored, and as a result shifts the perspective to that particular area of comparison.
Thus a systematic study of all the documentation of the Hellenistic period is required, popular as well as literary, to be able to place the Greek of the Bible in its correct location. In reality, the lan- guage of the LXX has not yet been examined thoroughly in the light of the enormous number of papyrus documents. Although we know enough about the popular Greek of Egypt in the Ptolemaic period, our knowledge of the literary use of Greek in the same period is very inexact; the lack of studies of the language of post-classical Greek is too obvious a fact to be stressed. The koiné does not have to be as uniform as the manuals insist. Today it is increasingly accepted that most of the morphological innovations of modern Greek go back to the period of Aoiné.” It is also possible that there were greater degrees of dialectal differentiation than we know through the process of linguistic uniformity imposed by a great section of liter- ary komé and the way of speaking well and writing well spread by the Atticist movement.”
A. Meillet, Apergu d’une histoire de la langue grecque, Paris 1965, 334; S. G. Kapsomenos, “Die griechische Sprache zwischen Koiné und Neugriechisch”, 19ff; A. Mirambel, La langue grecque moderne. Description et analyse, Paris 1959, 8. The prob- lem of biblical Greek is to some extent linked with the way hoiné spread, about which there is as yet no agreement among historians of the Greck language. Kretschmer puts this expansion within the domain of spoken language, as spread by Alexander’s conquests. The soldiers carried with them elements of the various dialects of the countries from which they came and as a result the koiné is an amal- gam or mosaic of dialects (see “Dic Entstehung der koiné”). However, according to Meillet, Apergu d'une histoire, 249-54, the koiné spread as a modern language through the conquering spread of Attic, which as a superior cultural language, imposed its ways of speaking and writing. This theory is also defended by E. Mayser, Grammatik der griechischen Papyri aus der Ptoleméerzeit 1,1 Berlin, 1970 1-4, Depending on which theory specialists hold, they will explain the anomalies in the Greek of the papyri and the Bible as a reflex of popular usage or as the literary influence of a foreign language. On the impact of the social and political history of Athens on the lan- guage, see A. Lopez Eire, “Historia antigua e historia de la lengua griega: el ori- gen del griego helenistico”, Studia Historica 1,1 (1983), 5~19.
5° §.G. Kapsomenos, “Die griechische Sprache zwischen koiné und neugriechisch”; Kapsomenos, “Das Griechische in Aegypten”, Museum Helveticum 10 (1953), 248-63, and N, Fernandez Marcos, “;Rasgos dialectales en la koiné tardia de Alejandria?”, Emerita 39 (1971), 33-47.
BIBLICAL GREEK AND ITS POSITION WITHIN KOLNE 15
Alongside this deepening at all levels of the production of koiné, more attention should be paid to the phenomenon of bilingualism and its repercussions in the area of syntax. Most of the peculiar fea- tures of the Greek of Egypt can usually be explained by the influence of Coptic. One should not speak of the vulgarisms of the papyri (some of which also have literary merit) but in each case it needs to be determined which phenomenon is duc to the inner develop- ment of Hellenistic Greek and which depends on or has traces of the influence of Coptic. And given the difficulty of this distinction in many cases, since Coptic is a language with a very simple con- struction, it has to be determined in which cases a particular lin- guistic phenomenon could be the result of both tendencies combined. This same analysis has to be applied to the Greek of the Bible. It is necessary for studies of the language of the New Testament to be extended, to the same level and to the same degree, to the Greek of the LXX. It is also necessary to use all the linguistic information provided by the intertestamental pseudepigraphic writings to trace as far as possible the successive stages in the development of bibli- cal Greek. This is because the Greek of the Pentateuch, a transla- tion Greek written in the 3rd century BcE in Egypt is not the same as New Testament Greek or the Palestinian Greek of the Lives of the Prophets of the Ist~2nd centuries ce. Even so, the many common features allow it to be studicd as a single linguistic complex that has its own identity, in spite of the differences in detail, for the influence of the first translation of the LXX extends even to the books that were not translated from Hebrew—Aramaic, such as the New Testament or certain pscudepigraphic writings.®'
At the close of this long survey of the history of biblical Greek, from the first reactions by the Fathers of the Church until the pre- sent, it would seem that there has been little progress if we consider that the problem of the existence or not of a Jewish Greek, around which at various stages the discussion has revolved, although it is
5! Apparently this translation Greek imposed its own linguistic categories on a series of later religious writers since it was considered to be a sacred language. It is sufficient to see how the translator of the book of Sira, capable of writing Greek adorned with rhetorical figures as shown by the prologue, turned to channels of Semitised Greek or translation Greek to begin his version of the Hebrew text. On the other hand, if we compare passages from the LXX (Exodus, Kings, Chronicles) with parallel passages from Josephus, there is a clear shift from the semantic calque of Hebrew in translating the LXX, to an imitation of classical Greek which chiefly affected style.
16 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
dismissed today in most publications, continues to some extent latent under the name of translation Greek. However, the question of iblical Greek is not banal, even though it has remained hidden and as comprised the background to impassioned discussions not only in the Reformation and post-Renaissance periods but even in our own day. Melancthon’s statement that Scriptura non potest intelligi theo- logice nist antea intellecta sit grammatice® continues to be valid. It must clearly understood that the only way to come close to ancient thinking is inductively through language and not the reverse. And we can only understand this language through analysis — as com- plete as possible — of all the documents (in the widest sense) of the past that are available to us.>‘ Although the impact on the language of any important cultural or religious movement must be taken into account,” Barr’s comments on Kittel’s lexicon of the New Testament should keep us alert to the constant danger of going beyond the imits of semantics, inserting into the text elements of interpretation that really belong to biblical theology.
SELECT BIsLIOGRAPHY
Abel, F.-M., “Coup d’ocil sur la koiné”. RB 23 (1926), 5-26.
Debrunner, A., Geschichte der griechtschen Sprache. Ll Grundfragen und Grundztige des nach- Hassischen Griechisch, Berlin 1954.
Deissmann, A., Bibelstudien, Marburg 1895.
; Lackt vom Osten. Das Neue Testament und die neuentdeckten ‘Texte der hellenistisch- romischen Well, Titbingen 1923*.
—., Neue Bibelstudien, Marburg 1897.
Frésén, J.,. Prolegomena to a Study of the Greek Language in the First Century AD: The Problem of Koiné and Aiticism, Helsinki 1974.
Gehman, H. S., “The Hebraic Character of LXX”. VT 1 (1951), 81-90.
Hadrianus, Eisagogué, ed. F. Gossling, Berlin 1887.
® Using the terminology of Sephiha for calque-languages, we would say that there is no evidence for spoken Jewish-Greek; instead there must have been a trans- lation Greek in which some peculiar syntactic features emerged due to the source language, Hebrew—Aramaic; see H. V. Sephiha, Le ladino, judéo-espagnol calque. Deutéronome. Versions de Constantinople (1547) et de Ferrara (1553). Edition, étude linguistique et lexique, Paris 1973, 424.
% ‘Taken from J. Ros, De studie van het bijbelgrieksch, 9. 5 ith, “The Social Description of Early Christianity”, SR 1, | (1975), “The second option is to take seriously the notion that man creates his world primarily through language ... not by theological and philosophical specu- lation on ‘hermeneutics’” (p. 21).
6 C. Mohrmann, “Transformations linguistiques et évolution sociale ct spirituelle”, VC 11 (1957), 11-37.
% J. Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, Oxford 1961, 206ff.
BIBLICAL GREEK AND ITS POSITION WITHIN KOLNE 17
Harl, M., “La langue de la Septante”. M. Harl e al, La Bible grecque des Septanie, 223-66.
Kapsomenos, 8. G., “Die griechische Sprache zwischen koiné und neugriechisch”. Berichte zum XT Intern. Byzantinisten-Rongress, Munich 1958, 1-39 (with a lengthy bibliography on the inscriptions, papyri and modern Greek as an indirect source for the linguistic phenomena of Aoiné).
Kretschmer, P., “Die Entstehung der Koiné”. Stlgungsbericht der Wiener Akad. Phil.- fist. Klasse, 144, X, Vienna 1900,
Mussies, G., “Greek in Palestine and the Diaspora”. The Jewish People in the First Century, ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern, I, 2, Assen-Amsterdam 1976, 1040-64.
, The Morphology of koiné Greek as Used in the Apocalypse of St. Fokn: A Study in Bilingualism. NTS 27, Leiden 1971.
Orlinsky, H- ‘Current Progress and Problems in Septuagint Research”. The Study of ible Teday and Tomorrow, ed. H. R. Willoughby, Chicago 1947, 144-61.
sichari, J., “Essai sur le grec de la Septante”. REY 1908, 161-208.
os, J., De studie van het bybelgnieksch van Hugo Grotius tot Adolf Deissmann, Nijmegen 1940.
Rydbeck, L., Fachprosa, vermeintliche Votksprache und Neues Testament. Zur Beurteilung der
sprachlichen Niveauunterschiede in nachklassischen Griechisch, Uppsala 1967.
Thackeray, H. St J., A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint.
Vol. I: Introduction, Orthography and Accidence, Cambridge 1909.
Thumb, A., Die griechische Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus. Beitriige zur Geschichte und
Beurteilung der Koiné, Strasbourg 1901 (reprinted by De Gruyter, Berlin~-New
York 1974).
Tumer, E. G., Greek Papyri: An Introduction, Oxford 1968.
Turner, N., “The Unique Character of Biblical Greck”. VT 5 (1955) 208-13.
Vergote, J., “Grec Biblique”. DBS TIL, 1938, 1320-69.
e
The select bibliography can be complemented by referring te CB 21-34 and CG. Dogniez, BS, 27-46.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SEPTUAGINT AS A TRANSLATION
a) An Unprecedented Event
Although today it is taken for granted that the Bible had to be trans- lated and even has the distinction of being the book translated into the largest number of languages,' nevertheless the LXX, the first biblical translation, was an unusual and unparalleled event in the ancient world. In the West, the translating tradition really began with the Romans when faced with the Greek literary legacy which they considered to be culturally superior. However, the Grecks thought that their literature was completely sclf-suficient and the curiosity aroused by countries such as Egypt or by oriental religious move- ments such as Zoroastrianism never caused them to learn those lan- guages. Herodotus spread the image of an enigmatic Egypt among the Greeks, and in the Hellenistic period there arose a whole pseude- pigraphic literature composed in Greek, but none of these works went back to the original by translating the Gathas,” for example. Thus the translation of the Jewish Pentateuch into Greek in the 3rd century BCE can be considered an event without precedent in the ancient world, of extreme importance for the history of our civili- sation. For it to happen, several determinative processes of very different character had to converge. It could only arise from within a common cultural background created over centuries, with some par- ticular ideological foundations and with the confluence of favourable historical circumstances. There existed from ancient times a common
' Translated into about 2,000 languages, and in the last fifty years into over 200 pre-literary primitive languages.
* Hymns dedicated to the exaltation of Zoroaster’s reform in Persia in the 7th—6th centuries Bok. See 5, P. Brock, The Phenomenon of the Septuagint, 14, and E. J. Bickermann, The LXX as a Translation, 174. At the same time that the translators of the LXX were beginning their enterprise, the Babylonian priest Berossus was writing the history of his people, dedicating it to Antiochus I of Syria, and the Egyptian high priest Manctho was compiling a history of the pharaohs. ‘T’ ¢. 280260 scr, under royal auspi tatives of the Oriental peop to provide the Greek public with authentic information instead of the fables that were circulating about their origins and history.
THE SEPTUAGINT AS A TRANSLATION 19
Mediterranean culture, and contacts with the East go back to very much earlier than the Hellenistic period and are revealed not only through the many borrowings from Semitic into ancient Greek but even through finds of Mycenaean pottery in Ugarit and in the analy- sis of mythological constellations.* To the point that in some sense one can agree with Astour’s words: “Long before Hellenism imposed itself over the ancient civilisations of the East, Semitism had exer- cised no less impact upon the young civilisation of Greece. Hellenism became the epilogue of the Oriental civilisations, but Semitism was the prologue of Greek civilisation”.*
However, the ideological background that made the translation of the LXX possible was in germ in Jewish thought itself, as the Torah which Israel received on Sinai was originally considered to be a guide for the whole of humankind, since ‘God did not speak in secret’ (Isa. 45:19). In fact — according to a rabbinic tradition — it was offered first to the gentiles but they gave it the cold shoulder. The rabbis also state that Joshua had buried the Law under the stones of the altar (Josh. 8:30) not only in the original but in all the languages of the world; the nations received a copy of the Law, but after reading it they paid it no attention.
In respect of the LXX, in the Talmud we find the statement that the only foreign language allowed for the transcription of the Law scroll is Greck, as it is proved to be the one that translates it best.® Even so, as we shall see in the next chapter, there is no lack of negative judgements in rabbinic literature about that translation.
On the other hand, for the Jews of the diaspora, once they had abandoned the language of their fathers, the only way to preserve the religious legacy of their ancestors was to translate it into the foreign language that they uscd. The danger of losing this cultural
* See E, Masson, Recherches sur les plus anciens emprunts sémitiques en grec, Paris, 1967; E, Haag, Homer, Ugarit und das Alle Testament, Tubingen, 1962; M. C. Astour, Hellenose- mitica, Leiden 1965; J. P. Brown, Literary Contexts, H. B. Rosén, L*hébreu et ses rap- ports avec le monde classique. Essai d’une évaluation culturelle, Paris 1979.
* Astour, Hellenosemitica, 361.
5M. L. Margolis, The Story of Bible Translation, 9-10. The Jewish tradition con- cerning the revelation on Sinai is universalist. According to that tradition the Law was presented there to the pagan peoples in several languages; seventy, says Rabbi Yohanan. See J. Potin, La fete juive de la Pentecile, I Commentaire; LI Textes (targumiques), Paris 1971, 3111.
© Jerusalem Talmud (ed. M. Schwass, Paris 1930), Meg. 1, 9(8): “Selon R. Simon b. Gamialicl, est-il dit, la seule langue étrangére permise pour la transcription du rouleau de la Loi est le grec; car, aprés examen, on a observé que le texte de la Loi peut le mieux é@tre traduit suffisamment en grec.”
20 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
inheritance had been felt carlier in the communities of Hellenistic Judaism than in those in Palestine; the latter defended themselves ideologically from Hellenism by producing apocalyptic literature; whereas in the diaspora, the Hellenistic communities reacted by tak- ing the battle to their own camp through the translation of the Torah into Greek.’ This explains why the translation of the LXX was made by Jews and for Jews, meaning that it was done by bilingual orien- tals and not by Greeks. It arose therefore due to the religious needs of the Jews of Alexandria; liturgical needs on the one hand and edu- cational needs on the other, due to the special position of Judaism in the Greek world with a high proportion of Greek-speaking Jews who did not know the original language of their own scriptures. Thus the picture painted by the Leter of Ansteas of the circumstances surrounding the translation of the LXCX in the court of king Ptolemy is deceptive.® Its purpose was probably to guarantee the authentic- ity of the Greek version of the Pentateuch against the criticism, which had already begun to be voiced, that this translation did not reflect exactly the Palestinian Hebrew text. These differences caused theo- logical problems in Hellenistic Judaism which the Letter of Aristeas was trying to confront by stating that the translators used the best Hebrew manuscripts brought from Jerusalem.
A process of idealising the LXX began which culminated in the requirement for inspiration which first Philo and later Augustine claim fer the Greek translation. In this way the differences from the Hebrew text are safeguarded, since revelation itself could take
7 R. Hanhart, “Zam Wesen der makedonisch-hellenistischen”, 55-57
® See F. J. Foakes and Kirsopp Lake, The Beginnings of Christiamty, London 1920, 153: “As the Alexandrian grammarians were the interpreters of the classics of Greece to the world, so the Alexandrian Jews expounded their own literature... The ven- erable names of Orpheus and of the mysterious Sibyls were attached to hymns and oracles designed to glorify Judaism in the eyes of the Greeks; and literary frauds of this description were for a considerable time practised at Alexandria by Jews and Christians alike.” In various places a whole rang of literary fiction arose with the aim of showing that the most revered teachers of antiquity were imbued with the spirit by Hebrew sages. On Hellenistic interpretation or rewriting of the history of Israel, see N. Fernandez Marcos, “Interpretaciones helenisticas del pasado de Israel”, CFC 8 (1975), 15786.
* Vita Mosis, I, 37-40. The translators state, kaOdénep évOvordivtes mpoegytevov obk GAAG GAA, th 8’ obt& ndvteg dvonato. Kai phuata, Hoxep dnoPodéws exdo- toig copdtus Evnxobvtos (“they prophesied like enthusiasts, not some [saying] one thing and others another but all the same names and words as if an invisible prompler were whispering to each”). And he even compares them to Moses, ... oby Epunvéas éxeivoug GAN iepopdvtas Kad mpopitas npooayopebovtes, oig éEeyéveto
THE SEPTUAGINT AS A TRANSLATION 21
on different forms: one form being the Hebrew text and another the Greek translation. However, within Judaism and before Philo, the shortcomings of the translation were noticed and interpreted in a very different way. The author of the prologue to Sira (132 pce) apologises for the inadequacy of his translation and adds that often the Law and the Prophets in Greek are different when compared with the original.!? Evidence of this unease due to the difference between the two Bibles, Hebrew and Greek, are: the traces of cor- rection of the Greck text to fit it to the Hebrew text in use which can be detected in some pre-Christian papyri and especially in the fragments of ‘Twelve Prophets from Nahal Hever;'' the new revi- sions and translations of the LXX started within Judaism; and the critical work of Origen in his Hexapla and of Jerome in his new translation, the Vulgate."
Independently of these aims that guided the Jews of the diaspora in starting the translation of the sacred Hebrew books, the cultural importance of the LXX also lies in its becoming the best tool for spreading Christianity, acting as a praeparatio evangelica through the many proselytes already converted to Jewish monotheism. Beyond the expectations of the translators, by being adopted by the Church as the official Bible, it became the main vehicle for the expansion into the West of oriental Semitic thought.
ovvépapety Aoyiopois eldixpivéot 1 Mavoéws coOapordto avebpeti (“not calling them interpreters but hierophants and prophets due to the flawless reasoning by which they emulated the purest spirit of Moses”). See also, Augustine, De Civ. Det, XVII, 42-43. On the hypothesis of the inspiration of the LXX as discussed by modern, scholars, see CB, 13, and C. Dogniez, BS, 25.
© ob yap loodvvopel abt& év Eavtoic ‘EBpatoti Acyoueva. Koi Stav petayOF eic étépav yAdoouv, od pdvov bé todta, GAA Kai adbtdg 0 vdpoc Kai oi npognteton Kal t& Aoink tiv PipAiwv od pixpiy gyxer Svagopiv év Eovtois Acydueve. (“for these things said in Hebrew do not have the same force when translated into another language; and not only that, but even the Law, the Prophecies and the other books differ not a little when said in their own language”).
"'D. Barthélemy, Les Devanciers d’Aquila. VTS 10 (1963), and the critical and diplomatic edition by E. Tov, The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever (8 HevXHer): The Seiyal Collection 1, with the collaboration of R. A. Kraft and a con- tribution by P. J. Parsons, DJD VIII, Oxford 1990.
8 "The dispute between the philological principle and the inspirationist principle has persisted in key moments of the rebirth of biblical studies and not only in the dispute between Jerome and Augustine, the latter being a staunch defender of the LXX against the Vulgate, but later in the positions of Erasmus and Luther. Augustine describes the disturbances that broke out (in Tripoli) the first time that the book of Jonah was read according to Jerome’ 's version, because the Old Latin, following the LXX had translated the plant in Jon. 4:6 as a coloquinth, whereas the Vulgate identifies it as the ivy, see W. Schwartz, Principles and Problems, 38.
99 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING b) A Range of Translation Techniques
However, the LXX is not a uniform translation that can be judged by modern criteria but the result of much trial and error. At first different equivalents were tried until the most suitable Greek words prevailed as the most suited for the various Hebrew expressions. ‘The Greek Pentateuch came to be a rudimentary lexicon for books trans- lated later, such as Isaiah.'? Something similar was to happen, centuries later, with the decanting to Latin of concepts from the new Christian religion; first several terms were tried, many of them imported from Greck, for the technical terms of Christianity until one of them pre- vailed and was standardised as the only Latin equivalent.'*
Rather than a single translation, in the LXX one should speak of a collection of translations depending on the book; even within a single book, different literary units reflect different translation tech- niques. Studies of these techniques indicate more than one transla- tor for each book, although the total number did not come to seventy or seventy-two as the Letter of Aristeas says.'° For this same reason, although Swete’s remarks on the LXX as a version'® or Thackeray’s in the grammar on Semitisms!’ continue to be valid, today their con- clusions need to be refined, since, for lack of precedents and being the work of several translators, we find reflected in the LXX a whole
'S See J. Ziegler, Untersuchungen zur Septuaginta des Buches Isaias, Minster 1934, and E. Tov, “The Impact of the LXX Translation of the Pentateuch on the Translation of Other Books”, Mélanges D. Barthélemy, ed. P. Casetti, Freiburg—Géttingen 1981, 577-92.
“ This is what happens with various Christian terms such as “baptism”, “bap- tist”, “saviour” (see Ch. Mohrmann, Latin vulgaire, latin des chrétiens, latin médiéval, Paris 1955, t8ff., and in general the works of the Nijmegen School), or with the first romanced bibles in Castilian, sec G. M. Verd, “Las Biblias romanzadas. Critcrios de traduccién”, Sefarad 31, 1 (1971), 319-51, and M. Morreale, “Vernacular Scriptures in Spain”, The Cambridge History of the Bible U, ed. G. W. H. Lampe, Cambridge 1969, 465-92.
'§ The theory defended by H. St J. ‘Thackeray, “Ihe Bisection of Books in prim- itive Septuagint manuscripts”, 775 9 (1908), 88-98, and by J. Herrmann and Fr. Baumgirtel, Beitrage zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Sepluaginta, BWAT 5, Berlin 1923, who propose two different translators for Isaiah and even three for the Twelve Prophets and Ezekiel, finds few followers today. A large part of the arguments used by these authors evaporates, since they used manual editions in their studies which attribu- ted to the original LXX material belonging to later stages of transmission, see J. Ziegler, “Die Einheit der Septuaginta zum Zwoltprophetenbuch”, Beilage zum Vorlesungsverzeichnis der Staal. Akademie zu Braunsberg-Ostpr. 1934-— 1
'© H. B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, 315-41.
" H. St J. Thackeray, A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek [, Cambridge 1909, 32H.
THE SEPTUAGINT AS A TRANSLATION 23
gamut of translation techniques which run from literal translation (including transliteration) to paraphrase, especially in the later writ- ings, although the usual midrashic expansions and procedures of the Targums were never used. A global judgement of the LXX trans- lation, besides being deceptive as the LXX does not reflect this unity of translation, also has the danger of being conditioned by the kind of translation for which the researcher is looking. The extreme posi- tion is taken by those defining the LXX as a targumic paraphrase conceived for the majority of the Jews who did not know Hebrew. Taking this line, R. Kittel even stated that the LXX is not a real translation but a theological commentary.'* However this is only true at the primary level of the distribution of the material, the titles of the books of the Pentateuch, the grouping of Samucl’Kings, the re- titling of Chronicles and Lamentations and the introduction of a new chronological sequence that places Ruth after Judges and Lamentations after Jeremiah, and the reinterpretation it presupposes.'? Once we get into the actual text, as a general rule the translation of the Pentateuch is faithful to the Hebrew text, more than was thought at the beginning of the century. And in the light of recent discov- eries at Qumran, the great divergences in the historical books between the LXX and the Hebrew have to be interpreted more as a witness of the pluralism of the Hebrew text before its consonantal fixation at the synod of Yamnia, c. 100 cx, than as the result of the exeget- ical preferences of the translators. Ch. Rabin has insisted on this lit- eral nature of the LXX translation by noting the relative frequency with which the authors use translations of perplexity (Verlegenhettstiber- selzungen), even though they make no sense, leaving it up to the reader to divine or intuit the meaning of the passage. This procedure is not used in the Targum, and if the translators had really had con- tact with the Targums they would have adopted midrashic solutions or theological interpretations for many of these aporiat of the origi- nal text, some of which continue to be real enigmas for the trans- lator even today.” Another matter is that the translators of books
"6 Tn a lecture given at the Onientalentag in Leipzig, 1921; see A. Bentzen, Introduction to the Old Testament, Copenhagen 1952, 76,
' Lor the main differences between the LXX and the Masorctic Text, see O. Mun- nich, “Le texte de la Septante”, M. Harl ef al, La Bible grecque des Septante, 173-82.
* Ch. Rabin. ‘he ‘Translation Process”, 24, and J. Ziegler, Untersuchungen zur LXX des Buches Isaias, 13.
24 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
after the Pentateuch used it as a sort of elementary lexicon for Hebrew~Greek equivalents, as noted above.”! And in general it can be stated that the biblical Greek adopted by the translators of the Pentateuch became a sort of sub-language which later translators or the authors of pseudepigrapha, if they were bilingual, imitated.” This has to be taken into account for its direct repercussion on the recent discussion about Semitisms in the New Testament and in biblical Greek in general.”*
The analysis of the translation techniques of each book or of each unit of translation has to precede any study of syntax, for often it has been shown that a different translation of certain Hebrew expres- sions does not always argue for different translators, since the different styles, psychologies and tastes for variety of the various authors come into play.”* The extent of Semitic influence on the translation Greek is evident in the many transcriptions of proper names and toponyms even in the Pentateuch, in the many neologisms from the institu- tions and the religious practices of Isracl, in the tendency to use in Greek a word similar in sound to the Hebrew word, and in the many syntactic Semitisms. The translation into Greek of polysemic Hebrew words often produces an extension of the semantic ficld of the Greek word in question, creating new meanings: for example, Gedpiopa. = ‘what is set apart’ comes to denote ‘the offering of first- fruits’ (Ex. 29:24); c& €6vn as a translation of goyyim comes to mean ‘non-Jews’; &yyehog = ‘messenger’ is used for the heavenly inter- mediary beings that abound im apocalyptic literature, just as éyph- yopog = ‘watcher’ denotes a particular type of angel, the ‘irim.”
We also come across Greek words that take on non-Greek mean- ings due to a confusion of homonyms in Hebrew; this happens with the verb dyyotebew = ‘to be the closest’, a translation of Hebrew
2 J. L. Seeligmann, The Septuagint Version of Isaiah, 454%. and note 13.
* Ch. Rabin, “The Translation Process”, 25.
%3 The discussion is based on the analysis of Semitisms (Hebraisms and Aramaisms) that can be found in works that have only been transmitted in Greek. It is also possible (or sometimes certain, as there is no Hebrew~Aramaic construction to sup- port it) that they are Septuagintisms, ie. analogical formations that have been absorbed by the New Testament through LXX Greck which became the standard language for religious Jewish-Hellenistic writers.
* See J. Ziegler, “Die Einheit der Septuaginta”.
% See Dan. 4:10 according to @ in the Alexandrian ms.; Lam. 4:14 and | Enoch 1:5 ff,
THE SEPTUAGINT AS A TRANSLATION 25
g@al 1, but in some cases in the passive, according to the dictionary of Liddell-Scott/Jones, = ‘to be excluded by descent’. As Katz** has noted, what happens is that the translator of Esdras B' confused the two Hebrew homonyms ga’al I and I, the second of which means precisely ‘to be disqualified, to be excluded’. And there are cases of Semitic loans that through homophony take on the form of existing Greek words but with a different meaning. Thus in 1 Kgs 18:32, 35, 38 the word /“alé = ‘channel’, translated correctly by bépayaryéc in other Old Testament passages,”’ is interpreted as OéAacoa probably through homophony with ¢a/‘ata’ in the Aramaic spoken by the trans- lators.** And these are only a few lexical examples. Thackeray stud- ied various aspects of syntax by which the translators tried to establish a meaning within the Greek system. Possibly one of the more suc- cessful guesses is the translation of a Hebrew syntagm as alien to the Greek system as the infinitive absolute to indicate the inevitable aspect of an action. The first attempts go from literal translation of the infinitive to translation by an adverb or periphrastic translation or even omission. However, after these initial attempts, the transla- tors, in general, opted for one of the following two solutions: (1) dative of the noun corresponding to the verb in question: Bavét@ GnoBaveioGe for mét tamit of Gen. 2:17 and (2) participle of the same verb or of a verb close in meaning: rAnOdvov xAnOvvé for the harba 7arbé of Gen. 3:16.
*% P. Walters (formerly Katz), The Text of the Septuagint: Its Corruptions and their Emendation, ed. D. Gooding, Cambridge 1973, 149.
7 See Is. 36:2.
* P, Walters, The Text of the Septuagint, 191. ‘The influence of homophony in the translation of the LXX is a topic discussed in current research. Caird holds that homophony was one of the translation techniques used by the translators which influenced the choice of words. At other times it was an ingenious procedure for extracting a plausible meaning from an otherwise unintelligible text, see G. B. Caird, “Homocophony in the Septuagint”, Essays in Honor of W. D, Davies, ed. R. Hammerton- Kelly and R. Scroggs, Leiden 1976, 74-88. Although there are undeniable traces of this procedure, not all the cases presented by Caird are convincing; see J. Barr, “Doubts about Homoeophony in the Septuagint”, Yextus 12 (1985), 1-77. On the relationship between lexicography and translation techniques, E. Tov, “Three Dimensions of LXX Words”, RB 83 (1976), 529-44; ‘Tov, “Loan-words, Homophony and Transliteration in the Septuagint”, Bib 60 (1979), 216-36; N, Fernandez Marcos, “Nombres propios y etimologias populares en la Septuaginta”, Séfarad 37 (1977), 239-59; and J. A. L. Lee, “Equivocal and Stereotyped Renderings in the LXX”, RB 87 (1980), 104-17, can be consulted. Lee insists that al times the translators are aware of the polysemy of certain words and do not attempt to resolve the ambi- guity, so that more than one reading of the same text is possible.
26 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
This last procedure is the one that prevailed in the historical books. However, the two syntagms that ultimately imposed themselves already enjoyed some authority in classical Greek.”
c) Modern Linguistics and the Translation Process
In the history of research on the LXX there is no lack of mono- graphs on the translation technique of certain books, especially around the theory of a double translator for each book, as set out by Thackeray in 1903;°° works devoted to various sections of the lexi- con include those by $. Daniel, Jellicoe, Skchan, Zlotowitz, Heater, Olofsson*! and others such as those by Orlinsky, Fritsch and Soffer on the anthropomorphisms, with the aim of uncovering the true theology of the LXX;* finally there are some syntactic analyses particularly by the Helsinki school.** However, there are no com- prehensive structural studies, based on modern linguistics, on the bihngualism of the translators, which would throw light with new perspectives on the translation process, one of the more complex phenomena of linguistic expression. And this even though in recent years we have scen several events that have contributed to the devel- opment of this areca of language: the emergence of structuralism in Europe at the beginning of the century with F. de Saussure, the
79H. St J. Thackeray, 4 Grammar of the Old Testament, 47-48.
oH. St J. TL pray, “The Translators of Jeremiah”, 77S 4 (1903), 245-66; Thackeray, “The ‘Translators of Ezekiel”, 77S 4 (1903), 398-411; Thackeray, “The ‘Translators of the Prophetical Book”, 77S 4 (1903), 578-85; ‘Thackeray, “The Greek Translators of the Four Books of Kings”, FITS 8 (1907), 262-7 pray, “The Bisection of Books in Primitive LXX Manus cripts”, JTS 9 (1908), 88-98, And more particularly see CB 34-37.
3S. Daniel, Recherches sur le vocabulaire du culte dans la Sepiante, Paris 1966; S. Jel- licoe, “Hebrew~Greck Equivalents for the Nether World: Its Milieu and Inhabitants in the Old Testament”, Textus 8 (1973), 1-20; P. W. Skehan, “The Divine Name at Qumran, in the Masada Scroll and in the Septuagint”, BJOSCS 13 (1980), 14-44; B. M. Zlotowitz, The Septuagint Translation of the Hebrew Terms in Relation to God in the Book of Jeremiah, New York 1981; H. Heater, A Septuagint Translation Technique in. the Book of Job, Washington 1982 (he discovers the technique of interpolating material from elsewhere in the LXX, usually another part of Job, in the passage bemg trans- lated); S. Ololsson, God is my Rock: A Study of Translation Technique and Theological Exegesis in the Septuagint, Stockholm 1990.
® See CB 20.
* 1. Soisalon-Soininen, Die Infinitive in der Sepluaginta, Helsinki 1965, and R. Sollamo, “Some ‘Improper’ Prepositions in the Septuagint and Early koiné Greek”, VT 25, 4 (19 773-83. See also I. Soisalon-Soininen, Studien zur Sepluaginta-Syntax, and A. Aejmelaeus, On the Trail of the Septuagint Translators.
THE SEPTUAGINYT AS A TRANSLATION 27
Prague circle and the Copenhagen school; and in the United States the coincidence of a large number of linguists interested in the rela- tionship between language and culture; and the transformational~gen- erative linguistics of N. Chomsky. All the linguistic theories mentioned have repercussions for the problem of translation. They have been applied to the translation of the Bible with surprising results as shown by publications by E. Nida and others.*t Beyond the excessive pub- licity and the practical results achieved, there is no doubt that the exercise of translation by using computers has produced important results in semantic theory and greater precision in the analysis and evaluation of linguistic equivalences.”
However, prescinding from our opinion concerning the various linguistic schools of our century, from a functional aspect it seems clear that the structural and transformational-generative are the most productive approaches to be applicd to the phenomenon of transla- tion. The dynamic and gencrative aspects of the language are of prime importance for the translator who tries to describe the de- coding processes of the message in the source language to adapt them to the structures of the target language. As the linguistic sign is arbitrary and free in nature, some languages make more distinc- tions than others in ordering the totality of experience. There are no two languages that completely agree in the linguistic categories by which they structure reality. Furthermore, these structures differ much more radically than do the cultural worlds that transmit these extra- linguistic referents to us. Hence even in the most literal translation there is an inevitable shortfall or discrepancy between the message of the source language and what reaches the target language. When the LXX translates elohim by 986g and yahweh by «bproc, it has only reproduced in an approximate way and for the Greck-spcaking world what the Jews understood by the name of their God. In the same way, Ulfilas used Gothic Gup to translate the Qe6g of the LXX not because the Goths understood Gup to mean what Jewish Christians understood by Os6¢ but because this Germanic term could be adopted as a rough equivalent of the Greek term.
“EL A. Nida, Towards a Science of Transtating; J.-C. Margot, Traducir sin traicionar. Teoria de la traduccién aplicada a los textos biblicos, Madrid 1987, and V. Garcia Yebra, Traduccién: Historia _y Teoria, Madrid 1994.
*® See C. Dogniez, BS 9-11, especially E. Tov and B. G. Wright, “Computer- Assisted Study of the Criteria for Assessing the Literalness of Translation Units in the LXX”, Zextus 12 (1985), 149-87.
28 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
Of course this discrepancy, which is inherent to every translation, is in some way alleviated by the capacity of the context to reabsorb the semantic discrepancy due to the different arcas of meaning (oligosemy—polysemy) of the corresponding words in one or other language especially when one translates mechanically. In any case, all that has been said, together with the various techniques of mak- ing the implicit explicit, but which adds no new information, and still with great reservations about the hypothesis of a different Vorlage, forces us to look at the debated problem of the theological variants or the value judgements on the competence of the translators.
These linguistic theories have been fruitful in the translations of the Bible into modern languages, especially pre-literary primitive languages, where the technique of dynamic equivalents has its maximum appli- cation. In the LXX only timid attempts have so far been made, such as the one by de Waard for the book of Ruth” and by Rabin for the indefinite subject, and especially by Heller applied to categories of inflection.” Prior to any study of the theology of the translation or any induction about the possible different Hebrew Vorlage that the translators had in front of them, one has to ask oneself to what extent the divergences from the Hebrew text are conditioned by the linguistic possibilities of Greek as compared to Hebrew. These require- ments of the linguistic expression no doubt have theological conse- quences, but primarily they are linguistic and do not in themselves imply a ‘concrete exegetic tendency on the part of the translators. And they have to be taken into account if one wishes to avoid any type of generalisation that contrasts Semitic thought with Greek thought or the repeated digressions about Greek anthropocentrism
% For example, it is not possible to ascribe to the translators’ incompetence or dilettantism the scarce agreement we notice in the LXX between Greek and Hebrew tenses. It should be noted, instead, that the tenses in Greek correspond only very vaguely to the Hebrew tenses. And Rabin has examined the particular case of the indefinite subject in the ancient versions, reaching the conclusion that the differences in translation are due to stylistic preferences of the target languages in question, not because the translators had a different Vorlage; Ch. Rabin, “The Ancient Versions and the Indefinite Subject”, Textus 2 (1962), 60-76. On the other hand, statistical analysis confirms that the principle of semantic equivalence is retained with a very high percentage except in those cases where the polysemy of the Hebrew word allows multiple translations; see B. Kedar-Kopfstein, “Zum lexicalischen Aquivalenz- prinzip in Bibeliibersetzungen”, ZAH 2 (1994), 133-44,
# J. de Waard, “translation Techniques Used by the Greek Translators of Ruth”, Bib 54, 4 (1973), 499-515.
% Ch. Rabin, “The Ancient Versions”.
% J. Heller, “Grenzen sprachlicher Entsprechung”.
THE SEPTUAGINT AS A TRANSLATION 29
against Hebrew theocentrism.’” From an examination of the basic grammatical structures of the language, Heller concludes that the translators of the LXX had hardly any difficulty in the translation of pronouns; the obstacles to translating nouns increase in propor- tion the more abstract they are. However, where the discrepancy acquires alarming proportions is in the translation of verbs. The pre- cision in translating the lst person singular pronoun (anf) in the Pentateuch is in excess of 99%; and this even though in Greek it is not necessary to make the personal pronoun explicit as the subject. Nor did they find particular difficulty in translating the person. As a result, where there is a change of person within respect to the Hebrew, the passage has to be examined with greater accuracy as it can reflect an exegetical tendency of the translators and need not be due exclusively to linguistic change.
After the categories of person and number, the active and passive are reproduced more faithfully. Most of the changes observed are due to the fact that Greek lacks the causative form of the verb; but other cases are due to a different Vorlage or the exegetical attitude of the translator.
The translation of verbal inflection is much freer than for inflected nouns. In Indo-European languages, the intensive and the causative are not morphological categories but semantic; hence the /iphil and hophal cause the translators particular confusion. Even so, what can be stated from this analysis of the structures of both languages is that the translators were not amateurs but did their best to reach all the precision allowed them in the shift from one linguistic sys- tem to such a different one. Hasty judgements, such as that the translators gave clear signals of incompetence, have to be revised in the light of these criteria. In cach passage where we find one of the translations called free or paraphrastic the reasons for that transla- tion have to be examined, whether a particular expression can be
he Denken im Vergleich mit dem Griechischen, Gotin- sur la pensée hébraique, Paris 1962, or the studies by G. Bertram, especially “Die religiése Umdeutung altorientalischer Lebensweisheit in der griechischen Ubersetzung des AT”, ZAW 54 (1936), 153-67; Bertram, “Von Wesen der LXX-Frémmigkeit”, WO IL, 3 (1956), 274-84; Bertram, “Zur Bedeutung der Religion der LXX in der hellenistischen Welt”, 7TLZ 92 (1967), 245-50. Recent studies make it clear that the chasm that some have wished to mark out between Semitic and Greek thought never actually existed: N. P. Bratsiotis, “Nephes-psyché. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Sprache und der Theologie der LXX”, VTS 15 (1966), 58-89, and L. M. Pasinya, La notion de ‘nomos’ dans le Pentateuque grec, Rome 1973.
See T. Boman, Das hebrii gen 1968; G. ‘Tresmontant,
30 THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL SETTING
translated literally within the range of possibilities of the language or whether the interpreter had a different Vorlage before his eyes. Only in those cases where the two previous explanations fail is it permissible to consider intentional change by the translator, as the reflection and crystallisation of the actual theology of the LXX.
SeLecT Brp.ioGRAPHy
Aejmelacus, A., On the Trail of the Septuagint Translators: Collected Essays, Kampen 1993.
Astour, M. C., Hellenosemitica, Leiden 1965,
Bardy, G., La question des langues dans Véglise ancienne, Paris 1948, 1~78.
Barr, J., The Typology of Literalism in Ancient Biblical Translations. MSU XV, Géttingen 1979.
Bickermann, E. J., “The LUXX as a Translation”. PAAZR 28 (1959), 1-39 (reprinted in Bickermann, Studies in Jewish and Christian History, Leiden 1976, 167-201),
Brock, S. P., “Aspects of Translation Technique in Antiquity”. GRBS 20 (1979), 69-87.
~-——, “The Phenomenon of the Septuagint”, OS XVII (1972), 11°36. —-, “Translating the Old Testament”. Jt iy Written, ed. D. A. Carson, 1988, 87-98.
Brown, J. P., “Literary Contexts of Hebrew-Greek Vocabulary”. JSS (1968), 163-91.
Cook, J., “Were the Persons Responsible for the Septuagint ‘Translators and/or Scribes and/or Editors?”. ZNSE 21 (1995), 45~58.
Coste, J., “La premiére expérience de traduction biblique: La Septante”. La Maison Dieu 53 (1958), 96-102.
Frankel, Z., Vorstudien zu der Septuaginia, Leipzig 1841, 163-203.
Hanhart, R., “Die Ubersetzungstechnik der Septuaginta als Interpretation”. Mélanges D. Barthélemy, ed. P. Casetti, 1981, 135~57.
——., “Zum Wesen der makedonisch-hellenistischen Zeit Israels”. Wort, Lied und Goitesspruch. Beitriige zur Sepluaginta. Festschrift fiir Joseph Ziegler 1, Wurzburg 1972, 49-59.
Harl, M., “Les divergences entre la Septante et le texte massorétique”. M. Harl et al, La Bible grecque des Septante, 1988, 201-22.
Heller, J., “Grenzen sprachlicher Entsprechung der LXX. Ein Beitrag zur Uber- setzungstechnik der LXX. auf dem Gebiet der Flexionskategorien”. MIOF 15 (1969), 234-48,
Jellicoe, 8., SMS, 314-29,
Katz, P., “Zur Ubersetzungstechnik der Septuaginta”. WO I] (1956), 267-73.
Lee, J. A. L., A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch, SCS 14, Chico, Galif. 1983.
Margolis, M. L., The Story of Bible Translation, Philadelphia 1917 (reprinted in Israel 1970).
Martin, R. A., “Some Syntactical Criteria of Translation Greek”. VT 10 (1960), 295-310.
, Syntactical Evidence of Semitic Sources in Greek Documents. SCS 3, Missoula, Mont. 1974.
Mounin, G., Les problémes théoriques de la traduction, Paris 1963.
Nida, E. A., Towards a Science of ‘Translating, Leiden 1964.
Nida, E. A., and Ch. R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden 1969.
Olofsson, S., The LXX Version: A Guide to the Translation Technique of the Septuagint, Stockholm 1990.
‘THE SEPTUAGINT AS A TRANSLATION 31
Rabin, Ch., “The Ancient Versions and the Indefinite Subject”. Textus 2 (1962), 60-76.
——— “The Translation Process and the Character of the Septuagint”. Texius 6 (1968), 1-27,
., “Vhe Mechanics of Translation Greek”. JBL 52 (1933), 244-52,
B. J., The Old Testament Text and Versions, Cardiff 1951, 172-88.
, W., Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation, Cambridge 1955,
Sceligmann, J. L., The Septuagint Version of Isaiah: A Discussion of its Problems, Leiden 1948,
Soisalon-Soininen, L., Studien zur Sepuaginia-Syntax, eds. A. Acjmelaeus and R. Sollamo, Helsinki 1987.
Sollamo, R., Renderings of Hebrew Semiprepositions in the Septuagint, Helsinki 1979.
Swete, H. B., An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, Cambridge 1914, 315-41.
Talshir, Z., “Linguistic Development and the Evaluation of Translation Technique in the Septuagint”. Scripta Hierosolymitana 33, Jerusalem 1986, 301~20.
Tov, E., “The Nature and Study of the Translation Technique of the LXX in the Past and Present”. VI Congress of the IOSCS, 1987, —59,
Waard, J. de, “La Septante: une traduction”. Kiudes sur le judaisme hellénistique, eds. R. Kunizmann and J. Schlosser, Paris 1984, 133-45.
Weissert, D., “Alexandrinian Analogical Word Analysis and Septuagint Translation ‘Techniques”. Textus 8 (1973), 31-44.
For further bibliography, see CB 16-20 and C. Dogniez, BS 47-52.
PART ‘TWO
THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
CHAPTER THREE
THE LETTER OF PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES
a) The Jews of Alexandria
The diaspora or voluntary dispersion of the Jews had already started at the beginning of the 6th century BCE in connection with the Babylonian exile. Some Jews fought as mercenaries on the side of Psammeticus Il (594-589) against Nebuchadnezzar and afterwards fled to Egypt for fear of the Jews (see Jeremiah 42-43). In Egypt, they founded the military colony in Elephantine in the southern part of a small island in the Nile, a few kilometres north of the first cataract. This Jewish settlement became famous for the many legal papyri found there in 1906-07, among them the oldest translation into Aramaic (end of the 5th century sce) of the Book of Ahigar. However, the diaspora only gained importance in the Hellenistic period. Shortly after the conquest by Alexander (332 scx) and the foundation of Alexandria (331 sce) the presence of many Jews is already noticeable in Egypt and particularly in that city. According to the Letter of Aristeas (§§12-13), when Ptolemy I Lagos (323-283) occupied Palestine in 312 Bag, he took to Egypt as slaves many Jewish prisoners of war. His son Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283-246) granted them freedom. Philo of Alexandria (Contra Flaccum, 43) speaks of a million Jews resident in Egypt. However, this figure seems to be exaggerated and historians calculate about two hundred thousand, half of them residing in Alexandria. They were not ruled by the law of the polis but were organised as their own ethnic group within the state, presided over by an ethnarch and governed by the gerousia or Gouncil of Elders, a senate with seventy-one members. Hellenisation occurred not only at the level of language but also with respect to culture as can be seen from the onomasticon and the offices and professions they carried out.' Whereas contacts with their original
' TD). Rokeah, “Prosopography of the Jews in Egypt”, Appendix II, ie Hi, 1964, 167-96. See also V. Tcherikover, “The Ptolemaic Period (323-30 sc) . CPy I, 1957, 1-47; H. Hegermann, “The Diaspora in the Hellenistic Age”, The Canibridge
36 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
homeland by means of pilgrimages to Jerusalem on the chief feasts and the annual tribute to the Temple kept their traditions alive, the opening to Hellenistic Judaism and its oriental attraction captivated many proselytes from the Hellenistic surroundings. In imitation of the Greeks, the Jews of the Hellenistic period also cultivated a series of new literary forms such as writing history and even publicity with the purpose of presenting Judaism to a Hellenised society, philosophy and epic, tragedy and even the novel.? However, of all the Jewish-Hellenistic production preserved, without any doubt whatsoever the main contribution was the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. A result of this unique event was also the pro- duction of new books in Greek, Greek expansions of some Hebrew books, and a whole series of pseudepigraphic literature in Greek which grew in the shadow of the Bible translated into Greck.?
b) Description and Contents of the Letter
The document that claims to describe the origin and circumstances surrounding the translation of the LXX is the Letter of Aristeas. It is a pseudepigraphic writing in the form of a letter by the supposed author, Aristeas, to his friend Philocrates. However, as in so many cases in antiquity,‘ it is in fact a literary fiction that conceals a treat- ise with several topics on events of the past with a strong dose of indoctrination about the Jewish people. The situation of Jews in the diaspora, living in Alexandria in a hostile environment, very soon gave rise to a whole range of propaganda literature against the
History of Judaism, 1989, 115-66, and P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria IIL, Oxford 1972.
2 N. Walter, “Jewish-Greek Literature of the Greek Period”, Cambridge History of Judaism, 1989, 385-408.
* Those books which do not appear in the Hebrew Bible are called ‘apocrypha’ in Protestant tradition and ‘deuterocanonical’ by Catholics. However, it is not casy to agree on either the name or the classification of this literature and even less on parabiblical literature commonly called pseudepigrapha or intertestamental since the boundaries between the various literary forms and the actual manuscript transmis- sion are not always clear. A good example is provided by the treatment this liter- ature receives in two recent works: M. Delcor, “The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Hellenistic period”, The Cambridge History of Judaism, 1989, 409-503, and M. E, Stone (ed.), Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, Assen~Philadelphia 1984, 33-184 and 283-442.
* For example, the letters of Seneca and Ciccro, which are really treatises on re- Jevant topics in the form of a letter; see N. Fernandez Marcos, “Letter of Aristeas”, 13.
PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 37
Hellenistic world, among which our letter must be included.) This work, which has reached us in twenty-three manuscripts, has no superscriptio. Tt usually appears as a prologue in a series of Byzantine minuscule manuscripts that contain a catena (biblical text and con- tinuous commentary by various Fathers) to the Octateuch. Josephus calls it td “Apiotatov BiBAtov (‘the book of Aristeas’)® and Eusebius refers to it in the following terms: xepi tficg Epunvetas tod tv Tovdatev véuov (‘on the translation of the Law of the Jews’).’ The word émiotoAn occurs for the first time in ms. Parisinus 950 of the Paris National Library (14th century). In book 12 of the Antiquities Josephus paraphrases two-fifths of the letter, rewriting the story in Attic style;* and Eusebius, in books 8 and 9 of the Praeparatio Evangetica, extracts about a quarter of the content of the letter. The indirect tradition of Eusebius is valuable in transmitting to us virtually the same text as in the manuscripts but several centuries earlier, given that the oldest date to the 11th century.
Tt is not casy to summarise the contents of the letter. It describes the origin, purpose and result of the mission of the writer Aristcas (one of the three envoys) together with the high priest of Jerusalem, Eleazar. The king of Egypt, Ptolemy Philadelphus, commissions his librarian Demetrius of Phalerum to collect in Alexandria, by pur- chase or translation, all the books of the world. Aristeas is present at the interview between the king and the librarian and can prove how the former expresses his wish to include in this great collection a copy of the Jewish Law translated into Greek. With this aim he orders a letter to be written to the high priest of the Jews to draw up a team of competent translators (§§1—21). To win the high priest’s favour, Aristeas suggests that the king concede freedom to 100,000 Jewish slaves, prisoners of war, and in the letter includes a document of manumission (§§22-25).° There is an exchange of letters and cre- dentials between Ptolemy and Eleazar with a detailed description of
° See H. Willrich, “Urkundenfiilschung”, and N. Fernandez Marcos, “Interpreta- ciones helenisticas del pasado de Israel”, CFC 8 (1975), 157-86.
® Josephus, Ant. XII, 100.
7 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evang. IX, 38.
® A. Pelletier, Mavius Foséphe adapltateur.
* H. Liebesny has published, translated and commented on one of the docu- ments which might have been a source for the redactor of the letter in this pas- sage: see “Ein Erlass des Kénigs Ptolomaios I Philadelphos tiber die Deklaration von Vieh und Sklaven in Syrien und Phénikicn (PER Inv. N. 24. 552 gr.)”, Aegyptus 16 (1936), 257-91.
38 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
each gift; the texts of the letters are also included in the writing. Ptolemy’s letter to the high priest asks him to send six old men from each tribe (6 x 12 = 72), men of exemplary life and versed in the Law. Next, the list of translators is given in which the predominance of Semitic but Hellenised names is evident (§§47-50).'° Ptolemy’s delegation describes their impressions of Jerusalem, the templc, the cult, the city and the whole of Judah (§§83-120). Aristeas questions the high priest on some Jewish laws and he explains their deeper meaning (§§128-70)."'
Text, translators and delegation return successfully to Egypt where they are immediately received by the king, contrary to every cus- tom in Greek courts. Ptolemy prepares a seven-day banquet for his Jewish guests. Here the author uses the genre of the symposium to describe the banquet in the royal court; this symposium takes up most of the letter (§§187-292). The king questions them on the scriptures and proposes an enigma (hid@) to cach of the old men, which they solve brilliantly, to the surprise and joy of the audience.'” Next come short paragraphs devoted to the actual translation and its results (§§301-16). The worthy guests, who are taken to an island, surrounded by silence and provided with everything necessary, com- plete the translation in seventy-two days as a sign of remarkable coincidence.'* Every morning they wash their hands in the sea fol- lowing Jewish usage, as testimony that they had done nothing wrong.'*
At the close, Demetrius gathers together the whole Jewish community
' Tsserlin wishes to see in this predominance of Palestinian names over Egyptian
an indication that perhaps there is a basis of truth and that the description of the delegation is not a complete invention: see “The Names of the 72 Translators”. However, the use of Palestinian names belonging to the twelve tribes could be quite intentional within the literary fiction to which the letter belongs.
"' On this part of the Zeller, see N. Ferndndez Marcos, “El ‘sentido profindo’ de las prescripciones dietéticas judias”.
"A procedure which was very common the in Oriental Hellenistic courts, as can be seen in the passage about the three bodyguards of King Darius (I Ezra 3-5). On the connection between questions about wisdom and courtly education, sce F. Cantera and M. Iglesias, Sagrada Biblia, Madrid 1975, 603-604, and L. M. Wills, The Few in the Court of the Foreign King, Minneapolis 1990.
ovuvérvye 5& obtmc, Hote Ev hugpats EPSourKovta Svoi teAetwOivon t& tic hetoypagiic, olovel Katd xpdQeatv tivo tod torodtov yeyevnuévov (“The outcome was such that in seventy-two days the business of translation was completed, just as if such a result was achieved by some deliberate design carried out as if it were according to a goal previously fixed,” Letter of Aristeas §307).
4 Siesdpovv Sé Sti paptipidv got: tod pndév eipydoOor Kaxdv (“They explained that it is evidence that they have done no evil,” Letter of Aristeas §306).
PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 39
and reads the translation aloud and it is greeted with general acclaim, everyone promising to utter a curse — as was the custom — against anyone who removed anything from the text or added anything.’”
c) Historicity
Since the letter as a whole was accepted as historical in antiquity, in successive versions legendary elements were added. It was not until the modern age that the first doubts arose concerning the let- ter’s authenticity. The first to voice reservations about it was the Spanish humanist Luis Vives (1492-1540), commenting on the pas- sage in Augustine (De Cw. Dei XVIU, 42) on the translation of the LXX."* In 1606, J. Justus Scaliger (1540~1609) had the same doubts and a century later, H. Hody was indifferent to the statements in the letter.!”
Editions and translations into modern languages are listed exhaus- tively in A. Pelletier’s introduction, the most complete and most recent edition of this text.'? All the same it is worth noting the edi- tion by L. Mendelsohn and P. Wendland in the Teubner collection (Leipzig 1900), to whom we owe the division of the letter into 322 paragraphs, generally accepted today, and the edition by H. St John Thackeray, printed as an appendix to Swete’s Greek Old Testament, also in 1900."° As for translations into modcrn languages, there are several in Italian, French, English, German and one in Spanish, in Modern Hebrew and in Japanese.”
4% éetevoav drapdcaco, coOds Hog abtois gor, ef tig SiaoKkevdcer mpooteig F} petapépwv tt td Gbvodov tay yeypappéevoy H moiobpeEvos deaipesiv, KaAdds todto mptooovtec, iva Suk mavtoc cévva. Koi pévovta pvoAdoontar (“they commanded that a curse should be laid, as was their custom, on anyone who should alter the version by any addition or change to any part of the written text, or any deletion cither. This was a good step taken, to ensure that the words were preserved com- pletely and permanently in perpetuity,” Letter of Aristeas §311).
6 L, Vives, In XXH libros de Cwitate Dei Commentaria, Basel 1522, on book XVIIL, 42.
"J. J. Scaliger, Animadversiones in Chronologica Eusebii, Leiden 1606, 122-25, and H. Hody, “Contra historiam LXX interpretum Aristeae nomine inscriptum disser- tatio”, in De Bibliorum Textibus Originalibus, Versionibus Graecis, et Latina Vulgata, Oxford 1705, 189.
‘SA. Pelletier, Letire d’Aristée a Philocrate. An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, 531-606.
S andez Marcos, “Letter of Aristeas”; by A. Kahana, in Ha-
Ha-hisonim, 1-71; and by Y. Sakon in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha V, 'Yokyo 15-85 and 283-301. See C. Dogniez, BS 18.
40 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
Today the pseudepigraphic genre of the letter and its legendary nature are accepted without question. But the literary fiction is not without historical elements however difficult it may be to extract them by sound source criticism: the date of the translation of the Pentateuch cannot be put back too far (in fact before direct or indi- rect association with Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the first half of the 3rd century BCE seems likely, although the work itself was begun by the Jews of the diaspora and for the Jews and was not an official undertaking of the Egyptian court). The translation was made basi- cally for liturgical and didactic, but not expressly literary, reasons, as can be gathered from a simple comparison of the Pentateuch with the style of Josephus, Philo and even of the letter we are discuss- ing. The language of the Pentateuch belongs to the first half of the 3rd century Bce in Alexandria, as the studies by A. Deissmann have shown. Furthermore, there are the witnesses of Pap Rylands 458 (with fragments of Deuteronomy 23-28) which comes from the 2nd century BcE, and of Pap Fouad 266 (Dt. 31:36~32:7) from the Ist century BcE. To these indications can be added the fact that the Jewish-Hellenistic historian Demetrius, from the end of the 3rd cen- tury BCE, certainly knew Genesis in Greck.”! The knowledge that we have from other sources of the reign of Ptolemy II make this hypoth- esis likely, and in 132 sce the translator of the book of Sira already alludes in the prologue to the Torah, the Prophecies and other writ- ings as integral parts of the Alexandrian Bible.”
| See J. Freudenthal, Hellenistiche Studien, 185ff. According to Meecham (‘The Letter of Aristeas”, 316-24) the author of this letter was familiar with the Greek Pentateuch as can be shown from a series of allusions and reminiscences. Wevers however stresses that he only knows the Pentateuch and that no relationship between Letter of Arsteas 8857-82 and I Kings 6-7 can be established. Instead, the rela- tionship of Aristeas with Ex. 25:23ff seems beyond doubt (J. W. Wevers, “Proto- Septuagint Studies”, 63, note 23. The Seed of Wisdom. Fs. T. 7. Meek, Toronto 1964, 58-77). The information from Aristobulus (first half of the 2nd century Bc), trans- mitted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evang. XII, 12, |-2, according to whorn there were partial translations of the Law before the one described here, in which Pythagoras and Plato inspired the authors, belongs to the Jewish-Christian issue of plagiarism by Greek writers from Moses and thus has no historical credibility at all: sce G. Dorival, “histoire de la Septante dans le judaisme antique”, 45-46.
2 sig te thy tod vouov Kal tav xpogntOv Kai tv GAAwv zatpiov PiBAlov avéyvoov (“for the reading of the Law, the prophets and other books of the ances- tors”). Van Esbroeck has analysed the Georgian version of the Letter of Aristeas and in it he finds traces of a document, probably from Jerusalem, used with some changes by the translator and also by Epiphanius of Salamina in his treatise De mensuris et pondertbus, 3 and 6: see M. Van Esbroeck, “Une forme inédite de la let- tre du roi Ptolémée”.
PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 41 d) Date of Composition and Sources
The date of the letter is an almost insoluble problem since the opin- ions of scholars range from the end of the 3rd century pce until close to the 2nd century cx.’ However, linguistic analysis allows fur- ther precision, as Bickermann has shown,” from the use of Ptolemaic titles, analysis of the documents and other formulaic expressions used as well as from the religious and political tendency of the work, as Meisner has pointed out. Prominent are glorification of the Hellenistic ideal of a philanthropic king and the warning against the abuse of power; in the religious sphere the emphasis given to Jerusalem is paramount; the idealised description of the cult, the close links between the communities of Jerusalem and Alexandria, as well as the com- plete silence on the important cult of Leontopolis are notable.* All this shows that the author of the letter wishes to distance the Alexandrian community from the Jews of Onias so that the decade between 127 and 118 sce seems the most suitable period for the origin of the letter.” And in any case it is earlier than Flavius Josephus, given that around 70 cE he rewrites the letter in Antiquities XIE, 12-118.
The author has used several sources, some already identified, others more difficult to find due on the one hand to our preserving so litde of the literary production of Hellenism and on the other to the pseudepigraphic nature of the writing which tends to disguise and change the material used. In §31 Hecateus of Adbera is mentioned; probably the work was used as a basis for the first part or the epi Toviaiev cited by Josephus in Contra Ap. I, 183-205, falsely attribu- ted to Hecateus of Abdera, together with other Greek reports of journeys to Palestine or pilgrims’ guides.” For the symposium passage,
% See 8S. Jellicoe, SMS, 47-52 and G. Dorival, “L’histoire de la Septante dans le judaisme antique” 41-42.
4 E. Bickermann, “Zur Daticrung des Pseudo-Aristeas”, 121ff: proposes ¢. 145~125 BCE as the most probable date. Momigliano instead opts for 110~100 Bag, see A, Momigliano, “Per la data e la caratteristica della Lettera di Aristea”, Aegyptus 12 (1932) 161-72, p. 168.
5 N. Meisner, “Untersuchungen zum Aristeasbrief”, 204-17.
%6 A Jewish military colony near Memphis, founded by Onias, see V. A. Tcherikover and A. Fuks, CPJ I, Cambridge, Mass. 1957, 3ff. See A. F. J. Klijn, “The Letter of Aristeas and the Greek Translation of the Pentateuch in Egypt”, 7S 11 (1964-65) 154-58, and S, Jellicoe, “Che Occasion and Purpose of the Letter of Aristeas: A Reexamination”, N7S 12 (1965-66) 144-50.
* N. Meisner, “Aristeasbrief”, 43.
°8'N. Meisner, “Aristeasbrief”, 39.
42 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
which covers more than a third of the whole letter, in most of the answers the line of thought of ancient Hellenistic treatises called nepi Baotretac can be followed. The sources of other sections cannot be traced, but they certainly belong to the topic of this kind of litera- ture.” To the king’s question of why no Greck historian or poct mentioned the Jewish Law, the answer is that the Jewish scriptures cannot be touched by the gentiles, illustrating this by mentioning
when clarifying the sources of this passage: for some the writing of Pscudo-Hecateus is latent here whereas Bayer suspects that un- derlying this narrative is the lost writing by Demetrius with the title xepi dvetpwv in which miraculous cures from Sarapis are de- scribed, stories which the author of the letter transfers to the God of the Jews.” The number of seventy-two translators who came from Jerusalem is to be ascribed to literary fiction, as is the picture it con- veys of the philological work carried out in Alexandria. Analysis of the style and translation techniques of the Pentateuch indicate sev- eral translators or the work of a team supervisor but these could never number seventy-two. This number, 70/72, is made up by choosing two for each of the twelve tribes and probably evokes the seventy old men present at Sinai when Moses received the Law.*! It is also the total of the members of Sanhedrin, as we shall see. As for the philological work, the author of the letter transposes to the event of translation inexact representations about what he thought
of the work carried out in Alexandria: ic. neglected texts were restored and transformed into genuine texts through discussion and comparison carried out by the philologists.*
* N. Meisner, “Aristcasbrief”, 40, and P. Hadot, “Fiirstenspiegel”, RAC 8 (1972), 555-631, pp. 587-89.
® EK. Bayer, Demetrios Phalereus der Athener, Stuttgart-Berlin 1942, LO2fT.
4 See Ex, 24:1 and G. Dorival, “La Bible des Septante: 70 ou 72 traducteurs?”,
® See G. Zuntz, “Aristeas Studies II. Aristeas on the translation of the Torah”, - JSS 4 (1959), 109-26, and the disputed passage from the letter: twyyéver yap “EBpaikoic ypéppact Kot peovi Acyouevo., cwedgatepov Sé Koi oby do brdpyer, ceotpovtat, Kadds bxd tav eiddtov npocavapépeton (“for these [works] are writ- ten in Hebrew characters and language. But they have been transcribed [lit. indi- cated] somewhat carelessly and not as they should be [lit. as is the case], according to the report of the experts” Letter of Aristeas §30). On the discussion of the mean- ing of ceonpavto., see D. W. Gooding, “Aristeas and Septuagint Origins: A Review of Recent Studies”, VF 13 (1963), 357-79. Gooding proves that oeoquavto clearly means ‘were written’, not ‘were translated’ or ‘were interpreted’. Dorival suggests translating it as ‘ont été traduits oralement’ (see G. Dorival, “L’histoire de la Septante dans le judaisme antique”, 54), although he admits the culty that this meaning
PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 43 e) Purpose of the Letter
The purpose of the letter is definitely apologetic. It is more difficult to determine the main recipients that the author has in mind, the Jews themselves (and in this supposition either the Palestine com- munity or the Alexandrian diaspora), the Greeks to let them know Israel’s glorious past, or the court of the Ptolemics. This detail affects the debate about the origins of the LXX. Thus Kahle’s theory, that the letter was the endorsement of the official unified version imposed by the Jewish authorities in the same period when the document was written, after a long period in which various Greek versions
were in circulation, like the Targums, has to be rejected as unusual.” On the other hand, P. Lagarde and his successors, although accept- ing the legendary elements shown by the letter, maintain the refer- ence to a single event, the translation of the Pentateuch in the 3rd century BCE, as a historical nucleus. Klijn has stated that is a pro- paganda writing in favour of the original LXX against a revision made ¢. 140 sce in the Jewish colony of Leontopolis which was in competition with the one in Alexandria.** All the same, although more and more traces of the revision of the LXX continue to appear from a very early period, we know too little about the Jewish set- tlement at Leontopolis to be able to defend this hypothesis without excessive imagination. For Stricker the letter refers to a royal under- taking by Ptolemy which consisted of codifying Hellenistic poetry and all the religions practised in Egypt with the aim of placing them under official control; for this it was necessary to translate the Egyptian (Manetho), Babylonian (Berossus) and Jewish (LXX) religious texts.”
of the verb is not accepted in the dictionaries. In my view, however, a new mean- ing of the verb has been introduced from synagogal practice as known from trans- lations into Aramaic. However, in the case of the LXX we have no witness to this practice and its translation techniques are very different from those used in the Targum, As Dorival himself admits (tid. 51-52), ancient witnesses on the existence of partial translations of the Bible before the LXX cannot be accepted. On the work and techniques of the Alexandrian philologists in respect of classical texts, especially by Homer, see R. Pfeifer, History of Classical Scholarhsip. I: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age, Oxford 1968, See also J. Trebolle Barrera, The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible, translated from the Spanish by W. G. E. Watson, Leiden—New York-Kéin 1998, 137-41.
“8 Por a more detailed explanation of his theory see the following chapter.
“ALF. J. Klijn, “he Letter of Aristeas”.
% B. H. Stricker, De Brief van Aristeas. De hellenistische codificaties der pracheleense gods- diensten, Amsterdam 1956. Rost again insists on the idea that the Greek translation
44 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
However, the success of the Greek Bible within Hellenistic Judaism is difficult to explain if the translation had been due to a coercive act based on the Hellenising politics of the Ptolemies.”
Howard, instead, maintains that the letter is not propaganda writ- ing against Hellenism, nor is it trying to make one particular trans- lation prevail over another, whether this is earlier than or contemporary with the letter. Instead, what it is trying to defend is the Judaism of the diaspora against the attacks of Palestinian Judaism. The Palestinian Jews accused their brothers in Alexandria of using an inaccurate translation of the Pentateuch and so were not fulfilling the Law.” However it cannot be ignored that although these differences between the Hebrew and Greek texts were very upsetting, there never was a real opposition between the theology of the diaspora and that of Palestine. This is what Hanhart states in setting the LXX transla- tion in Alexandria at the same level as the production of apocalyp- tic material in Palestine, as the special tool which Judaism used to defend itself from Hellenism.™
f) The Letter in Jewish Tradition
The information and commentaries about the origin of the Greck translation of the Bible in Jewish sources are later than the Letter of pseudo-Aristeas, but they may preserve some nucleus of earlier tradition alluding to the historical circumstances surrounding the translation. K. Miiller has examined these data in a monograph and published tthe results in a recent article.’ The texts are taken from the treatises of the Talmud and Tosephta which include the same tradition with several variations. The information revolves around the following topics:
has its origin for reasons of public law and not because of the needs of Greek- speaking Jewish communities: see L. Rost, “Vermutungen iiber den Anlass zur grie- chischen Ubersetzung der Tora”, in H. J. Stoebe (ed.), Wort-Gebot-Glaube, ATANT 59, Zurich 1970, 39-44. The same idea is reflected in D. Barthélemy, “Pourquoi la Torah a-t-elle été traduit en grec?”, On Language, Culture, and Religion: In Honor of Eugene A. Nida, The Hague 1974, 23-41, especially pp. 29ff.
% R. Hanhart, “Fragen um die Entstehung der LXX”, VT 12 (1962) 139-63.
*% G. E. Howard, “The Letter of Aristeas”, 8-9.
33) R, Hanhart, “Das Wesen der makedonisch-hellenistischen Zeit Israels”, Wort, Lied und Gottesspruch, 49-58.
% K. Miller, “Die rabbinischen Nachrichten”.
PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 45
1. The number of translators.
2. The number of changes inserted by the translators.
3. The fact that the translation is incorrect and comprises a sort of profanation together with a with some political unrest against Ptolemy.
With respect to the number of translators, the sources fluctuate between five (Abot of Rabi Nalan, 37; Séferim 1, 7), seventy (Sefer Tora 1, 8) and seventy-two (Séferim 1, 8; Maseket Sdferim 1, 8).
The rejection of the translation by the Jews is evident in two rab- binic statements:
1. The day the Law was translated was as hard for Israel as the day they made the golden calf; for the Torah could not be trans- lated according to all its demands.”
2. On the 8th day of Zebet*' the Law was written in Greek in the days of king Ptolemy. And for three days darkness came over the world.”
Also the number of changes made by the translators differs accord- ing to source: ten in Tanhuma Semot 22 and Abot of Rabi Natan 37; thirteen in Séferim 1, 8 and Sefer Tord 1, 9; and eighteen in Exodus Rabé 5, 5 and in the Midras hagadol to Dt. 4:19. However, as hap- pens in the case of the Tiggiéné Séferim the attempts at an exact list are expressions of late reworkings of the tradition."’ The kernel of truth which these rabbinic details reflect is that very soon differences were felt between the LXX and the Hebrew text. According to Miiller,"" of the changes quoted five are attested in the LXX and the other three show contact with it.” The other changes have to
© Séferim 1, 7-8; Sefer Tord 1, 8-9.
“ Corresponding to December—January; sec E. Schiirer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 Bo-Ap 135), revised and edited by G. Vermes and F. Millar, 1, Edinburgh 1973, Appendix III, The Jewish Calendar, 587-601.
® Gaonic additions to Megillat Ta’anit, 13. However, as we have seen in the pre- vious chapter, rabbinic tradition did not completely oppose the Greek translation. A remark included in the Jerusalem ‘Talmud, Meg. 1, 9, considers how Greek is the only language into which the Law can be translated in the most suitable way.
* S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, New York 1962, 29, “Corrections of the Soferim”.
4K. Miiller, “Die rabbinischen Nachrichten”, 73ff.
% Gen. 2:2 év th hpépa ch fern; Ex. 4:20a émi tmoGino; Ex. 12:40b kal év yf yavaav; Num, 16:15b émO@bunpo = ‘object of value’ instead of hamor = ‘ass’, as a tendency to distance this animal from important people; and Lev. 11:5a tov dacbn0d0. = ‘hare’ for “amebet and not tov ayov — as Baraita Meg. 9b of the Babylonian Talmud explains ~ so that they would not say that the Jews, in order to mock Ptolemy’s wife (from the Lagides family), inserted her name among the unclean animals, The
46 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
be attributed to the contemporary context of ever-changing Jewish exegesis. The persistent memory of these changes made by king Ptolemy comprises the strongest support for the hypothesis that the translation of the LXX was due to a violent act based on the pol- itics of Hellenisation by Ptolemy IL, indicated in the Letter of Aristeas." Some rejection and Jewish opposition to the LXX translation for fear of profaning the Torah is evident almost from the very start and, of course, before Christianity adopted it as the Bible of the Church. This is latent in the prologue to Sira,”” in certain passages of Philo and even in the Letter of Aristeas (8312-16). In this passage Demetrius replies to king Ptolemy that no Greek author has dared to cite the Jewish Law because it was sacred and untouchable, and he confirms it citing two warning miracles: Theopompus™ spoke and Theodectes* remained blind in punishment for his daring (xd tod Beod mAnyévtes §313). Furthermore, Theopompus was told the rea- son for his punishment in a dream: it was an indiscretion to deliver divine things to the profane. Probably the same reluctance and fear of profanation are latent in the paragraph of the Ictter which explains why the translators wash their hands every morning when saying the prayer, ‘as witness that they are doing nothing wrong’;®! and in
changes mentioned which indicate contacts with the LUXX are Gen. 1:1 (év é&pxii); 2:2a; 18:12b; and 49:6b. On this translation of the changes inserted by the trans- lators, see G. Veltri, Eine Tora fiir den Konig Talmai, 22 112. Veltri concludes that most of the alterations are exegetical changes which presuppose the Masoretic text and not a different Vorlage, a sort of Proto-Septuagint, as E. Tov, “The Rabbinic Tradition”, asserts,
© Bovdopvévav 8 huav Koi tobtoig yapilecbar Kal mor toig KaTé Thy cikovpévny Jovbatorg Kal toig peténerto., mponphweda. tov vonov dpav pebepunverBivon ypcp- paow "EAnvikoig & tév map’ dudv Acyouévev EBpaixGv ypaupétov, iv’ dx&pyn xal tadta nop’ hiv év PiPAroOhn obv toig GAAors Pastdikois PiPAtots (“It is our wish to grant favours to them and to all the Jews throughout the world, including future generations. We have accordingly decided that your Law be translated into Greek letters from what you call the Hebrew letters, in order that they too should take their place with us in our library with the other royal books”). See Leiter of Anisteas § 38. ,
© ob yap ioodvvapel ordth ev Eavtoic ‘EBpaiotl Aeydueva Kat Grow perayOf eis érépav yAdooov (“for these matters do not have the same force said in Hebrew as when they are translated into another language”).
“ A disciple of Isocrates, ¢. 378-300 scx.
“ Orator and tragic poet, ¢. 375-334 pcr. On this type of warning miracle in antiquity as a divine punishment, especially in the context of incubation, see N. Fernandez Marcos, Los Thaumata de Sofronio, Madrid 1975, 180-92.
t& Beta... eig Kowobs dvOpdxove Expéperv, (Letter of Aristeas § 313).
" Letter of Aristeas § 306.
PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 47
Philo’s Vita Mosis 2, 36, where the old men stretch their hands to heaven begging God not to let them fail completely.”
According to Miiller,** the fluctuation in the number of transla- tors (72/70/5) is best explained within the framework of rabbinic reflections on competence to make changes in a copy of the Torah. As a result of the rabbinic theories on the genesis and composition of the supreme court (bét din haggddél) only 72/70 or five members could be responsible for the divergences of the LXX, a common number in the commissions of the great Sanhedrin. It would thus be a projection into the past of the condition of the rabbinic period connected with the commissions responsible for making any change in the Torah. Others, however, think that the number five is due to giving that numerical value to the letter 4 of the article in haz- Zgenim (‘the ancients’). \
The author of the extra-canonical treatise Sépherim solved this difference of tradition as follows: two translations of the Law were
made by king Ptolemy, the first completed by five ancients; and the day the Law was translated was as hard for Isracl as the day they made the golden calf. The other translation made by seventy-two ancients with divine help was received with great success.”
g) Later Legend concerning the Origin of the Septuagint
The complex and ambiguous reception given to the Greek version in rabbinic tradition is in contrast with the enthusiasm that it roused, right from the start, in Hellenistic Judaism and in Christian tradi- tion. In Greek-speaking Jewish circles and among Christians writers,
2. qitobpevor tov Oedv pi) Siapaptety tig mpooBécemc, Vila Mosis Ul, 36. chen Nachrichten”, 9Of,
‘ ‘ain sect out a critique of the rabbinic information connected with the origins of the LXX. The main conclusions of his monographs can be summarised in the following points: (1) in rabbinic wadition the LXX was never considered to be a Targum but a Writing by King Ptolemy; (2) there was no rejection of the LXX by rabbinic Judaism and Christianity did not influence the Jewish appraisal of that version. The shift from a positive to a negative appraisal did not occur until the Gaonic period; (3) basically, the translation with all its requirements was considered to be impossible. Hence some accounts consider it to be a failure and compare it with the golden calf; and (4) the changes made by King Ptolemy belong to rabbinic exegesis not to the actual text. These changes reflect the difficulties of the Masoretic text and do not refer to a different Hebrew text used by the translators.
48 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
the content of the letter was further developed such that legendary clements were progressively added until Jerome’s verdict was reached on the assignment of the translators.
Still in the Alexandrian circle, Philo develops his inspiration theory about the translation, making it equivalent to the original Hebrew.*° Several new clements are inserted which are added to those men- tioned in the letter: Eleazar is high priest and king of Judea; Aristeas’s request is attributed to divine inspiration. It is now the translators who choose the place to make the translation and the Jsland of Pharos is expressly mentioned, though it is not specified in the letter. Once enclosed there, the translators “as if inspired by the deity, prophe- sied not some one and others another but all the same names and words, as if an invisible prompter were whispering them to each”.*® And further on he insists that both the original and the transla- tion are a single text and that the translators are prophets and hiero- phants like Moses.*’ Finally he tells us of an annual feast on the Island of Pharos which commemorated such an auspicious event.®
In the 2nd century ce, Justin confuses Eleazar with king Herod (37 Bce-4 ce!) and states that Ptolemy sent an embassy to Jerusalem to obtain the ‘books of prophecies’.°° In the Dialogue with Tryphon 78, 7 the translation is not only of the Pentateuch but extends to the whole Old Testament.
8 For an account of his thoughts on. the narrative in the Letter of Aristeas, see Philo, Vite Mosis Tl, 25-44, especially 36~37.
© KaBdaep évBovoidvtes mposertevov obk GAAa Ado, th 8 odte mivtes d6vopota Kon Efpota, boxep broBodéac Exckotorg copatas évnxodvtos, Vita Mosis I, 37. Note the use of the verb év@ovarice = ‘to be in ecstasy, inspired or possessed by a deity’, a technical term in classical antiquity for inspiration, sce Plato, fon 535¢-536b; Phaedo 253a, etc.; see, similarly L. Gil, Los antiguos y la inspiraciin poética, Madrid 1966. And for the concept of inspiration in Philo, see A. Pifiero, La ‘Theopneustia’ biblica en los primeros siglos. Doctoral diss. Madrid, Gomplutensian Univ., 1974. Note also that daofodetc = ‘he who suggests, reminds’, is used for the prompter in the theatre (Plutarch 2.813ff}, probably the image alluded to here.
57 Philo, Vita Mosis II, 40: iepopcvrng = the one who initiates (someone) into the rites and introduces (him) into the worship of the mystery religions.
88 Philo, Vita Mosis Il, 41.
%® $te SE ItoAguaiog 6 Aiyurtiov Bactheds, BiBAvobjKnv Kateckedate Koi to néviwv évOpdnov ovyypénuata cuvéyew éxerpoOn, nvOdpevos Kol tav mpognterdrv robtwv, nposénepye TH TOV ‘lovdaiay tote Bactrebovtt "Hpady dEidv SromepqOfivar adt® thks PiBAovg tHv xpognterav (“and when Ptolemy, the king of the Egyptians, organised the library and proposed collecting together all the writings of all men, when he heard about these prophecies, sent an embassy to Herod, at that time king of the Jews, asking him to get them to send him the books of prophecies”), Justin, Apologia I, 31.
PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 49
Irenaeus sets the event in the time of Ptolemy Lagos (305-285 BcE) and the request for exemplars of the Law is addressed to the people of Jerusalem.” After the translators were separated (without saying how), when the translations are compared in the king’s pres- ence they turn out to be identical, so that even the Gentiles who are present had to accept that the Scriptures had been translated by divine inspiration. Already there appears the apologetic motif of the superiority of the LXCX, especially to the more recent Jewish ver- sions of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, some of which had been in circulation since the time of Irenaeus.
The anonymous author of the Exhortation to the Greeks’ adds — as proof that his apologetic account which is intended for the Greeks is not a fable ~ that when he visited Alexandria and the Island of Pharos he himself could see the remains of the cells of the translators and that the natives told all this as the tradition of their ancestors.
Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian also refer to the Letter of Aristeas in terms not very unlike those used by Irenaeus.” And it is paradoxical that towards the end of the 2nd or at the beginning of the 3rd century cr, the Letter of Aristeas, a Jewish propaganda docu- ment which recommends the Greek translation of the Pentateuch, has become the principal witness for the defending the whole LXX, now adopted by Christianity as its official Bible.
The legend would continue to grow or the same topics would be repeated,® until Jerome, without rejecting the historicity of the Letter of Ansteas, was to ridicule the details of the later legend, setting the office and function of the translators in their true limits. In the pro- logue to his Vulgate translation of the Pentateuch he set out the
Irenaeus, Ady. Haereses III, 21, 2. Fragments preserved in Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. V, 8, 11-15.
®" Cohortatio ad Graecos, 13, a work attributed to Pseudo-Justin in the 3rd century cE, see PG 6, 241326.
® Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1, 22, 148; Tertullian, Apologeticum 18, 5-9. The latter states that the Hebrew exemplars used for the translation could be seen in the Serapeum of Alexandria.
® According to Epiphanius (310403), De Mens. et Ponderibus, IIL (PG 43, 242), the 72 old men were shut up in twos from morning to night ( (Coyh Cori Kote oikiokov) in 36 cells, and 36 canoes brought them each night to feast with the king. Augustine (354-430), in De Cimitate Dei, XVIU, 42, and XV, 11-13 repeated the same well-known points. For later authors A. Pelletier, Lettre d’Arisiée a Philocrate, 93-96, can be consulted. And for discussion of these ancient witnesses, see P. Wendland, “Zur altesten Geschichte der Bibel in der Kirche”, ZNW 1 (1900), 267-99.
50 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
following unambiguous details: “Et nescio quis primus auctor Sep- tuaginta cellulas Alexandriae mendacio suo extruxcrit, quibus divisi eadem scriptitarint, cum Aristheus ciusdem Potolomei txepoomortis et multo post tempore Jossepphus nihil tale rettulerint, sed in una basilica congregatos contulisse scribant, non prophetassc. Aliud est enim vatem, aliud esse interpretem.* In this and in other prologues to the Vulgate he also specifies that the original version of the Letter of Aristeas refers only to the translation of the Pentateuch. In these pro- logues, an attempt can be seen to justify and recommend his new translation based on Hebrew as against the LXX held to be inspired even by his contemporary, Augustine. The prestige which the LXX enjoyed as the Bible of the Church required an explanation for the new Vulgate translation, a translation which very soon was to replace the Greek version in the West.
h) The Completion of the Septuagint
The Letter of Aristeas only refers to the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek in the 3rd century scx. However, the process of the translation of Hebrew Bible into Greek continued in the 2nd and Ist centuries ce. That is to say, the translation into Greck of the Bible took four centuries, was the work of several translators and, as is obvious, throughout this period the translation techniques also varied. Not only that but, besides the translation of the Hebrew books, the Bible of Alexandria was enriched by including new books written in Greek such as Wisdom, Judith, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah or 1 and 2 Maccabees, and adds Greck supplements to other books such as Esther and Daniel.
It is not always easy to date these translations and new composi- tions. For this we have two basic criteria, one is external, from wit- nesses where these translations are already quoted, and the other is internal, from the analysis and characteristics of the translation. Recently, Dorival has set out the current position concerning the chronology and geography of these translations and we refer to him for further information.” However, this transformation of the Bible
“ Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. R. Weber, I, Stuttgart, -1969. On bib- lical prologues before Luther, see M. E. Schild, Abendlandische Bibelvorreden bis zur Lutherbibel, Hcidelberg 1970, pp. 24-42.
© G. Dorive chévement de la Septante dans le judais! La Bible greeque des Septante, 83-111.
”) M. Harl, et al.,
PSEUDO-ARISTEAS AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 51
through being translated into Greek does not end here. It affects the titles of the books, their grouping and sequence, the arrangement of the material, the different editions of certain books, and several other divergences of lesser importance but of great cultural and exegetical interest." All this transforms the Bible of Alexandria, even though it is largely a translation, into a literary work that warrants being studied for its own sake.”
SeLecT Brs_ioGRAPHY
Andrews, H. ‘T., “The Letter of Ari: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R. H. Charles, Oxford 1913, 83-122,
Aptowitzer, V., “Die rabbinischen Berichte iiber die Entstehung der LXX”. Ha- Qedem 2 (1909), 11-27, 10222; 3 (1910), 4-17.
Beavis, M. A. L., “Anti-Egyptian Polemic in the Letter of Aristeas 130-65 (The
igh Pri Discourse)”, 787 18 (1987), 145-51. ‘
Bickermann, “far Datierung des Pseudo-Aristeas”. ZNW*-29 (1930) = Studies in Jewish and Christian History, “Leiden 1976, 109-37.
Boccaccini, G., “La sapie! dello Pscudo-Aristea”. Biblische und judaistische Studien. Festschrifl fiir Paolo Sacchi, ed. A. Vivian, Frankfurt-Bern-New York~Paris 1990, 143-76.
Cohen, N. G., “he Names of the Translators in the Letter of Aristeas: A Study on the Dynamics of Cultural Transition”. 7§7 15 (1984), 32-64.
Delling, G. (ed.), Bibliographie zur jtidisch-hellenistischen und interlestamentarischen Literatur 1900-1965, Berlin 1969, 61-63, 2nd edn, Berlin 1976, 97-98.
Dorival, G., “L’histoire de la Septante dans le judaisme antique”. M. Harl et al, La Bible grecque des Septanie, 1988, 31-83.
, “La bible des Septante: 70 ou 72 traducteurs?”. Tradition of the Text, 1991, 45-62.
Esbroeck, M. van, “Une forme inédite de la lettre du roi Ptolémée pour la tra- duction des LXX”. Bib 57 (1976), 542-49.
Fernandez Marcos, N., “El ‘scntido profundo’ de las prescripciones dietéticas judias (Carta de Aristeas 143-69)". Salvaciin en la Palabra, 1986, 553-62.
» “Letter of Aristeas”, Apécrifos del Antiguo Testamento Il, ed. A. Diez Macho, Madrid 1983, 9-64.
Freudenthal, J., Hellenistische Studien I und II, Breslau 1875, (854.
Hadas, M., Aristeas to Philocrates, New York-London 1951.
Howard, G., “The Letter of Aristeas: A Re-evaluation”. BIOSCS 4 (1971), 89
Isserlin, B. 8. J., “The Names of the 72 Translators of the Septuagint (Aris 47-50)”. Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University (The Gaster Festschrifi) 5 (1973), 95-106,
Jellicoe, S., SMS, 29-58.
Kahana, A., Ha-sefarim Ha-hisonim, Tel-Aviv 1956, Tl, 1-71.
" See H. B. Swete, dn Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, 197-288, and Z. Frankel, Uber den Ei influss der paléistinischen Exegese auf die alexandrinische Hermeneutik, Leipzig 1851, and M. Harl, ‘ divergences entre la Septante et le texte mas- sorétique”, M. Harl et al., La Bible grecque des Seplante, 201-22.
*? See M. Harl, La langue de Japhet, 33-42.
52 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
Kraus Reggiani, C., La lettera di Aristea a Filocrate, introduzione, esame analitico, traduzione, Rome 1979.
Meecham, H. G., “The Letter of Aristeas: A Linguistic Study”. Diss. Manchester 1935.
Meisner, N., “Aristeasbrief”. JSHRZ I-I, Gtitersloh 1973, 35-85,
; “Untersuchungen zum Aristeasbricf”. Diss. Berlin 1973.
Méléze Modrzejeeski, J., Les Juifs d’Egypte. De Ramsés I a Hadrian, Paris 1991,
Mendels, D., “On ‘Kingship’ in the “lemple Scroll’ and the Ideological Vorlage of the seven Banquets in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates”. Aegyptus 59 (1979), 12737.
Miiller, K., “Die rabbinischen Nachrichten uber die Anfange der Septuaginta”. Wort, Lied und Gotlesspruch, 73-93.
Murray, O., “Aristeas and his Sources”. Studia Patristica XM, Berlin 1975, 123-28.
Murray, O., “Aristeasbrief”. RAC Sup I, (1986), 573-87.
Parente, “La ‘Lettera di Aristea’ come fonte per la storia del giudaismo alessan- drino rante la prima meta del I secolo a.C.”. ASNP 2 (1972), 177-237 and 51767.
Pelletier, A., Flavius Joséphe adaptateur de la lettre d7Aristée: une réaction aiticisante contre la koiné, Paris 1962.
, “Josephus, the Letter of Aristeas, and the Septuagint”. Josephus, 1989, 97-115.
——~—, Lettre d’Aristée & Philocrate. SC. 89, Paris 1962.
Schtirer, E., “Pseudo-Aristeas”. The History of the Jewish People, TI. 1, 1986, 677-87.
Shutt, R. J. H., “Letter of Aristeas”, In J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, IL, New York 1985, 7-34.
Swete, H. B., An Jntroduction to the Old Testament in Greek, Cambridge 1914, 10-28 and 531-606 (edition of the letter by H. St J. Thackeray).
‘Tcherikover, V., “Phe Ideology of the Letter of Aristeas”. H7R 51(1958) 59-85.
Tov, E., “The Rabbinic Tradition concerning the Alterations Inserted into the Greek Pentateuch and their Relation to the Original Text of the LXX”. JSF 15 (1984), 65-89.
Tramontano, R., La lettera di Aristea a Filocrate, Naples 1931.
‘Troiani, L., “Il libro di Aristea ed i giudaismo ellenistico (Premesse per un’inter- pretazione)”. Studi Ellenistict Tl, Pisa 1987, 31-61.
Veltri, G., Eine Tora fir den Konig Talmai. Untersuchungen zum Ubersetzungsverstindnis in der jiidisch-hellenistischen und rabbinischen Literatur, Viibingen 1994.
Walter, N., “Jewish-Greek Literature of the Greek Period”. The Cambridge History of Judaism, 1989, 385-408.
“Jiidisch-hellenistische Literatur vor Philon von Alexandrien (unter Ausschluss der Historiker)”. ANRW Il, 20, 1 (1987), 67-120.
Wendland, P., Aristeae ad Philocratem epistula, Leipzig 1900.
~~~, “Per Aristeasbric!”. Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments, ed. E. Kautzsch, Tiibingen 1900, II, 1-31.
Willrich, H., “Urkundenfalschung in der hellenistisch-jiidischen Literatur”, FRLANT-
nf 21 (1924), 86-91.
For more detailed studies on the various aspects and problems of the letter, see CB 45-47 and C. Dogniez, BS 15-21.
CHAPTER FOUR
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
Most recent studies on the Letter of Aristeas have been carried out in connection with the origins of the LXX and are stimulated by prob- lems that have arisen from textual criticism of the Greek Bible. Each position adopted from the beginning of the century in this respect has repercussions on the interpretation of the Leller, since every the- ory about the origin and early history of the LXX uses it as a ref erence point. There is almost unanimous agreement that it is a propaganda document in favour of a Greek translation of the Penta- teuch. The discrepancy revolves around the following questions: To which translation does it refer and when was it made? The dia- metrically opposed positions that mark out the frame of polemics are those of Lagarde and the Géttingen School on the one hand, who defend on principle the single origin of the LXX (although tem- pered by many nuances as more is known about the textual history of the various books), and the position of Kahle and his disciples on the other hand, who maintain a plural or multiple origin of the translation in the manner of a Greek Targum. These two theories have polarised the attention of specialists in the course of this century and continue to be latent as basic interrogatives in every attempt to restore the original LXX which is the goal of every critical edition. Besides these other hypotheses have arisen, which without expressly avouring any of the theorics proposed have tried to incorporate the data from tradition within new coherent explanations, with greater or less success. Some of them already belong to the past and have no more than historical interest, but we shall consider them briefly so that the history of research can be better understood.
a) The Septuagint as a Greek Targum (P. Kahle)
Kahle set out his theory for the first time in 1915 and maintained it throughout his life, followed by his disciple A. Sperber.' According
' P. Kable, “Untersuchungen”; Kahle, The Cairo Geniza; although he already
54 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
to Kahle, there never was an Ur-Septuagint or single original text. Instead from the beginning there were several translations that arose from liturgical necessity in the various synagogues, just like the Aramaic Targums. In the face of this pluralism, from time to time attempts were made at unification. However, a definitive and official text came not at the beginning but at the end of a long process of previous attempts. In this supposition, translations of greatly varying quality circulated in the Jewish communities. At a given moment the need was felt for approving a recognised and official translation. The Letter of Aristeas alludes to this version sanctioned by the Jewish author- ities, a unified version made around [00 BoE, since in ¢. 132 BcE, in the prologue of Sira, the Law, the prophets and other writings are mentioned already as integral parts of the new translation. The Letler of Aristeas is thus a piece of propaganda writing recommend- ing this approved version as against many others that continued to be used for some time; in spite of the letter these did not completely disappear. Remnants are preserved in biblical quotations of the New Testament, especially in the book of Acts and in the letter to the Hebrews which agree surprisingly with the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch; and the same applies to the quotations from the books of Jubilees.? Traces of these multiple versions are reflected in the actual tradition of the LXX for some books that have been transmitted in duplicate texts.? And not only this, but along the same lines he interprets a serics of data from the documents recently discovered which at first surprised LXX critics, such as the variants of Papyrus Fouad 266 (Ist century scr), Papyrus Gr. 458 Manchester (2nd cen- tury BCE), which contain readings related to the Lucian recension; the Greek fragments from Qumran Cave 4, the Greek fragments of the Twelve prophets identified by Barthélemy, the Lucianic readings predating the recension of the historical Lucian known through Justin, Philo, Josephus and Old Latin, the anonymous versions quinia, sexta and septima used by Origen for compiling the Hexapla; the non-
applied it earlier to the Samaritan Targum. In 1954, (“Die im August 1952 ent- deckte Lederrolle”) in support of his theory, he interprets the Greek fragments of the Minor Prophets identified by D. Barthélemy, “Redécouvert d’un chainon man- quant de Vhistoire de la Septante”, RB 60 (1953), 1829, a position restated in P. Kahle, “Problems of the Septuagint”, Studia Patnstica, ed. K. Aland and F. L. Cross, Berlin 1957, 1 (= TU 63) 328-38.
2 P. Kahle, “Untersuchungen
* For example, Judges, Tobit, Danicl. See the next chapter.
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ORIGIN 55
Septuagintal quotations of Philo, the Theodotionic text of Daniel and the presence of Theodotionic quotations in the New Testament and the apostolic Fathers, the Hebraisms of the Coptic versions, etc.* Both Theodotion and Lucian revised other very ancient translations but not the LXX. This explains the presence of Theodotionic and Lucianic readings in documents that are chronologically earlier than the date usually given for Theodotion and Lucian.
The basic task, therefore, does not consist in discovering or recon- structing, by the procedures used in textual criticism, an imaginary primitive text, but in carefully comparing all that remains of these earlier translations, before the standardised text of the Greek Bible.® Kahle’s hypothesis is taken up and developed further by his disci- ple A. Sperber. Combining the theory of Wutz ~ to which we shall * refer later — with Kahle’s, Sperber presupposes in the history of the LXX a transitional period in which Greck was used both for the transcription of Hebrew and for translation.’ Next there arose spor- adic translations according to the needs of the communities in the diaspora in which Hebrew was gradually disappearing as a spoken language. In the period before Christianity came on the scene, there were at least two Greck translations of the Old Testament which can be identified on the basis of quotations from the Old Testament in the New. Building on these suppositions, Sperber introduced the expression ‘Bible of the apostles’ as a common denominator for all those texts where the Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament and which diverge from the LXX we know.’ In the Hexapla also he finds traces of more than one Greek translation. The obelised® section reflects a translation into Greek of a Hebrew Bible which at this period included the whole Old Testament, a direct Hebrew exemplar of which we have in the Samaritan Pentatcuch. However, although Kahle’s theory is so rich in ideas, the textual links required to make it true, or at least likely, are missing. The
+ P. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza, 191-261.
5 “The task which the Septuagint presents to scholars is not the ‘reconstruction’ of an imaginary ‘Urtext’ nor the discovery of it, but a careful collection and inves- gation of all the remains and traces of earlier versions of the Greck Bible which differed from the Christian standard text,” P. Kahle, The Cairo Gemiza, 264.
8 A. Sperber, “Das Alphabet der Septuaginta-Vorlage”, OLZ 32 (1929), 533-40.
? A. Sperber, Testament and LXX” (in Hebrew). Tarbiz 6 (1934), 1-20; Sperber, “New Testament and Septuagint”, JBL 59 (1940), 193-293.
* Le. the one found in the LXX even though it does not correspond to the Masoretic text we know. See chapter 12.
56 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
LXX became the Christian Bible only for the purpose of canonis- ing its different books in the 2nd century ce. In the period when Christianity appeared one should recognise, both for the books cited in the Qumran writings and in the quotations in the New Testament,° that it is incorrect to exaggerate the distinction between the Palestinian and Alexandrian canons as if the latter were the one that the Church would one day inherit. On the contrary, in both sets of writings — Qumran and New Testament — the same Old Testament books are mentioned; these quotations correspond therefore to a period of tex- tual instability before it was fixed at the Synod of Yamnia (c. 100 ce). As for the quotations in the New Testament, the cornerstone of Kahle’s theory, it presents much more complex problems than he had realised. Moreover, there are other hypotheses that can explain the many divergences from the Septuagintal text: quoting from mem- ory, mixed quotations, adaptation of prophecy to context, the many revisions to which the original text was subject from very early on, etc. The Semitic tradition that seems to underlie Stephen’s speech (Acts 7), which Kahle attributed to the existence of Greck texts related to the Samaritan Pentateuch, has an mnmediate antecedent in the Hebrew texts from Qumran and comprises an example of textual pluralism in Hebrew in the centuries prior to the Christian era.'° The recently discovered papyri of the LXX in the pre-recen- sional period are not substantially different in form, in spite of the interpretation given them by Kahle, but at most are traces of very early revisions along the lines indicated by Barthélemy.''! From ana- lytical study of individual books, the school of LXX scholars in the USA and Canada has confirmed the basic soundness of Lagarde’s approach although it has refined his initial position. P. Katz, Kahle’s disciple, devotes at his request a monograph to the biblical text of Philo’ and comes to conclusions that are opposed to his master’s,
scussion of this point, see chapter 20.
© J. de Waard, A Comparative Study of the Old Testament Text in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the New Testament, Leiden 1965, especially pp. 80-81, and F. M. Cross, “The History of the Biblical Text in the Light of Discoveries in the Judean Desert”, HTR 57 (1964} 281-99. The bibliography on the history of the text in this period has greatly increased as a result of the publications of the documents from Qumran. See particularly N. Fernandez Marcos, “La Biblia de los autores del Nuevo Testamento”, If Simposto Biblico Espanol, ed. V. Collado Bertomeu and V. Vilar- Hueso, Valencia~Cérdoba 1987, 171-80.
" —D. Barthélemy, Les Devanciers d’Aquila, Leiden 1963.
® P. Katz, Philo’s Bible: The Aberrant Text of Bible Quotations in some Philonic Writings and us Place in the Textual History of the Greek Bible, Cambridge 1950.
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ORIGIN 57
results which he did not accept.'S Internal arguments and the data we have for the historical nucleus preserved in the Letler of Aristeas are sufficient proof that in the case of the LXX a process like that of the Aramaic Targums did not occur.
b) An Alexandrian Origin but in the Maccabean Period (c. 146 sce)
This is the hypothesis held by H. Graetz in a short article"? towards the end of the last century. He starts from some texts which, in Graetz’ opinion, already reflect the polemic between Pharisees and Sadducees (Lev. 23:11-16). Proving that translators resolve the dilemma along Pharisaic lines means that the version could not have been made before the Maccabean period when these differences started , to manifest themselves. He also bases his theory on other peculiar features of the version, such as the translation of ’arnebet by Sacbnovg (Lev. 11:5) and not by Aya. Instead of the rabbinic explanation for this choice which we saw in the previous chapter, according to Graetz this synonym was not chosen to avoid offending the Lagides but because at that time Sacbm0vg was the word more in use for ‘hare’ (arnebet).
Similarly; in Ez. 8:12 the first half of the verse is missing from the LXX; Origen adds it with a preceding asterisk and the follow- ing note: “the words ‘the king shall mourn’ were perhaps omitted intentionally by the translators, to avoid suspicion that the king had occasion to suffer”.!> The translation of melek by &pywv instead of Bactreds (Dt. 17:14-19) would be explained in the same way. These details confirmed the thesis of Aristeas that an Alexandrian king pro- moted the translation; only that the king in question to which the letter refers would be Ptolemy VI Philometor (181-145 ce), a bene- factor of the Jews, patron of Onias IV and founder of the temple of Leontopolis.
SP. Katz, Philo’s Bible, 9561. and 114ff. Ninety-five percent of Philo’s quotations are from the LXX; about 4% are of a different type in certain manuscripts, in oth- ers, the same as LXX. About 1% are of a different type in all the manuscripts. Philo’s commentary is based on the text of the LXX. The quotations which differ in the lemma seem to have been changed and do not match the commentary, ‘The non-Septuagintal texts in Philo are from Aquila. Later, Philo must have gone through Jewish hands in a period when Aquila’s translation was obligatory.
4H. Graetz, “The Genesis of the So-called LXX”.
8H. Graetz, “The Genesis of the So-called LXX”, 151.
58 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT However, Swete’s reply,'* based on linguistic arguments, was cnough to emphasise the weakness of Graetz’ arguments, which were insufficient to make a change of such magnitude in the date of the letter.
c) A Palestinian Origin
This hypothesis was formulated by M. Gaster in the Schweich Lectures of 1923.7 According to him, the Greek Pentateuch did not arise in Alexandria but in Palestine, since only the Palestinian origin of the version could count on enough prestige and support to be accepted among the Jews of the diaspora. The movement that produced the Greck Pentateuch represents only a further facet of the general resist- ance to Hellenisation of the peoples of Near East by means of affirming the antiquity and superiority of their own culture. By trans- lating the scriptures into Greck the Jews took the war to the enemy camp. However, here an additional factor comes into play, the rivalry between Jews and Samaritans. The two groups presented themselves to king Ptolemy with their respective translations into Greek so that he could decide the dispute. The king of Egypt declared in favour of the Jewish version which in future became the official text, fixing in this way the superiority of the Jewish Pentatcuch of Jerusalem over the Samaritan Pentateuch, an event reflected in the exchange of presents in the Letter of Aristeas. From the Jewish-Hellenistic his- torian’s knowledge of the biblical traditions he dates the version towards the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 3rd century BcE, ic. under Ptolemy I (823-285). In this hypothesis, the Samariticon'® would in fact be the Samaritan Pentateuch, of the same date as the Jewish version of the LXX and responding to the same caste spirit. Both versions would represent the first step towards the ‘Targums, and would have been made for the use of the people and not for liturgical service where the Hebrew would continue to be used in Palestine until the Aramaic liturgical Targums appeared.
The ferment of resistance to Hellenisation which is part of Gaster’s theory has been made explicit recently by R. Hanhart.'? However
\ H. B. Swete, “Graetz’s Theory of the LXX”.
M. Gaster, The Samaritans. See chapter 9.
‘9 R. Hanhart, “Zum Wesen der makedonisch-hellenistischen Zeit Israels”, ort, Lied und Gottesspruch U, Wirzburg 1972, 49°59.
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ORIGIN 59
the rest of the theory is not convincing since recent study of the lan- guage has more than proved the Alexandrian origin of the Pentateuch and of other books such as Isaiah, 1-4 Kings, Jeremiah, Job, Proverbs.””
d) A Liturgical Origin
This theory is connected with Thackeray, who developed it in the 1920 Schweich Lectures (published in 1923).?' He attempted to give a valid and coherent explanation that could embrace all the books of the LXX. The origin of various parts of the LXX is conditioned by the liturgical requirements of the synagogue. As a result, the trans- lation was made in four stages:
1. First, the Law or Pentateuch in the 3rd century BcE, as a unit and by a small team. The vocabulary and style indicate its Alexandrian origin. Apart from the last part of Exodus, there are very few diver- gences from the Hebrew text.”
2. In a second phase the latter prophets were translated: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets, beginning with Isaiah, the book having a language and style most like the Pentateuch. The sequence was dictated by use in the synagogue, since these books provide the material for the second liturgical reading or haflarah after the reading from the Law.
3. At a further stage a partial, expurgated version of the former prophets was produced including | Samuel, 2 Samuel 1-11 (omitting the Uriah episode), 1 Kgs beginning with 2:12 (Solomon’s accession to the throne) and continuing up to 21:43. Finally the work was re- edited by a single author who filled in the gaps of previous trans- lators.7 And these three parts comprise the Alexandrian version proper, divided into three volumes.
% See in general A. Deissmann’s studies in the light of the papyri and for Isaiah, J. L. Secligmann, The Septuagint Version of Isaiah: A Discussion of its Problems, Leiden 1948, 95-122, and J. Ziegler, Untersuchungen zur LXX des Buches Isaias. AVA XI, 3 Minster 1934, chap. VII: ‘Der alexandrinisch-adgyptische Hinte: rgrund der Is-L. XxX’,
2 See Select Bibliography. However he had already expres it more clearly in 1915 in his article “Septuagint” in the /SBE.
” For this part of Exodus, see the monograph by D. W. Gooding, The Account of the Tabernacle: Translations and Textual Problems of the Greek Exodus, Cambridge 1959, and D. Fraenkel, “Die Quellen der asterisierten Zusatze im zweiten Tabernakelbericht Exodus 35-40”, Studien zur Septuaginta, 140-86,
*5 See H. St J. Thackeray, The Septuagint and Fewsh Worship, 16-28.
60 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
4. The Writings (k’tébim) have a special place. If we except the Psalter, where the translators took hardly any liberties, the rest of the translation was the product of free paraphrases and extracts which sometimes include legendary additions and are directed more to the general public than to the faithful of the synagogue. This explains the partial translation of Job (one-sixth shorter than the Hebrew textus receptus)* made by someone who had studied the Greek poets; and the fact that Proverbs contains sayings that do not occur in the Hebrew and that the translator composed fragments in iambs and hexameters. With the same liberties, | Ezra is composed of extracts from the Hebrew books of Chronicles—Ezra—Nehemiah, pasted together around a fable of non-Jewish origin, the legend of the three bodyguards of king Darius (Ezra 3-5). The same author of 1 Ezra edited the first version of Daniel (Dan.-LXX) incorporating extra- neous clements missing from the Masoretic text such as the hymn of the three youths, the short story of Susannah and the episode of Bel and the Dragon. This liberty reached its peak in the translation of the book of Esther, where the Greck additions, missing from the Hebrew text, make up two-thirds of the total story.
At the time of being translated, these Writings, which later acquired official recognition, were not so binding as the Law and the Prophets, and allowed the translator a degree of creativity.
One of the weak points of Thackeray’s theory is that he leaves out of this process the translation of Joshua and Judges, two books that raise problems due to the different recensions in which their text has been transmitted. Nonetheless, it is the most ambitious hypothesis to try to incorporate in a coherent way the whole process of decanting the Bible from Hebrew to Greck in its different stages. Of course some links do not have positive support from the data and others have been discarded owing to later research, such as the theory concerning the division of the books into two halves for its translation. Thackeray’s studies were based on Swete’s manual cdi- tion. Now it is known that phenomena that Thackcray attributed to the translators are due to later stages of the transmission of the text, as was proved once the material had been conveniently stratified in the critical editions. On the other hand, continuous reading of the
* See N. Fernandez Marcos, “The Septuagint Reading of the Book of Job”, The Book of Job, ed. W. A. M. Beuken, Leuven 1994, 251-66.
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ORIGIN 61
Law together with the Aaffarét of the prophets is unlikely, as Perrot has recently confirmed, and thus there was no liturgical need for a complete translation of the Torah.”
e) The Transcription Theory
Although of no interest today as an explanation for the origins of the LXX, in its time it was the object of scholarly debate and unleashed a series of publications from the beginning of the 1920s until the end of the 1930s."* It had already been raised by the Danish scholar Tychsen in the 18th century,” but scholars paid almost no attention to it. The name that has been almost exclusively identified with this theory is F. X. Wutz (1883-1938). He defended it in a series of publications, from 1922 until his death, with a huge col- lection of material.” According to him, the translators of the LXX used a Hebrew text that had already been transliterated into Greek characters; with the result that he undertook the task of tracing that text by means of the remains of transliterations preserved in the LXX: proper names, difficult words that they did not understand, palacographic mistakes, etc. By means of these isolated indications he tried to recover the consonantal Hebrew text that the translators used as a Vorlage, a text which of course would have the advantage of being much older than the Masoretic text as we have it in Hebrew manuscripts.”? As well as the material transliterated in the LXX, he used transcriptions from the second column of the Hexapla by means of photographs of the Milan palimpsest discovered by G. Mercati, transcriptions of “the three”, especially ‘Theodotion, and for proper names the Onomastica Sacra by Eusebius and Jerome’s transcriptions.
There is no doubt at all that the data handled by Wutz are well-founded. It is clear that the LXX preserves a large number of transcriptions, not only of proper and place names but even of other difficult terms, the meaning of which was not clear to the translators.
* C. Perrot, “La lecture de la Bible dans la diaspora hellénistique”, Etudes sur le judaisme hellénistique, ed. R. Kuntzmann and J. Schlosser, Paris 1984, 109-32.
® See CB 43, Wutz’s Theory.
27 O. G. Tychsen, Tentamen de variis codicum hebraicorum VI MSS generibus, Rostock 1772, 54-65.
* See CB 43-44.
* See F. W. Wutz, Die Transkriptionen von der Septuaginta 1, 6111; 101M; IL, passim.
62 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
Tt is even possible that parts of the Hebrew Bible used in the liturgy were transcribed into Greek for the convenience of the faithful who had lost contact with the original script of Hebrew when it became a sacred language and disappeared as a spoken language. However, from these scant and uncertain data Wutz sets out an elaborate and subtle theory which violates the translation process, forcing it into a precise chronology on the basis of transcriptions. The hypothesis of a change to the Greek script continues to be a probable conjecture until the transcriptions of the Hexaplaric secunda (c. 230 cr). Even the origin and purpose of this secunda poses such problems” that it cannot be used to support a global theory about the origins of the LXX.
It is much more likely that the translators transliterated the proper names as they were pronounced in their time; hence the importance of the transcriptions for studying the pronunciation of pre-Masoretic Hebrew, used with due caution, stratified chronologically and tak- ing into account the corruptions due to transmission and the diachronic evolution of the vocalic and consonantal systems of Greek and Hebrew.
Wutz’s theory inserts an unnecessary stage into the translation process. If the translator is able to handle a Hebrew text transliter- ated into Greek it can be assumed that he knows enough Hebrew to translate directly from the original. Furthermore, there is absolutely no decisive proof that the translators used transliterated texts. If they had, it would have produced endless ambiguities, considering that the four Hebrew phonemes comprising the sibilants (5, s, § 5) are transcribed by a single phoneme in Greck, namely sigma; the same difficulties must have applied in distinguishing the gutturals. On the other hand there are indications of similar Hebrew letters being con- fused in translating, such as d/r and _»/w, whose Greek equivalents are not so alike as to be confused by copyists.
f) Other Theories
As we have seen, none of the theories set out explains in a satis- factory way the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek as it is described in the Letter of Aristeas, and thus none of them has gained general acceptance among specialists. Although scholars continue
* See chapter 12.
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ORIGIN 63
to argue the case between the needs of the Jewish community of Alexandria and the initiative of King Ptolemy as principal cause of the translation, the most recent publications tend to favour the official initiative, the cultural and legislative politics of the Ptolemaic court, as the main reason for the translation. Several indications support this supposition. First of all, the Alexandrian Jewish sources as well as the rabbinic sources refer to the translation as a royal initiative and are silent on the motive of the liturgical or cultural needs of the Jewish community. No privately instigated translation is known before the 2nd century sce, and it would be of the Prophets as a continuation of the Torah. All the examples known of translations made in this period*' are due to royal or official undertaking more or less in the direction indicated by the Letter of Aristeas. Accordingly, an historical nucleus has to be accepted in the traditions included in this letter.
Some scholars also insist on the importance of the codification of public law in the court of the Ptolemies, a codification which included the Law of the Jews. This hypothesis, defended in various forms by Bickermann, Stricker, Rost and Barthélemy,” has been developed by Méléze Modrzejewski from the publication of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3285, which presents the ancient local law of the indigenous inhab- itants of Egypt. According to him, around 275 sce all the judicial apparatus of the Lagides was translated from Demotic into Greek. The same happened to the Torah of the Jews so that the royal officials could understand it. As a result, the translation of the Law into Greek received a sort of official sanction, thanks to its inclusion in the judicial system of Ptolemy IT Philadelphus.* However thought provoking this hypothesis might be, there is no incontrovertible proof for the inclusion of the Law into the juridical system of the Lagides,
31 Manetho wrote the history of the pharaohs at the request of Ptolemy II, Berossus dedicates the history of Babylonia to Antiochus I of Syria, Hermippus prepares a Greek commentary on Zoroaster, again on royal demand, the Greek edicts of Asoka around 250 sce are due to the initiative of that Indian emperor; see G. Dorival, “Les origines de la Septante”, 71, and E. Benvéniste, “Rdits df’ Asoka en traduction grecque”, Journal Asiatique 252 (1964), 137-57.
® Sce E. Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History 1, Leiden 1976, 137-66 and 167-200; B. H. Stricker, De brief van Aristeas, Amsterdam 1956; L. Rost, “Vermutungen iiber den Aniass zur griechischen Ubersetzung der Tora”; D. Bar- thélemy, “Pourquoi la Torah a-t-elle été traduite en grec?”, Etudes dhistoire du texte de VAncien Testament, Freiburg-Géttingen 1978, 322-40.
* See G. Dorival, “Les origines de la Septante”, 73-76.
64 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
and it must be admitted that the Pentateuch is more than a law code. Ptolemy’s cultural policy is attested, besides the evidence trans- mitted by the Leiter, by the information about the classification of the works kept in the Library of Alexandria in the time of Callimachus (260-240). However, if there had been a copy of the Pentateuch in Greck in that library, it is difficult to think that there was no ref- erence to the Greek Bible in Greek and Latin writers before the treatise De Sublimitate by. Pseudo-Longinus (Ist century cE) unless those writers were repelled by the strange contents of the LXX and the bad Greek of the translation compared with the lterary usages of the time.** There is no doubt that the socio-religious and apologetic needs of the community of Alexandria were latent as is shown by the new literary genres in Greek that the Jews of the diaspora cul- tivated, but it is difficult to avoid the essence of the Letter of Aristeas according to which the initiative for the undertaking came from the court of King Ptolemy.
g) The Proto-Septuagint
The problem of the proto-Septuagint, which had leapt onto the schol- arly stage after 1915 with the debate between Lagarde (single ori- gin) and Kahle (multiple origin) of the version, came to the forefront again in the 1940s with the publication of the commentary on Daniel by Montgomery, on Greek Joshua by Margolis, the writings of A. Sperber, and the publication of the Chester Beatty, Rylands and Scheide papyri.* What for Lagarde was a working hypothesis with a good dose of intuition has been confirmed by the inductive analy- sis of several LXCX books: by Rahlfs for Ruth, by Margolis for Joshua, by Montgomery for Daniel and Kings, by Moore for Judges, and by Ziegler for Prophets. To this must be added the works by Gehman on the secondary versions and the recent editions and studies by Wevers on the Greek Pentateuch and by Hanhart on 2 Maccabees,
See G. Dorival, “La Bible des Septante chez les auteurs paiens (jusqu’au pseudo- Longin)”, Cahiers de Biblia patristica 1, Strasbourg 1987, 9-26; A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom, Cambridge 1978, pp. 91-92: “The LXX remained an exclusive Jewish pos- session until the Christians took it over. We do not even know whether it was deposited in the great Ptolemaic foundation, the library of Alexandria,” p. 92. Sce also G. Rinaldi, Biblia Gentium, Rome 1989.
*% H, M. Orlinsky, “On the Present State of Proto-Septuagint Studies”, 81ff.
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ORIGIN 65
Esther and 1 Ezra. Lagarde’s principles, plausible @ pror, have been shown as solid and consistent. The variants in the pre-recensional Papyri indicate that the revisions of LXX have to be put back to a date closer to its composition. However the basic assumptions remain unchanged.
In 1949, P. Katz, Kahle’s disciple, abandoned his teacher’s theo- ries precisely because of his studies on biblical quotations in Philo and Justin:** the idea that originally competing and simultancous par- tial or complete translations once existed has no support in the facts when these are only arranged chronologically.” Years later Wevers, in an overall view of LXX studies within the perspective of origins, would again insist on the basic reorganisation of the Lagarde~Rahlfs position which shapes all the editorial work of the Sepiuaginta-Unternehmen of Géttingen: “The future of proto-Septuagint studies depends on the classical line, with some necessary modifications to be sure, rather than on the general lines of Kahle’s approach.”
% P. Katz, “Das Problem des Urtextes der Septuaginta”, and Katz, Philo’s Bible.
% P. Katz, “Das Problen des Urtextes der Septuaginta”, 17: “Die Vorstcllung, als hatten konkurrierende Teil oder Vollibersetzungen urspriinglich nebencinander bestanden hat also keine Stiitze an den Tatsachen, wenn man diese nur geschichtlich cinordnet.” And on p. 18 he adds: “So bleibt nur die Analogie zu den palastin. Targumen. ‘Tatsachlich finden sich an die Targume gemahnende Deutungen, aber so sporadisch, dass sie den Vergicich mit der starren Konsequenz der Targume nicht aushalten. Hier zeigt sich nur ebén der Einfluss der Umwelt auf die Uber- setzer, die dadurch noch lange nicht zu Targumisten werden. Beachtet man diese Ejinschrankung aber nicht und schliesst aus soich vereinzelten Analogien weiter auf cine urspriingliche Vielheit von Ubersetzungen, so ist das cinc petitio principii, Denn bis heute ist keine cinzige Stelle nachgewiesen, fiir die wir mehr als eine vorrezen- sionelle Ubersetzung besdssen, womoglich als Wiedergabe eines dem unsern tiber- legenen Hebraers. Solange dieser Nachweis aber fehlt, ist alle Rede von urspriinglichen Paralleltargumen blosse Vermutung auf Grund des aus vereinzelten Beobachtungen @ priori erschiossenen Targumcharakter.” 88 J. W. Wevers, “Proto-Sepiuagint Studies”, 77, with an extensive bibliography. And the information published by him periodically on current research in the field of the LXX in Theologische Rundschau. See also J. W. Wevers, “The Géttingen Septuagint”, B/OSCS 8 (1975), 19-23, and R. Hanhart, J. W. Wevers, Das Géttinger Septuaginta-Unternehmen, Gittingen 1977. “So one may conclude that in the Kahle vs Lagarde~Rahlfs controversy Kahle was wrong and the Lagarde school was right” confirms J. W. Wevers, “Barthélemy and Proto-Septuagint Studies”, 26, although in the very next line he insists on the complexity of the text history of the Septuagint in the various books and how the method proposed by Lagarde for restoring the LXX has to be revised and refined in many ways.
66 ‘THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
Secect BrerioGRaPHy
Dorival, G., “Les origines de la Septante”. M. Harl et al., La Bible grecque des Septante, 1988, 66-78.
s The Samaritans, London 1925, especially pp. 112-30.
, H., “The Genesis of the So-called LXX, the First Greek Version of the
Pentateuch”. JOR 3 (1891), 150-56.
, “The LXX: A Reply to Prof. Swete”. ET 2 (1890), 277-78.
Hanhart, R., “Fragen um die Entstehung der LXX”. VT 12 (1962), 139-62.
, “Zum gegenwartigen Stand der Septuagintaforschung”. De Sepiuaginta, 1984,
18.
Jellicoe, $., SMS, 59-70.
Kahle, P., “Die im August 1952 entdeckte Lederrolle mit dem griechischen Text der Kleinen Propheten und das Problem der LXX”. TLZ 79 (1954), 81-94 (= Opera minora 113-28),
» “Dic Septuaginta, Prinzipielle Erwagungen”. Festschrift O. Eissfeldt, Halle
1947, 161-180.
, The Cairo Geniza, Oxford 1959, 191-304.
-—, “Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Pentateuchtextes”. TSA’ 88 (1915),
399- 439 (= Opera Minora, Leiden 1956, 3-37).
Katz, P., “Das Problem des Urtextes der Septuaginta”. TK 5 (1949), 1-24,
and Textual Criticism”. Actes du I? Ci Congres de la fédération internationale des associ- ations d'études classiques, Paris 1951, 165-82. Lagarde, P. A. de, Anmerkungen zur griechischen Ubersetzung der Proverbien, Leipzig 1863.
, Librorum Veteris Testamenti canonicorum pars prior Graece, Gottingen 1883.
Orlinsky, H. M., “Current Progress and Problems in Septuagint Research”. The Study of the Bible Today and Tomorrow, ed. H. R. Willoughby, Chicago 1947, pp. 155-57.
—~rn, “On the present State of Proto-Septuagint Studies”. JAOS 61 (1941), 81-91.
Pietersma, A., “Septuagint Research: A Plea for a Return to Basic Issues”. V7 35 (1985), 296-311. :
Rost, L., “Yermutungen fiber den Anlass 2ur griechischen Ubersetzung der Tora”. Wort, Gebot, Glaube, Walter Eichrodt zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. H. J. Stoebe, ATANT 59, Zurich 1970, 39-44.
Skehan, P. W., “The Earliest LXX and Subsequent Revisions”. Jerome Biblical Commentary, New York 1968, 570-72.
Swete, H. B., “Graetz’s Theory of the LXX”. ET 2 (1890). 209.
Thackeray, H. St J., “Septuagint”, in /SBE IV 1915, 2722-32.
———., Some Aspects of the Greek Old Testament, London 1927, 21-31.
, The Septuagint and Jewish Worship: A Study in Origins, London 1923.
Vattioni, F., “Storia del testo biblico: L’origine dei LXX”. AZON 40 (1980), 115-30.
Wevers, J. W., “An Apologia for Septuagint Studies”. B/OSCS 18 (1985), 16-38.
—nron, “Barthélemy and Proto-Septuagint Studies”. BIOSCS 21 (1988), 23-34.
~~-——, “Proto-Septuagint Studies”. The Seed of Wisdom: Fs. T. J. Meek, Toronto 1964, 58-77,
Wutz, F. X., Die Transkriptionen von der LXX bis zu Hieronymus. BWAT IL, 9 Lieferung 1 (1925), 1-176; Ligf 3 (1933), 177-571.
wns, Onomastica Sacra. Untersuchungen zum Liber interpretationis nominum hebraicorum des hl. Hieronymus. I Quellen und System der Onomastica. Lf Texte und Register. TU 41 (1915).
—, Syslematische Wege von der Septuaginia zum hebrdischen Urtext, Stutigart 1937.
Further bibliography on Wutz’s theory in CB 43-44.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT
a) Two Texts Face to Face
Beyond the translation of the Torah or Pentateuch into Greek, to which the Letter of Aristeas refers, the process of translation or cre- ation of the other books of the Greek Bible which we know today as the LXX, occurred in separate stages, that are difficult to deter- mine, between the 2nd century Bce and the Ist century cE. This inadequately known process, as well as the geographical origin of the translation or creation of the various books, has been described by G. Dorival in a short compendium that summarises the present state of knowledge on the subject.'
The results of this process, however, are well known. A simple comparison between the Greek Bible and the Hebrew Bible shows a series of books in the LXX that are not included in the Hebrew canon: 1 Ezra, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah and the four books of Maccabees. To these are added the Supplements to the book of Esther and the addi- tions to the book of Daniel. And within the books included in the Hebrew canon the differences are no less important: different titles and arrangement of the various books, different sequence and con- tents,’ cases in which the LXX represents a different textual tradi- tion or a different edition from the Masoretic text.? Another kind of difference is only evident when we subject both texts to the metic- ulous examination of textual criticism; these differences are duc to a different vocalisation of the consonantal Hebrew text, to the lin- guistic comprehension of the translators, and to their particular trans- lation technique and the theological and modernising interpretations."
' G. Dorival, “L’achévement de la septante dans le judaisme. De la faveur au rejet”, in Harl, et al., La Bible Grecque des Septante, 83-111.
* See H. B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, Cambridge 1914, 197-288.
* ©, Munnich, “Ecarts principaux entre la Septante et le texte massorétique (livre par livre)”, M. Harl, et al, La Bible grecque des Septante, 173-82.
* M. Harl, “Les divergences entre la Septante et le texte massorétique”, M. Harl, et al, La Bible grecque des Seplante, 201~22.
68 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
As a consequence of this complex process, the Bible of Alexandria which the Greek-speaking Jew used cannot be considered a simple reproduction of the original Hebrew text but an autonomous liter- ary work organised around a new constellation of meanings within the Greek system. And it can be said that the discrepancy between the original and its reproduction appeared right from the first moment of translation, as testified by the author of the prologue to the trans- lation of Ecclesiasticus, towards the end of the 2nd century Bce.? An echo of this inappropriateness of the Greek translation is also pre- served in the many rabbinic references to the changes which the seventy elders inserted into the translation for king Ptolemy.°
Tf these differences did not constitute a serious problem when the Hebrew text itself had not yet been standardised, they became a burning problem when the single consonantal text started to become normative and binding towards the end of the Ist century cz. As we saw when examining the reception of the Letter of Aristeas,’ an attempt to reduce the unease aroused by these discrepancies between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible of Alexandria within the Jewish community went in two directions. One part of Jewish tra- dition, with Philo at its head, though it was to find an echo in Augustine, chose to consider the LXX an inspired translation with the same authority as the Hebrew Bible. According to this inspira- tionist movement, God had revealed himself to the people of Israel through Moses in the Hebrew Bible and through the translators in the Greek Bible and both texts were inspired. However, there was also another philological tendency within Judaism that was appar- ent in a series of early revisions intended to correct the text of the LXX in order to adapt it to the Hebrew text in current use. This trend, which is already evident in the Hebraising corrections of some pre-Christian papyri, would become more obvious in the xatye revi- sion and culminated in the new Jewish translations by Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion or in the new translation into Latin by Jerome.® Furthermore, these divergences would condition the history of the transmission of the biblical text, and emerge with force in the
° For the same things said in Hebrew do not have the same force when trans- lated into another language”, Ben Sira, Prologue 20.
© See chapter 3, pp. 44-47.
* See pp. 47-50.
® See infra, chapters 7-9.
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT 69
critical moments of the scientific study of the Bible. Two examples are Origen’s Hexapla, the first attempt at synchronic comparison of the different texts in circulation, and the Polyglot Bibles of the 16th and 17th centuries, synoptic editions of the various texts, each retain- ing its own autonomy.
Until the middle of this century, the differences between the LXX and the Hebrew text were usually explained by resorting to the idio- syncrasy and translation techniques of the translators, to editorial reworking of the text in favour of an actual theology or to other tendentious purposes. This is how H. S. Gehman, J. W. Wevers and the Scandinavian school argued, up to H. S. Nyberg.® That is to say, the same reasoning that P. de Lagarde had sketched out at the close of the 19th century for the reconstruction of the LXX was applied to the Hebrew text. In other words, at the beginning of text- ual transmission, around 130 cr, there was only one Hebrew text (the theory of the archetype) which was being reproduced with extreme precision, ensuring the uniformity of the consonantal text.’ As a result, all the discordant readings to be found in the Samaritan Pentateuch or in medieval manuscripts are due to copyist errors or to tendentious changes to the original by the scribes of the dissident sects. The same criterion is usually used with the versions and their divergences from hebraica veritas. In the words of D. Barthélemy: “Scholars were more and more reluctant to admit that every vari- ant of the LXX was based on a Hebrew Vorlage distinct from the MT.”" However, there was no lack of scholars in this period who succeeded in discovering the high value of the LXX for the restora- tion of the Hebrew text in some books in which the Masoretic text was particularly corrupt. It is sufficient to mention names such as O. Thenius, J. Wellhausen and S. R. Driver for the books of Samuel, C. H. Cornill for Ezckiel, J. A. Montgomery for Kings and Daniel.”
° HS. Nyberg, Studien zum Hoseabuche, Uppsala 1935; H. S. Gehman, “Exegetical Methods Employed by the Greek Translator of 1 Samuel”, JA4OS 70 (1950), 292-96, and J. W. Wevers, “A Study in the Exegetical Principles of the ‘Translator of Tl Sam, XL:2-1 Kings T:11”, CBQ 15 (1953), 30-45.
” On the differences between the theory of “a single recension” and “a single archetype” which ultimately were considered as synonymous, see M. H. Goshen- Gottstein, “Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts: Their History and their Place in the HUBP Edition”, Bib 48 (1967), 243-90, especially pp. 254-62.
" Text, Hebrew, in IDBS (1976), 878.
"OQ. Thenius, Die Biicher Samuelis, Dresden 1842; J. Wellhausen, Der Text der Biicher Samuelis, Gottmgen 1871; S. R. Driver, Noles on the Hebrew text and the Topography
70 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
P. Kahle must be mentioned as the principal opponent of Lagarde’s theory; he defended a plural origin of the LXX, just as happened with the Aramaic Targums."
Parallel to this movement of textual re-evaluation of the LXX there arose another, with Z. Frankel as its main exponent; he inter- preted the differences between the Masoretic text and the Greek Bible as the result of the influence of Jewish exegesis.'' This ten- dency to highlight the periphrastic nature of the LXX culminated in the statement, attributed to R. Kittel, that the LXX is not a trans- lation but a theological commentary on the Hebrew text.'? Only H. M. Orlinsky dared to state, before 1950, that the Hebrew manu- scripts used by the translators of the LXCX in some books such as Job, Jeremiah or Esther differed recensionally, and not only in small details, from the Masoretic textual tradition, and then add that these traditions perished some time ago."
b) Qumran and the Septuagint
It is difficult to overestimate the impact made by the finds from the Desert of Judah on the understanding of the history of the biblical text and more particularly on the early history of the LXX and its relationship to the Hebrew text. Evidence of the enormous activity expended in this field of research in recent years is provided by the number of publications in progress,'’ which will probably increase as the pace of the official editions of those documents increases. ‘The . importance of these finds lies not only in the Greek fragments found in Qumran and Nahal Hever but especially in the Hebrew texts.
of the Books of Samuel, Oxford 1890; C, H. Gornill, Das Buch des Propheten Ezechiel, Leipzig 1886; J. A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Kings, Edinburgh-New York 1951, and Montgomery, 4 Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Edinburgh 1927. :
'S For a description of P. Kahle’s theory on the origins of the LXX in the same way as the Targums, see pp. 53~57. .
“7%, Frankel, Vorstudien zu der Septuaginia, Leipzig 1841, and Frankel, Uber den Finfluss des palastinischen E-xegese auf die alexandrinische Hermeneulik, Leipzig 1851.
® Cited by S. Jellicoe, SMS, 316.
'© “But those text-traditions have long perished, driven out by the Hebrew text that was used by the Mishnah and Talmud, by Theodotion, Aquila, Symmachus, Origen, Jerome, from the first~second to the fifth centuries ap”, H. M. Orlinsky, “On the Present State of Proto-Septuagint Studies”, JAOS 61 (1941), 78-109, p. 85.
Compare for example the one page devoted to the topic in the CB (1973) with the fifteen pages of the BS (1995).
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT 71
And within these, those fragments that are compared with the LXX allow certain conclusions to be drawn on the state of the biblical text in the two centuries that preceded the standardisation of the consonantal text.
Beginning with the Greck texts, prior to Qumran we only knew two pre-Christian papyri, from Egypt, with fragments of Deuteronomy: Pap. Rylands 458 (Rahlfs 957) from the 2nd century Bcr and Pap. Fouad 266 (Rahlfs 848) from the Ist century sce. However, Qumran has come to increase this stock with new fragments from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and the Letter of Jeremiah, from Caves 4 and 7.'* In spite of the meagre amount of documents recovered, the repercussions of these finds for LXX stud- ies and its origins are enormous. In fact, the Greek manuscripts from Qumran certainly support P. Lagarde’s theory on the origins of this version. The emergence of Greck texts of the Pentateuch a century and a half or two centuries from the Alexandrian translation, and which fit in perfectly with the textual tradition represented by the great uncial codices, tips the balance, we think conclusively, in favour of Lagarde’s theory rather than Kahle’s. At the same time, they reveal to us a new facct of the early history of the LXX: the recen- sional activity did not begin with Origen, nor was it even motivated by Jewish-Christian polemics, but goes back to a period quite close to the origins of the translation itself, when the LXX was transmitted within the Jewish communities and had not yet cut the umbilical cord that tied it to the Hebrew text.
The other important group of Greek texts comes from a cave lying on the southern slope of Nahal Hever, a few kilometres south of En-Gedi. They are important fragments of a parchment scroll, which Barthélemy presented in a pioneering article to the academic world in 1953.'° Ten years later he published a transcription together with a study of its implications for the history of the LXX, possibly the most stimulating monograph of recent decades in the field of the Greck Bible.” As late as 1962, B. Lifshitz published other fragments
® See E. Ulrich, “The Greek Manuscripts of the Pentateuch from Qumran, Including Newly-Identified Fragments of Deuteronomy (4QLXXDeut)”, De Sepiuaginia, 1984, 71-82, and Ulrich, “The Septwagint Manuscripts from Qumran: A Reappraisal of their Value”, P. W. Skehan, E. GC. Ulrich, J. E. Sanderson, Qumran Cave 4. IV: Palaeo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical Manusenpis. DJD IX, Oxford, 1992.
® D. Barthélemy, “Redécouverte d'un chafnon manquant de histoire de la Septante”, RB GO (1953), 18-29.
*” 1D, Barthélemy, Les Devanciers d’Aquila. VTS 10 (1963).
72 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPFUAGINT
from the same cave which belonged to the same scroll of the Minor Prophets.*! And finally in 1990, the official edition came out with all the fragments published previously plus other additional unidentified fragments, photographs, a palacographic study and a reconstruction of the text based on detailed analysis of the translation techniques, the spelling and the condition of the preserved sections.” In the palacographic study of these documents, P. J. Parsons opted for dat- ing them towards the end of the lst century Baz.”
With the obligatory refinements in matters of detail, Barthélemy’s fundamental thesis, according to which these fragments belong to a consistent revision of the LXX to bring it close to a Hebrew text very similar to but not identical with the proto-Masoretic text, has been firmly accepted. Some of the particular features of this revi- sion which Barthélemy noted, and others identified in later stud- ies, can be debated. It is also possible to discuss the length and identification of this revision in other books of the Bible as well as its uniformity since it seems instead that it forms part of a longer translation with its own characteristics in the other books. Or its relationship to rabbinic hermeneutics of the Ist century cz could be discussed. However, there is absolutely no doubt that these fragments belong to the LXX, which we knew through more reliable ancient witnesses, but it was revised to adapt it with greater literalism to the current Hebrew text. This proof also consolidates P. de Lagarde’s hypothesis about the unity of the translation as against an original pluralism as postulated by P. Kahle.
The finds from Nahal Hever, together with its general interpreta- tion within the framework of the early history of the LXX provided by Barthélemy, became an obligatory reference point for all later studies. Displayed before us was a new image of the pre-Hexaplar LXX, a shadowy zone of which we knew scarcely anything were it not for the quotations in the NT, some pseudepigraphical writings, the Jewish-Hellenistic historians, Philo, Josephus and the writings of Justin. And it had important consequences, as we shall see, for the
* B. Lifshitz, “fhe Greck Documents from the Cave of Horror”, IEF 12 (1962), 201-207.
* E. Tov, with the collaboration of R. A. Kraft, and a contribution by P. J. Parsons, The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nakal Hever(8HevX Ter): The Seiyél Collection. DJD VII, Oxford 1990.
° "Tov, The Greek Minor Prophets, 26.
4 Barthélemy, Les Devanciers d’Aquila, 48-78.
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT 73
image we have of the three more recent Jewish translators, Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion through the ancient sources.” However, the documents from Qumran have revolutionised the textual history of the LXX due to the Greek fragments discussed and duc to the Hebrew texts discovered there, related in one way or another with the Vorlage used by the Greek translators. In first place must be mentioned the recovery of new originals in Hebrew or Aramaic for books or parts of books which were unknown unti now, such as the five manuscripts, four in Hebrew and one in Aramaic, of the book of Tobit found in Cave 4, or the appearance in Gave 11 (11QPs*) of two Hebrew compositions undoubtedly related with an ancestor from which the Greek translation of Psalm 15 came. No less important is the discovery of readings that are different from the textus receptus but that agree with LXX readings; before Qumran these were usually explained as the result of a different exegetical tradition and not as belonging to a different textual tra- dition. For example, 4QGen-Exod", from the Herodian period, agrees with the LXX that Jacob had seventy-five descendants instead of seventy as transmitted by the éextus receptus. 4QDeut* contains the final verses of the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32) in a composite text which for the first time provides us with readings in Hebrew which underlie the forms these verses have in the LXX.”* Even though these occasional agreements should not be exaggerated and one should not make hasty and more wide-ranging classifications about the various textual types, to some extent in connection with the LXX one can speak of a nemesis of Qumran in much the same way that E. G. Turner spoke of a “papyrological nemesis [which] awaits those who, without good reason, throw away explicit ancient testimonies”.”” Among the Hebrew documents from Qumran, those that merit special attention are the ones that contribute fragments of a different text from the textus receplus not only in actual variants but also from the literary aspect. In Cave 4, fragments of Samuel and Jeremiah were found with a text very close to the one used as a Vorlage by
* See infra chapters 7, 8 and 9.
* Pp, W. Skehan, “A Fragment of the ‘Song of Moses’ (Deuteronomy 32} from Qumran”, and Fernandez Marcos, “La Septuaginta y los hallazgos del Desierto de Juda”, 236-38.
* “Tt is clear that a papyrological nemesis awaits those who, without good rea- son, throw away explicit ancient testimonies,” E. G. Turner, Greek Papyri: An Introduction, Oxford 1968, p. 100.
74 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
the translators of the LXX. From the beginning these facts provoked an avalanche of studies on the biblical text and a fierce debate, which is still open, in the hope that the complete publication of the documents from Qumran can throw some new light on the theories circulating today. The best known is the theory of local texts set out by F. M. Cross in 1953 and retained with a few refinements until his most recent publications.”* It is the only theory claiming to explain in full the history of the biblical text. It postulates, at least for the Pentateuch, the existence of three textual families from three different places, which Cross identifies as Egypt (Vorlage of the LXX, from a full text, though not always, related at its oldest stage to the Palestinian text}, Palestine (which is an expansionist text) and Babylonia (with a short text, where preserved). The lack of links that would allow us to reconstruct all the vicissitudes of the complex textual history, and its somewhat speculative nature, have caused this hypothesis of local texts, followed in general by Cross’s disciples and the Harvard school, to be received cautiously by others and even to be rejected.” It has also to explain the fact that among the documents of Qumran, i.e. in the same geographical area, very different textual types are being discovered that are proto-Masoretic, proto-Samaritan, Septuagintal and of other types which for lack of better terminology are called “independent”. However, in spite of the vulnerability of Cross’ the- ory of local texts, today the coexistence of different textual types is accepted as fact at least during the two centuries before the stand- ardisation of the consonantal text. Furthermore, specialists such as S. Talmon and E. Tov postulate greater pluralism or question the very concept of textual type.*” Talmon focuses his attention on the
*® FM. Cross, “A New Biblical Fragment Related to the Original Hebrew Under- lying the Septuagint”; Cross, “The History of the Biblical Text in the Light of Dis- coveries of the Judacan Desert”; Gross, “Che Contribution of the Qumran Discoveries to the Study of the Biblical Text”; Cross, “The Evolution of a Theory of Local Texts”, Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text, 306-321; Cross, “Some Notes on a Generation of Qumran Studies”, The Madrid Qumran Congress I, 1992, 1-21.
* See R. Hanhart, “Zum gegenwartigen Stand der Septuagintaforschung”, De Sepiuaginia, 1984, 3-18, p. 10; G. Howard, “Frank Cross and Recensional Criticism”; S. Talmon, “The Old Testament Text I’, The Cambridge History of the Bible, 1, 193-99,
* See S. Talmon, “The Textual Study of the Bible: A New Outlook”, S. Talmon, FM. Cr eds, Qumran and The History of the Biblical Text, 321-401; E. Tov, “Determining the Relationship between the Qumran Scrolls and the LXX: Some Methodological Issues”, The Hebrew and the Greek Text of Samuel, 45-67; Tov, “A Modern Textual Outlook Based on the Qumran Scrolls”.
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT 75
sociological groups which conditioned the transmission of the text. According to him, of the various textual groups in existence only those survived which counted on the support of a religious com- munity entrusted with transmitting them, the Samaritan community for the Samaritan Pentateuch, the pharisaic-rabbinic community for the pre-Masoretic text and the Christian community for the text of the LXX. In his analysis, instead, E. Tov highlights not only the agreements between the Qumran texts and some of the texts previ- ously known, such as the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch or the LXX, but stresses the many disagreements or independent readings that prevent these texts from being included in a particu- lar textual group. He picks out a series of Qumran texts which he calls non-aligned, either because they follow an inconsistent pattern of agreements and disagreements with the Masoretic, Samaritan or LXX text, or because they are texts in some sense independent of these three traditions. According to E. Tov, these texts include about 15% of the documents from Qumran.*' B. Chiesa has joined in the debate, criticising the methodology of Tov’s analysis from a tradi- tion which is deeply rooted in textual criticism like the classical tra- dition and particularly the Italian school. For Chiesa the textual filiation of a document does not have to be defined by agreements or disagreements between cach other or from unique or exceptional variants. The latter are useful only to set a text in its cultural and historical context, because they are ideological variants. In textual criticism, instead, what matters is the nature of the variants and
especially the conjunctive or disjunctive mistakes that enable the tex- tual filiation of the various witnesses to be determined. Based on this type of reading and in spite of the plurality of texts, for B. Chiesa it is possible to sketch out a stemma or at least make an attempt, of the biblical texts in order to reach the base text.’ E. Ulrich opts for a more conciliatory stance. He emphasises on the onc hand our need for a more precise terminology in the debate, and on the other the urgency of further studies which will specify to what extent the various theories are adapted to the new data appearing right now when publication of the documents has been considerably speeded
31 E. Tov, “Some Notes on a Generation of Qumran Studies: A Replay”, The Madrid Qumran Congress I, 1992, 15-21, p. 20.
® B Chiesa, “Lextual History and Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Old Testament”, The Madrid Qumran Congress I, 1992, 257-72.
76 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
up. And A. S. van der Woude, without concealing the textual plu- ralism that has become apparent in the documents from Qumran, insists that we should not simply take for granted a similar plural- ism in the priestly circles of Jerusalem and among the Temple scribes. According to van der Woude, the events of 70 cz hastened the final phase of the standardisation of the text, but this was not the result of an historical accident or of a drastic recension by pharisaic Judaism. Instead it had been gestating as a tendency since the beginning of the Ist century cE in certain circles of Judaism, as can be perceived from the corrections in the Twelve Prophets fragments from Nahal Hever towards a proto-Masoretic type of text.*
However, beyond the present debate concerning different textual types, their terminology and the facts of the various theories, we should not lose sight of the re-evaluation of the text of the LXX due to many readings being confirmed in the Hebrew documents from Qumran and the verification of Hebrew base texts which under- lic the great changes evident in that translation as against the Masoretic text in books such as Samuel and Jeremiah.” Its disagreements with the textus receptus may in theory go back to a Hebrew Vorlage which is earlier than the standardisation of the consonantal text. Furthermore, in some books the Greek translation was made before the final redac- tion of the book had been completed in the form it has today in the Masoretic text. This is why, as we shall see below, the LXX has become the chief source of information that affects the literary crit- icism of the Old Testament.
c) The Use of the Septuagint in Hebrew Textual Criticism
The impact of the Qumran finds on the history of the biblical text has also produced, in parallel fashion, a transformation in the use of the Greek Bible in biblical text criticism. According to the latest
8 EL Ulrich, “Pluriformity in the Biblical ‘Text, Text Groups, and Questions of Canon”.
34 A. S. van der Woude, “Pluriformity and Uniformity: Reflections on the Transmission of the Text of the Old Testament”.
*% For the book of Jeremiah, see J. G. Janzen, Studies in the Texts of Jeremiah, Cambridge, Mass. 1973, and E. Tov, “Some Aspects of the Textual and Literary History of the Book of Jeremiah”; and P.-M. Bogaert, “De Baruch a Jéremie. Les deux rédactions conservées du livre de Jéremie”, Le livre de Jéremie. Le prophéte et son milieu. Les oracles et leur transmission ed. A.-M. Bogaert, Leuven 1981, 145-67 and 168-73 respectively.
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT tL
studies on the history of the biblical text, there are two principles that should govern the use of the LXX for the edition of the Hebrew text: (1) the existence of textual pluralism in the period before the Common Era, and (2) the polymorphism of texts within the LXX itself, that is to say, the differences evident in the process of trans- lation and transmission of the various books.
Thanks to the documents from Qumran, today we are aware of something that neither Origen nor Jerome could have suspected, in spite of realising that there were differences between the LXX and the Hebrew text of their time: the Greek Bible contains genuine, textual and literary variants from the Hebrew to the extent that we have to respect both traditions, without trying to reduce or adjust one to the other. As a result, in some books of the Old Testament, the Hebrew and the Greek transmit differing editions which, in the present state of our knowledge, cannot be reduced to a common original. In such cases the practice of resorting to the LXX for crit- ical restoration of the Hebrew text is not only utopian but method- ologically incorrect.** From the moment that the priority of one tradition over the other cannot be proved, one of them cannot be used to correct the other, because it is not always easy to distinguish between textual evolution and the literary evolution of the various traditions. In these cases, before attempting to restore the original it would be more prudent to reconstruct each of the different tradi- tions in which a particular biblical book has come to us.*” The soci- ological dimension of the text emphasised by S. Talmon also counsels respect for the various traditions that the different religious groups transmit,”® a procedure which in their way the authors of the Polyglot Bibles used in editing synoptically the different texts that were cir- culating in the various ancient languages.
However, this allegiance of the LXX to its Vorlage in large discre- pancies has helped to increase caution also in the case of the smaller variants. Even so, in these latter cases, before resorting to the hypoth- esis of a different Hebrew Vorlage, other possible explanations that are morc plausible have to be eliminated as new critical editions of
% See D. Barthélemy, Hiudes d'histoire du texte de l’Ancien Testament, Freiburg—Gottingen 1978, 368-69, and Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de UAncien Testament. 1 Josué, Juges, Ruth, Samuel, Rois, Chroniques, Esdras, Néhémie, Esther, Freiburg~Gottingen 1982, *107 and *111.
% DP. Barthélemy, “Etudes (histoire du texte”, pp. 368-69, and Barthélemy, “Lenchevétrement de l'histoire textuelle”, pp. 38-40.
* S. Talmon, “The Textual Study of the Bible”, p. 327.
78 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
the LXX continue to appear and improve our knowledge of the translation techniques of the various books and of Hebrew lexicog- raphy and Jewish exegesis.® That is to say, the use of the LXX in text criticism has become much more complex and refined after Qumran. And only by taking into account all the aspects mentioned will we avoid in future the criticisms deserved by its inappropriate use in earher editions of the Biblia Hebraica.” In the minor discrep- ancies and variants we have to remember some of the principles sct out by J. W. Wevers after long years of experience as editor of the Pentateuch in the series major of Gottingen: (1) Above all the nature and limitations of the target language for reproducing the source language have to be understood. We need to be aware that gram- matical elements cannot be translated. And before searching for a possible different Vorlage or for a theological background of the trans- lator, the first question to be resolved must be to what extent the discrepancies between the LXX and the Hebrew text are condi- tioned by the linguistic possibilities of Greek to express the linguis- tic structure and peculiar features of the source language."! (2) Before quoting evidence from the Septuagint there must be some certainty that the reading in question is authentic LXX and not the result of internal corruption in the Greek or a copyist’s error. And (3) before using the LXX properly in Hebrew text criticism, the distinctive points of view and procedures used by the particular translator in his translation have to be known.
To summarise, the LXX contains, in Tov’s words, “more significant variants than all other textual witnesses together. Furthermore, apart from a few scrolls from Qumran, the LXX is the only source that contains a relatively large number of variants which bear on the Lit- erary criticism of the OT”. In these last cases and with the infor-
* See J. Barr, “The Use of Evidence from the Versions”, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, Oxtord 1968, 238-72; E. Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, Jerusalem 1981, and A. Aejmelaeus, “What can We Know about the Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint?”, On the Trial of Septuagint Translators. Collected Essays by A. Acjmelaeus, Kampen 1993, 77-115.
* For an account of these criticisms, see Fernandez Marcos, “The Use of the Septuagint in the Criticism of the Hebrew Bible”, 63-66.
* See J. W. Wevers, “The Use of Versions for ‘Text Criticism: The Septuagint”, and the clear-sighted article by J. Heller, “Grenzen sprachlicher Entsprechung der LXX. Ein Beitrag zur Ubersetzangstechnik der LXX auf dem Gebiet der Flexions- kategorien”, MIOF 15 (1969), 234-48.
© EL Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint, p. 272.
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT 79
mation we now have, we should respect the autonomy and special nature of the translation as witness of a different literary tradition from the textus receptus. As is evident, in such cases it does not scem reasonable to use it as a source for restoring the authentic Hebrew text.’ However, in spite of all these reservations, in most of the books, the LXCX variants, when used intelligently and with due cau- tion, with the premisses set out above, can become an important aid for biblical text criticism and for editing the Hebrew text.
Nor should there be any need to say that this subsidiary use of the LXX to explain difficult Hebrew passages is little more than an insignificant part of the correct use of this version, since it is not possible to ignore other dimensions that only recently have come to the fore: its repercussions on the literary criticism of the Old Testament, and interest in it as an autonomous literary work within the Greck linguistic system.
d) Textual Criticism and Literary Criticism
Reflection over recent years on the history of the biblical text and the various text traditions has unleashed a series of studies on the effect of textual criticism on the literary criticism of the Bible.* Textual criticism is concerned with the transmission of the text once it has been fixed. Literary criticism, instead, studies the period of the literary formation of a book or set of books until the final edit. The problem arises when parts of a biblical book or early editions of complete books have been put into writing and circulated before the literary editing was complete. This is the case for the LXX trans- lation: the translation was completed at a particular time in history and later the Hebrew texts of some of the books were re-edited with
#8 See D. Barthélemy, Critique lextuelle de VAncien Testament, p. *111: “Mais le Comité a senti cde plus en plus clairement fa nécessité de ne pas déflorer la Septante pour retoucher le Texte Massorétique. Aucune de ces formes traditionnelles ne doit ¢tre traitée comme une carriére d’ot Von tirerait les bonnes legons avec lesquelles on reconstruirail un texte original.”
Emphasised particularly by M. Hari and her team in the French translation of the Septuagint, La Bible d’Alexandrie 1-5, Paris 1986-95.
® See E. Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint, 293-306; Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 313-49, with an extensive bibliography, and J. Trebolle Barrera, The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible, translated from the Spanish by W. G. E. Watson, Leiden~New York~Kéln 1998, pp. 389-97.
80 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
expansions, revisions or alterations of a different kind. Editions were put into circulation that were later replaced by new revised editions of the same book, revised editions which became official in the canon- isation process of the Hebrew text. As a result, the first editions have only been preserved for posterity either by chance, as in the case of the texts found in Qumran, or else because they were transmitted by non-Jewish communities, such as the Christian community in the case of the LXX.
This problem should not be confused with the problem posed by the existence of double texts within the Septuagintal tradition, dis- cussed in the next chapter. In fact the double texts of Judges, Daniel, Esther or Tobit belong to the text tradition of the LXX, most of them have a textual connection with that translation and only indi- rectly can they affect the literary criticism of those books. Other cases such as Job, Proverbs or Ben Sira display problems that are much too complex to be included in this section, since it is not easy to prove that the differences between the Masoretic text and the Greek translation of these books go back to editions that are different from the Hebrew. With respect to Job, at least, my view is that these differences are due to the translation techniques used.* Consequently, there are differences in extent, which are now considered to belong only to literary layers that are earlier than or parallel to what is found in the editions of the Masoretic text, whether they are chap- ters, sections or complete books.
Of course, in describing these phenomena no decision is being made about the literary priority of cither text. In fact, there is a subjective dimension in this description which is apparent when one notices that their number and contents fluctuate, depending on the scholar. The problem worsens because the discussion combines data from the LXX (often supported by the Old Latin) and Qumran on the one hand and data from the Masoretic Text, the Targum, Peshitta and Vulgate on the other. As the problem has been posed only recently, it is not surprising that this section is still germinating and requires further screening which will only happen as new studics continue to make clear the borders of these vast regions where text criticism and literary criticism overlap. In fact, only in the light of all the published witnesses and a comparative study of them will it be possible to speak of different editions, different Vorlage, or to estab-
* See N. Fernandez Marcos, “The Septuagint Reading of the Book of Job”, The Book of Job, ed., W. A. M. Beuken, Leuven 1994, 251-66.
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT 81
lish connections which lead to a genetic dependence among the different texts. Accordingly, in what follows I refer briefly only to those cases on which there is most agreement.
The book of Jeremiah
As is well known, the Greck text of Jeremiah is one-sixth shorter than the Masoretic text, ic. about 2,700 words of the textus receplus are missing from the Greek version. In addition, the sequence of chapters and verses is often different in the Hebrew from the Greek version. The dilemma facing biblical criticism is whether these differences are due to the Greek translator or whether he translated a Hebrew text that is not the same as the one we have. When the fragments 4QJer? and 4QJer’, which replicate these two main fea- tures of the LXX text, became known, it seemed clear, as is evi- dent from the studies by J. G. Janzen and E. Tov, that the LXX translated a Hebrew text that was close to the one found in Qumran Cave 4." Indeed, 4QJer” contains readings from Jer. 9:22-10:18 which are fragmentary but by good luck they confirm the sequence and peculiar arrangement of the LXX in 10:5-10 against the Masoretic text. Just like the LXX, Qumran transposes v. 5 after v. 9 and omits vw. 6-8 and 10. E. Tov and P.-M. Bogaert interpret these facts in the same way as J. G. Janzen, emphasising their repercussions for the literary criticism of the book of Jeremiah. The translator of Jere- miah did not shorten the Hebrew text as many exegetes had thought but instead, to judge from the comparative study of these two texts, it was the redactor of the Masoretic text who edited an expanded form of a text similar to the Vorlage of the LXX. Accordingly, Jeremiah- LXX reflects a first, shorter edition of Jeremiah, which is carlier than the second enlarged edition transmitted by the Masorctic text.**
7 See J. G. Janzen, Studies in the Texts of Jeremiah, Cambridg E. Tov, “Some Aspects of the Textual History of the Book of. ‘Je Sonderlund has recently opposed it in a recent study of Janzen’s thesis (se derlund, The Greek Text of. Jeremiah: A Revised Hypothesis, Sheffield 1985, 193- 248), “and opts for an intermediate position, i.e. a translator who follows a shorter Hebrew Vor- lage who also abbreviates. However, Janzen has replied, refuting Sonderlund’s the- sis, see J. G. Janzen, “A Critique of Sven Sonderlund’s ‘The Greek Text of Jeremiah: A Revised Hypothesis”, BIOSCS 22 (1989), 16-47.
* See E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 319-27, and P.-M. Bogaert, “De Baruch a Jérémie. Les deux rédactions conservées du livre de Jérémie”, Le Livre de Férémie. Le prophéte et son milieu, les oracles et leur transmission, ed. P.-M. Bogaert, Leuven 1981, 168-73, and Bogaert, “Urtext, texte court et relecture: Jérémie XXXL 14-26 TM et ses préparations”, Congress Volume Lewen 1989, ed. J. A. Emerton, Leiden 1991, 236-47.
82 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
Other literary units or sections of books
Besides the book of Jeremiah, other sections of books have been noticed in which the text of the LXX may affect their literary devel- opment: Exodus 35-40 (LXX), a parallel account of the building of the tabernacle which is considerably different from the Masoretic text, unlike Exodus 25-31 (LXX) where it follows it very closely; the transition of the book of Joshua to Judges, where Josh. 24:33 (LXX) adds a section that may reflect an earlier stage in the devel- opment of the Masoretic text; the different redactions of the David and Goliath story (1 Sam. 16-18), which is very much shorter in the ancient LXX than in the Masoretic text, although the interpretation of these facts has not yet been agreed among biblical scholars;*' the differing chronologies reflected in the Greek and Hebrew texts of 1-2 Kings;* Ez. 36:23c-38, which is missing from Papyrus 967 of the LXX and the Wirceburgensis codex of the Old Latin, and the same applies to chapters 36-39 which are sct out in different ways in this papyrus and in the Masoretic text, although some scholars prefer to explain the omission in Papyrus 967 as a problem of inter- nal transmission in Greek.
If these phenomena, or some of them, occurred in the period of literary growth of the biblical book before its final edition was con- cluded, they have to be analysed by using the methods of literary criticism but not the criteria of text criticism. However, since they came to light from comparing the different traditions of the biblical text, it is necessary to combine the information obtained from both types of criticism to reach a suitable solution to the problem. Text criticism and literary criticism each have their methods which must
* See A. Aejmelaeus, “Sepwagintal Translation Techniques: A Solution to the Problem of the Tabernacle Account”, Sepluagint, Scrolls and Cognate Writings, 1992, 381-402. Aejmelaeus opts for a middle solution in which the use of a different Vorlage and various free translation techniques are not mutually exclusive.
” See A. Rofé, “The End of the Book of Joshua according to the Septuagint”, Henoch 4 (1982), 17-36.
3 See D, Barthélemy, D. Gooding, J. Lust, E. Tov, The Story of David and Goliath, Textual and Literary Criticism, Freiburg-Géttingen 1986.
® J. D. Shenkel, Chronology and Recensional Development in the Greek Text of Kings, Cambridge, Mass. 1968.
* See P.-M. Bogaert, “Le temoignage de la Vetus Latina dans l’émde de la tra- :-Ezéchiel et Daniel dans le Papyrus 967”, Bib 59 (1978), 384-95, and E. ‘Tov, “Recensionai Differences between the MT and the LXX of Ezekiel”, ETL 62 (1986), 89-101.
THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE HEBREW TEXT 83
not intrude on each other’s analysis. In any event, they brmg us to a frontier zone of the history of the biblical text, the study of which has been outlined barely, that demands the collaboration of different disciplines and the application of much energy before more satis- factory and convincing results are obtained.
Serecr BisuiocRapHy
Aejmelacus, A., “What can We Know about the Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint?”. RAW 99 (1987), 58-89.
Albright, W. F., “New Light on Early Recensions of the Hebrew Bible”. BASOR 137 (19. 27-34.
Barthélemy, D., “L’enchevétrement de Vhistoire textuelle ect de Phistoire littéraire dans les relations existant entre la Septante ct te Texte Massorétique”. De Sepluaginia, 1984, 2140.
Chiesa, B., “Textual History and Textual Criticism of the Old Testament”. The Madrid Qumran Congress £, 1992, 257-72.
Cross, F. M., “A New Qumran Biblical Fragment Related to the Original Hebrew Underlying the LXX”. BASOR 132 (1953), 15-26.
«5 “The Contribution of the Qumran Discoveries to the Study of the Biblical Text”. LEF 16 (1966), 81-95.
; “The History of the Biblical ‘Text in the Light of Discoveries in the Judean Desert”. HTR 57 (1964), 281-99.
Gross, F. M., and 8. Talmon (eds), Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text, Cambridge, Mass.-London 1975.
Fernandez Marcos, N., “La Septuaginta y los hallazgos del Desierto de Juda”. Simposio Biblico Espatiol, 1984, 229~45.
> “The Use of the Septuagint in the Criticism of the Hebrew Bible”. Sefarad 47 (1987), 59-72.
Goshen-Gottstein, M. H., “Theory and Practice of Textual Criticism: The Text- critical Use of the Septuagint”. Textus 3 (1963), 130-58.
Howard, G., “Frank Cross and Recensional Criticism”, VT 21 (1971), 440-50.
Margolis, M. L., “Complete Induction for the Identification of the Vocabulary in the Greek Versions of the Old Testament with its Semitic Equivalents: Its Necessity and the Means of Obtaining it”. JAOS 30 (1910), 301-12.
Olmstead, A. 'T., “Source Study and the Biblical Text”. AZSL 31 (1913/14), 1-35.
Rabin, C., “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of the OT Text”. 77S ns 6 (1955), 174-82.
Sceligmann, L L., “Indications of Editorial Alteration and Adaptation in the Masoretic ‘Text and in the Septuagint”. V7 11 (1961), 201-21.
Skehan, P. W., “A Fragment of the ‘Song of Moses’ (Dt 32) from Qumran”, B4SOR 136 (1954), 12-15.
Talmon, S., “Aspects of the Textual Transmission of the Bible in the Light of Qumran Manuscripts”. Textus 4 (1964), 95-132.
Tov, E., “A Modern Textual Oudook Based on the Qumran Scrolls”, HUCA 53 (1982), 11-27.
, “Some Reflections on the Hebrew Texts from which the Septuagint Was
Translated”. ZNSL 19 (1993), 107~22.
~—-, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Minneapolis~Asscn~Maastricht 1992.
, “The Contribution of the Qumran Scrolls to the Understanding of the
LXX”. Septuagint, Scrolls and Cognate Writings, 1992, 11-47,
84 THE ORIGINS OF THE SEPTUAGINT
~~ (ed), The Hebrew and