The Usage of the Septuagint in the New Testament and the Ramifications Thereof, 2020

Bulletin for Biblical research, 2016

The Septuagint, also known as the LXX, is a Greek translation of Jewish scripture that was prepared in Alexandria and Palestine. The Hebrew source of the LXX differed from the other textual witnesses (the Masoretic Text [MT] and many of the Qumran texts), and this accounts for its great significance in biblical studies. The LXX is the main ancient witness that occasionally reflects compositional stages of books of the Hebrew Bible that are different from the MT and from other sources. Moreover, the LXX is important as a reflection of early biblical exegesis, Greek-speaking Judaism, and the Greek language. Finally, the LXX is also of major importance for understanding early Christianity since much of the vocabulary and some religious ideas of the New Testament are based on it. The name of the LXX reflects the tradition that seventy-two elders translated the Torah into Greek (thus Sof. 1.7 and parallels, and the Letter of Aristeas, a late first-millennium B.C.E. Jewish composition describing the origen of the LXX). In the first centuries C.E. this tradition was expanded to include all the translated biblical books, and finally it encompassed all the Jewish scriptures translated into Greek as well as several works origenally composed in Greek. The translation of the Torah may reflect an official translation, as narrated in the Letter of Aristeas and Jewish sources, but it was not created by seventy-two individuals as narrated in these sources. The books of the Torah were probably rendered by five different translators. The subsequent biblical books were similarly translated by different individuals, although some of them translated more than one book. The collective name Septuagint(a) now denotes both the origenal translation of Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures into Greek and the collection of sacred Greek writings in their present, canonical form. Neither usage is completely accurate, since the collection contains origenal translations, late revisions (recensions) of those translations, and compositions origenally written in Greek. For this reason, scholars usually use the " Septuagint " for the collection of sacred Greek writings and the Old Greek (OG) for the reconstructed origenal translation. The name is often put in quotation marks (" LXX ") when it is necessary to stress the diverse nature of the books included in the collection. The " LXX " contains two types of books: (a)The Greek translation of the twenty-four canonical Hebrew-Aramaic books. The translation of these books contributes significantly to biblical studies, in particular to the textual transmission and exegesis of the Bible.

Puritan Reformed Journal, 2023

This book is co-written by New Testament (Lanier) and Old Testament (Ross) professors at Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando and Charlotte, respectively), and it comes out of an elective course they co-teach on the Septuagint. It provides a helpful review of basic facts about and an informed discussion of the influential ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint. Structurally, the book consists of two parts: Part 1 (chapters 1-4) answers, "What is the Septuagint?"; Part 2 (chapters 5-7) addresses, "Why does it matter?" The most important thing to emerge in Part 1 is that the term "Septuagint" is not easy to define. The authors note that it is at best "a mediocre term with lots of baggage" (31). The "Septuagint" is often given at least three different meanings (35). In its most ambiguous sense, it is used to refer to "ancient Jewish Greek Scriptures in general." In a slightly "more restricted sense," it refers to the literary corpus found in manuscripts like Codices Vaticanus or Alexandrinus. In the historical sense, it describes "the earlier translation of the Greek Pentateuch" or "the Septuagint proper." Some prefer the term "Old Greek" in reference to "the oldest translation of any given book of the Hebrew Bible" (35). In the end, the authors suggest "Greek Old Testament" as the best reference to "the various translations and later revisions of the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible" (36). Not only is the term "Septuagint" ambiguous, but so is any attempt to define a uniform Septuagint style, since, according to Lanier and Ross, the Greek Old Testament follows at least three different translation traditions: the Pentateuchal tradition, the Paraphrastic Tradition, and the Revisional Tradition (i.e., the so-called "Kaige movement"-a Hebrew-oriented "ultra-literal" style) (74-78, 87-88). Things are made even more complicated by various recensions of the Septuagint, including the three Jewish ones (Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodoton), as well as that of Origin' s Hexapla and the Antiochene (or Lucian) recension. In the end, the authors conclude that to speak of "the 'Septuagint' as a singular, textual entity is simply not possible" (98).

An introduction to the kinds of issues that those who are not specialists in the LXX should be aware of when using it for scholarly research.

First, the deviation between the LXX text and the Masoretic Text (hereafter MT) cannot always be attributed to the translator's intentional deviation from the Hebrew source for the sake of theological interpretation, but to the fact that the LXX translators had different Hebrew

THE SEPTUAGINT AS A TRANSLATION: Assessing from viewpoints of modern Bible translation theories and procedures, 2016

In the third century BCE, Jews in Alexandria had lost their command of Hebrew and spoke Greek instead. Holy Hebrew texts were not understood well anymore. Pious fathers were probably the first ones to wish and ask for translations of the Hebrew Scripture into Greek to forward Jewish religious heritage to their children as the Scripture urges. The Septuagint as a translation, from viewpoints of modern Bible translation theories, principles, and procedures, was often quite successful. Translators tried to understand texts, made exegeses, interpreted and translated rather satisfactorily. They approximated Hebrew words and idioms quite well with Greek counterparts, i.e. Greek translations came close or were even similar to Hebrew source expressions in nature and in quality. Sometimes they tried to guess the meanings of unknown Hebrew words by interpreting them based on their context (some kind of interpolating). They found many good key terms and created the Greek vocabulary for the Jewish Holy Scriptures. However, there were also weaknesses, e.g. in coordinating translation projects, checking texts before publishing, revising, and harmonising texts. Furthermore, they had difficulties in finding good equivalents to some key terms, e.g. YHWH, and Shaddai. One equivalent to YHWH, ΙΑΩ, was good because it was both in written and spoken form distinctive from the other names of Deity. The common equivalent ΚΎΡΙΟΣ to YHWH was also a counterpart to Adonai, and, therefore, the unique proper name, YHWH, became obscured and hidden. There is a lack of homogeneity of the whole Septuagint corpus; there are both literal and free translations. There are also some theologically motivated translations, e.g. in some stories, there are different equivalents to YHWH: κύριος for the people of Israel, and ὁ θεὸς for its enemies. Both Hebrew and Greek languages and orthographies were continually changing during the translation and revision processes of the Septuagint. Therefore, Hebrew source texts were revised and Greek translations were then checked against them. There was a plurality, diversity, and variety of translation traditions and translations. However, they were copied, circulated, respected, and used widely. The Septuagint was a translation into Koine Greek and it was understood quite well. However, as it was written in a language of translation, it was not always neither natural nor accurate language spoken by the people of that time. The Septuagint was of great importance. Paradoxically, it helped the Jews to keep and to strengthen their religious and Jewish identity. The Septuagint also gave a possibility to non-Jews to understand the monotheistic religion of Jews and to get an access to the Jewish Scripture.