Septuagint

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The Septuagint (LXX) is the name commonly given in the West to the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) produced from the third to first century BC.

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[edit] Naming and designation

The Septuagint derives its name from the Latin septuaginta, 70, hence the abbreviation LXX and from a legendary account in the "Letter of Aristeas" of how seventy-two Jewish scholars (six scribes from each of the twelve tribes) were asked by the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the 3rd century BC to translate the Torah for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria. In a later version of that legend narrated by Philo of Alexandria, although the translators were kept in separate chambers, they all produced identical versions of the text in seventy-two days. Although this story is widely viewed as implausible today, it underlines the fact that some ancient Jews wished to present the translation as authoritative. A version of this legend is found in the Talmud, which identifies 15 specific unusual translations made by the scholars. Only 2 of these translations are found in the extant LXX.

The names "Septuagint" and "LXX" are of later Latin origin and are not used in Greek; the usual Greek name for the translation is kata tous ebdomekonta (according to the seventy).

[edit] Dating and critical scholarship

Modern scholarship holds that the LXX was translated and composed over the course of the 3rd through 1st centuries BC, beginning with the Torah.

The oldest witnesses to the LXX include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BC fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). Relatively complete manuscripts of the LXX include the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century AD and the Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th century. These are indeed the oldest surviving nearly-complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language; the oldest extant complete Hebrew texts date from around 1000 AD.

The sources of the many differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text have long been debated by scholars. One extreme view was that the Septuagint provides a reasonably accurate record of an early Hebrew textual variant, now lost, that differed from the Masoretic text. The other extreme, favored by Jewish religious scholars, was that the differences were primarily due to intentional or accidental corruption of the Septuagint since its original translation from the Masoretic text. Modern scholars follow a path between these two views. The discovery of many fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls that agree with the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic proved that many of the Septuagint's variants were also present in early Hebrew editions. On the other hand, there were known episodes of revisions and recensions, the most famous of which include those by Aquila (AD 128), a student of Rabbi Akiva. Origen (235), and other early Church fathers discussed the differences and attempted to preserve the original reading of the Greek. Origen, a Christian theologian in Alexandria, completed a comprehensive synopsis of each ancient version side-by-side, but his work is now almost completely lost.

These issues notwithstanding, the text of the LXX is very close to that of the Masoretic. Various versions of the Septuagint also included a number of apocryphal books not included in the Masoretic Text.

[edit] Use of the Septuagint

[edit] Jewish use

Jewish attitudes toward translations of their scriptures developed with time. By the 2nd century BC, it was often necessary for the readings in the synagogues to be interpreted from Hebrew into Aramaic, producing the need for the targumim, though one Talmud writer forbids their use except for foreigners. A later Talmudic injunction by Rabbi Simon ben Gamaliel said that Greek was the only language into which the Torah could be accurately translated. The Septuagint found widespread use in the Hellenistic world, even in Jerusalem, which had become a rather cosmopolitan city. Both Philo and Josephus show the influence of the Septuagint in their citations of scripture, though both modified passages that did not agree with the Hebrew text.

Several factors finally led most Jews to abandon the LXX, including the fact that Greek scribes were not subject to the same rigid rules imposed on Hebrew scribes; that Christians favoured the LXX; and the gradual decline of the Greek language among Jews after most of them fled from the Greek-speaking Roman Empire into the Aramaic-speaking Persian Empire when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Instead, Hebrew/Aramaic manuscripts compiled by the Masoretes, or authoritative Aramaic translations such as that of Onkelos, of Rabbi Yonasan ben Uziel, and Targum Yerushalmi, were preferred.

Ethiopian Jews are the only Jewish community today who accept the Septuagint (minus Ecclesiasticus).

[edit] Christian use

The Early Christian Church, however, continued to use the LXX, since most of its earliest members were Greek-speaking and because the Messianic passages most clearly pointed to Jesus as the Christ in the Septuagint translation. When Jerome started preparation of the Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin, he started with the Septuagint, checking it against the Hebrew Masoretic text for accuracy, but ended up translating most of the Old Testament afresh from the Hebrew. (Jerome based his Psalms off of the Septuagint, however.) However, all the other early Christian translations of the Old Testament were done from the Septuagint with no regard to the Hebrew text, which few of the translators understood.

The writers of the New Testament, also written in Greek, quoted from the Septuagint frequently, though not exclusively, when relating prophesies and history from the Old Testament. Even when Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian and other translations appeared, the Septuagint continued to be used by the Greek-speaking portion of the Christian Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church still prefers to use LXX as the basis for translating the Old Testament into other languages, and the Greek Orthodox Church (which has no need for translation) continues to use it in its liturgy even today. Many modern Catholic translations of the Bible, while using the Masoretic text as their basis, employ the Septuagint to decide between different possible translations of the Hebrew text whenever the latter is unclear, corrupt, or ambiguous.

[edit] Language of the Septuagint

The Greek of the Septuagint shows many Semiticisms, or idioms and phrases based on Hebrew, and the grammatical phenomenon known as "attraction" is common there. Some parts of it have been described as "Hebrew in Greek words". However, other sections show an ignorance of Hebrew idiom, so that the literal translation provided makes little sense. The translation in the Pentateuch is very close to the Hebrew, while some other books, such as the book of Daniel show influence from the midrash. Ecclesiastes is near over-literal, while Isaiah is fairly loosely translated. This is cited as near-certain evidence that the translation was in fact made by several different translators.

The translators usually, but not always, employed one and the same Greek word for one Hebrew word whenever it occurs. Thus the Septuagint can be called a mostly concordant translation. However, like in most translations of any literary work, often more than one Hebrew word gets translated into one and the same Greek word, removing some nuances from the text.

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[edit] External links

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