christian@geneva.rutgers.edu (10/05/89)
I got three postings on the Septuagint. For the sake of coherency,
I'm combining them into this one. COSC2U2%JANE@uhvax1.uh.edu referred
to the Septuagint in a posting last time, describing an English
tranlation from Zondervan. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of
saying that it was commissioned by Alexander the Great. Hence these
responses. This may seem a lot about the Septuagint, but it is really
a very important document for Christianity.
From: ut-emx!emx!blais@cs.utexas.edu (Donald E. Blais)
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
The name Septuagint is derived from the legend that there were 70
(Latin septuaginta, abbreviated as LXX), or more correctly 72,
translators (6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel), who worked in
separate cells, translating the whole, and in the end all there
versions were identical. The tradition that translators were sent to
Alexandria by Eleazar, the chief priest at Jerusalem, at the request
of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BC), a patron of literature, first
appeared in the Letter of Aristeas, an apologetic treatise by an
unknown Jewish author, probably written in the 2nd century BC.
The early Christian Church, the language of which was Greek, used the
Septuagint, not the original Hebrew, as its Bible, so it was in the
Septuagint text that the Christians located the prophesies that they
claimed were fulfilled by Christ. Jews considered this a misuse of
Holy Scripture, and they stopped using the Septuagint. The subsequent
history of the Septuagint, therefore, lies within the Christian Church.
-- SEPTUAGINT, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1983
[I think this may overstate the influence of the Christian church on
Jewish attitudes. Do we have any experts in 1st Cent. Judaism? I
suspect that after the destruction of the Temple, Jews were much less
interested in the missionary orientation emphasized in the LXX, and
that there may have been a renewal in commitment to use of Hebrew.
Few modern Jews even know about the movement out of which the LXX
arose. It was evangelical -- i.e. they were interested in gaining
both converts and "God-fearers" (Gentiles who obeyed many of the
principles of Judaism but were not circumcized). It was also
interested in maintaining contact with the surrounding culture. The
LXX shows a number of passages where translations are slanted in the
direction of God as interested in the whole world, and Judaism as
being a light to the Gentiles. E.g. consider Amos 9:11-12 (TEV).
Hebrew: The LORD says: "A day is coming when I will restore the
kingdom of David, which is like a house fallen into ruins. I will
repair its walls and restore it. I will rebuild it and make it as it
was long ago. And so the people of Israel will conquer what is left
of the land of Edom and all the nations that were once mine." says the
LORD, who will cause this to happen.
LXX: In that day, says the Lord, I will restore the kingdom of David.
I will rebuild its ruins, and make it strong again. ... And so all
the rest of mankind will come to me, all the Gentiles whom I have
called to be my own. ...
The difference is quite striking. This is not the only such passage.
This missionary effort was surprisingly successful. One estimate is
that at one time as much as 10% of the Roman empire was either Jewish
or "God-fearers". Christianity's first appeal was almost certainly to
the God-fearers, since it was a religion with many of the same
features as Judaism, but they could have full status in it. One can
make a case that several features of Christianity that seem foreign to
our Jewish brothers today in fact came from aspects of Judaism that
did not survive the destruction of the Temple.
--clh]
From: mls@cbnewsm.att.com (Mike Siemon)
Subject: The Letter of Aristeas (Re: The Zondervan Septuagint)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
A couple of notes on the Septuagint:
First, it is very interesting to see Alexander the Great "attracting" the
credit from where it "should" be, namely Ptolemy II, son of his successor
in Egypt. This illustrates what happens when "information" is passed by
hearsay -- it is all too easy to replace what we are told with something
related but different.
The legend about the origin of the Septuagint stems from the Jewish community
in Alexandria, and is recorded in the so-called Letter of Aristeas. Off the
top of my head (so this may be another illustration of my first point :-)),
I seem to recall that this is dated to early in the 1st century B.C.E. The
Jewish scholars are supposed to have been invited by Ptolemy and to have all
worked separately and, when their work was compared, to have miraculously all
given word for word the same translation. This is utter nonsense; some books
of the Septuagint are quite literal translations of the Hebrew while others
are more free, adding material or expanding the Hebrew text in the manner of
later targums. And some of the books, of necessity, are much later than the
time of Ptolemy -- notably the books of Macabbees. Some, like Daniel, are
so garbled as to be hopeless.
My understanding of scholarly opinion is that the Pentateuch may well have
been translated into Greek in Ptolemy's reign (mid 3rd century B.C.E.) but
that he is unlikely to have had anything to do with it, it being more a
matter of practical importance in a Jewish community that increasingly had
no active understanding of Hebrew (which is also the context that the later
Aramaic targums had in Palestinian synagogues.)
The letter of Aristeas is pure propaganda and legend; its historical value
is in pointing to things being said in the community from which it came.
The Septuagint itself greatly influenced the New Testament, which is full of
imitations of its style, and Greek usage adapted from it (even where there is
no direct quotation.) One reason it is hard to trace possible Semitic sources
"behind" the gospels is that essentially all of their not-very-Greek idioms
can be paralleled in the Spetuagint. Luke is especially prone to imitation,
and in Luke the nativity accounts most of all hark back to this source, in
a manner analogous to which *we* tend to revert to King James English if we
are trying to sound "sacred."
From: mike@unmvax.cs.unm.edu (Michael I. Bushnell)
Organization: University of No Money, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Actually, it was Ptolemy Philadelphus who commissioned the work. The
legend also indicates that it took either 70 days or 70 weeks to complete.
Augustine goes somewhat against the tenor of the time in refusing to
accept the full legend of the LXX. He seems to suggest that it was compiled
by a process remarkable similar to that used by the scholars commissioned by
King James.mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) (10/08/89)
One additional note on the Septuagint:
The number 70 (or 72) has another significance. Seventy was held to be the
number of nations in the world, so the number 70 here is another sign of the
evangelical intent of the translation. The number also appears in the NT,
particularly in the mission of the 70. Also, some held *72* to be the
number of nations, and a few ealy gospel manuscripts have a mission of 72
rather than of 70.
C. Wingate + "Our God, to whom we turn when weary with illusion,
+ whose stars serenely burn above this earth's confusion,
mangoe@cs.umd.edu + thine is the mightly plan, the steadfast order sure
mimsy!mangoe + in which the world began, endures, and shall endure."