T&T Clark Handbook of Septuagint Research

William A. Ross, W. Edward Glenny

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567680266
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Référence biblique

Students and scholars now widely recognize the importance of the Septuagint to the history of the Greek language, the textual development of the Bible, and to Jewish and Christian religious life in both the ancient and modern worlds. This handbook is designed for those who wish to engage the Septuagint in their research, yet have been unsure where to turn for guidance or concise, up-to-date discussion. The contributors break down the barriers involved in the technical debates and sub-specialties as far as possible, equipping readers with the tools and knowledge necessary to conduct their own research. Each chapter is written by a leading Septuagint scholar and focuses upon a major area of research in the discipline, providing an overview of the topic, key debates and views, a survey or demonstration of the methods involved, and pointers towards ongoing research questions. By exploring origins, language, text, reception, theology, translation, and commentary, with a final summary of the literature, this handbook encourages active engagement with the most important issues in the field and provides an essential resource for specialists and non-specialists alike.

PART ONE

Origins

CHAPTER 1

The Origins and Social Context of the Septuagint

JAMES K. AITKEN

INTRODUCTION

At a certain point in the Hellenistic period, someone sat down to write out a translation in Greek of at least one of the books of the Pentateuch. Contemporary accounts that might tell us anything more about this event are lacking. We have no account of who the translators were, how they worked, where they worked, what their fluency was in each language, or their very reasons for undertaking a translation in the first place. This gap in our knowledge has left a vacuum, to which many theories are drawn. While it may be true that we have very little knowledge of the translators or indeed of Jews in Egypt at the time, this does not mean we know nothing of the setting. The social and historical context has increasingly been revealed to us by the finds of papyri and inscriptions from Ptolemaic Egypt that shed light on the circumstances around the translation. This allows for evaluation of the validity of theories and the premises that they presuppose, and for the investigation of new areas that have been neglected despite the finds. Here the focus will primarily be on the first translations, namely, of the Pentateuch; every Septuagint book may have a separate history, but once the first books had begun to be translated, their influence on later translation practice is clear.

Our earliest ancient accounts of the translation found in Aristobulus and the Letter of Aristeas (see Wright’s chapter in this volume), although only deriving from the second century BCE, locate the translation within Ptolemaic Egypt, and specifically under Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II (305/4–282 and 283–246 BCE). Details in their accounts, especially Aristeas’s presentation of royal sponsorship for the translation and the placement of the translation in the library of Alexandria, are more likely attempts at bolstering the status of the Jewish community in Alexandria in the later second century than reliable historical information (Wright 2011). Nonetheless, some modern theories accept an element of historical memory in these legends and begin their reconstructions from this evidence (see, e.g., Honigman 2003; Rajak 2009).

Even if the reliability of such historical narratives is doubted, the internal evidence within the Septuagint translation itself provides data that at times corroborate the picture learned from those sources. We are therefore confident regarding the larger contours into which the translation may be placed. The translation technique and language of the five books of the Greek Pentateuch are consistent, indicating that they were all translated within a similar time period, if not by collaboration between translators (Lee 2018). Each book, however, also presents subtle differences in technique that suggest that there was a different translator for each. The language has been placed within the early period of post-Classical Greek, confirming the date of the third century (Lee 1983), or at the latest the early second century, for the translation of these books. Confirmation that it could not have been translated any later comes from citation in second-century sources, even if those sources cannot be precisely dated within the century, and the existence of second-century fragments of the Septuagint (for Deuteronomy P.Ryl. 458 and 4QLXXDeut; for Leviticus 4QLXXLev^a). The specific location of Alexandria cannot be supported from this internal evidence, but Egypt certainly can, owing to the presence of Egyptian loan-words (e.g., θίβις “container” and οἰφί, a unit of measurement), local administrative terminology (ἀρχισωματοφύλαξ “chief bodyguard” [a court title], τοπάρχης “governor of a district”), and perhaps even theology (Görg 2001).

Beyond these small pieces of evidence little more can be said with confidence about the origins. Theorizing by scholars is dependent upon whether greater priority is given to the scenarios envisaged in Aristeas and elsewhere or to features detected within the Septuagint itself. The scenario in Aristeas implies an impetus for the translation that is external to the Jewish community, motivated by Ptolemaic interest in the people and their writings. The majority of theories imply a degree of internal Jewish need, and especially how Jews accommodated to their new home in Egypt. To each of these starting points are then added assumptions about the status of Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt and their social environment, which now can be illuminated by literary and papyrological data from Egypt. The theories that have been offered on origins shed light on three broad categories: the need for the translation, the social background of the translators, and the mechanisms of producing the translation.

KEY DEBATES

In the nineteenth century, scholars sought to reconstruct the setting of the translators from the limited information on Jews in Egypt that they had access to. Frankel (1841: 9–11), for example, supposed that the translators must have come from among the Jews living in the chora of Egypt, while Grinfield similarly argued that they were descended from Egyptian Jews, most likely soldiers who now formed a proportion of the commercial population (Grinfield 1850: 23). They both adduced from the sparse evidence collected in Josephus and other historians that Jews served in the Egyptian and Ptolemaic armies. Swete’s popular Introduction (1914: 7–9) draws upon similar data from Egypt but already presumes a location in Alexandria. It is an irony that scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with access to a vast range of new data, have tended to offer explanations without any attention to such new evidence. There have been occasional exceptions that will be noted, but theories regarding the context have largely circumvented the actual evidence.

THE NEED FOR A TRANSLATION

The starting point for many has been the assumption that ignorance of Hebrew in the second generation of immigrants to Egypt led to a need for the translation. Porter is one of the few to express this in terms of bilingualism, proposing that the Jews were either native speakers of Greek (L1) or, if Greek had been their second language (L2), that their first language (L1) was a local language (Porter 2014: 288). He does not provide substantiation for his point, but the implication is that Jews of Egypt lacked knowledge of Hebrew while being fluent in Greek. The language of the translation does suggest they attained the level of native speakers of Greek, in their natural rendering of Greek syntax that did not arise from adherence to Hebrew word order (Janse 2002: 380–1). This attainment reflects competence in the language but does not provide a clear direction on the ethnicity or native language of the translators. Apparent misunderstanding of the Hebrew text also could suggest a lack of familiarity with Hebrew. However, traces of the influence of Aramaic and contemporary Late Biblical Hebrew on the translators (Loiseau 2016) suggest a native speaking ability of Hebrew. The translators read the text according to their own knowledge of the language rather than having been schooled in the classical Hebrew tradition.

Nonetheless, some strands of scholarship have assumed that Jews were not proficient in Greek, the proof for this lying in the translation itself. In earlier generations the apparently lower level of Greek was contrasted to Classical Greek models and taken as evidence of the lack of social integration of Jews in the diaspora (see Aitken 2014c). This recently has been expressed in more positive terms. The translation features, such as matching Hebrew word order and syntax and the creation of new religious vocabulary, have been taken as indicative of an internal Jewish need for the translation. It provided opportunity for Jews to express their identity in the Hellenistic environment, to maintain their identity as Jews, and articulate their attachment to the Hebrew language (Rajak 2009). The application of contemporary translation theory to the language of the Pentateuch has also concluded that the translation technique is indicative of a countermovement to Hellenistic acculturation (Ziegert 2017). Certainly the Septuagint as a self-conscious statement of Jewish identity has often been compared to Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, a translation of Egyptian king-lists into Greek from the third century BCE. The difference, though, is that Manetho’s work seems to have been a rewriting for a Greek audience, and in a literary form to appeal to Greeks (Moyer 2011: 131), not a translation adhering closely to its source text.

Such theories on the language are predicated on a particular understanding both of the linguistic makeup of the Greek and on the social environment of the translators. In contrast, research has demonstrated how, in addition to native competency already noted, the vocabulary is typical of post-Classical Greek (Lee 1983) and how the Greek is not to be dismissed for its poor quality. The language reflects a particular stage in the history of Greek and at the same time is composed in a register that is not of the highest literary standards but is not without literary features. It is not as peculiar as it might first seem. Interference from the translation process does result in unexpected idioms and a higher degree of particular forms, but this need not be a specific Jewish strategy of the translators. Examination of other translations in antiquity, including in Egypt (Aitken 2014), implies the Septuagint translators were following conventional translation methods and not expressing a unique identity through language.

Internal Jewish need for the translation is still the most likely option, even if conclusions cannot so easily be drawn from translation technique. A popular suggestion has been that the translation stems from the liturgical use of the Pentateuch (Thackeray 1921: 9–15), although we know little of the liturgical life at this time. Jewish prayer houses do appear in Egypt in the third century BCE, as attested by dedicatory inscriptions (e.g., JIGRE 22; 117), but there is no certainty whether reading Torah was part of that liturgy. An alternative scenario is that of the school room. For Jews in Egypt wishing to learn about their heritage, the Greek translation would have provided a guide to reading the Hebrew original. The style of the Greek translation, following very closely word order and syntax of the Hebrew, has been seen as indicative of this educational use (Pietersma 2002; cf. Brock 1972: 16) perhaps even for elementary learning of the Hebrew language. If the translation technique is a standard method for translation in Hellenistic times, it cannot necessarily serve as a sure guide to the purpose (Aitken 2016). Nonetheless, the schoolhouse as a setting is possible, especially if we move away from the focus on learning Hebrew. The agreement between the translators for consistent rendering of Hebrew words (such as διαθήκη for “covenant,” εὐλογέω “to bless,” and δόξα for “glory”) implies that the translations began in an oral context where the equivalents had been established over time (Aejmelaeus 2013). This could well have been in a context where the Hebrew biblical scrolls were being discussed in a Greek medium, and the schoolhouse is one such possible location. One need not imagine, as does Pietersma (2002) or Brock (1972), that the Septuagint served for Jewish education the same function as Homer in Greek education. For Greek-speaking Jews, Homer would have been a text for study since memorizing the Greek poet was the only means of learning Geek literacy in antiquity (Cribiore 2001). Homer was also the model of poetic work and would have held a high status alongside the Septuagint, each serving their separate purposes; one for literary and poetic models, the other for national history and theology.

The suggestion that there was an oral tradition behind the translation can be illuminated by the consistency in translation choices. Agreement over how to translate key religious terms (see above) implies decisions being made before the translation has been penned (Aejmelaeus 2013). Likewise, subtle translation choices such as ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας (“a fragrant odor”; e.g., Gen. 8:21; Exod. 29:18), θυσιαστήριον, ὁλοκαύτωσις require thoughtful consideration and could not appear in more than one book by chance (cf. Lee 2018). However, this oral background is a natural development of the familiarity of any text within its community. It is not support for a larger theory, proposed by Kahle (1959), that the Septuagint began in the manner of an oral Targum. Kahle built upon the existence of translation variants and the allusion in Aristeas to possibly defective translations (§ 30), that there was no one original translation since it began in a context of oral synagogue translation. As already noted, we cannot reconstruct anything of the early synagogue liturgy, but Kahle should not be entirely rejected. In reality there is some early variation between manuscripts and, coupled with the revision movement, it is possible to show that textual variation appears early in the tradition (Fernández Marcos 1994a). While the larger contours of Kahle’s theory have not been accepted, recognition of some oral transmission is feasible, and this would conform to recent discussion over the open-ended nature of writing in antiquity (Mroczek 2016).

The theory of a legal need for the translation combines elements of both Jewish and Ptolemaic support. Mélèze-Modrzejewski (1996) made the case that the Jews were governed by their own laws in Egypt, and, on the model of Demotic Egyptian laws requiring an accompanying Greek translation, a Greek translation of the laws was produced. His view has been largely rejected owing to lack of evidence for Jewish legal self-governance, his one case of papyri from the third century that refer to Jewish litigants proving to be tentative. Apparent supporting evidence has come to light more recently in the second-century BCE Jewish archive from Heracloepolis in the Egyptian Fayum, where the language of a “bill of divorce” (βιβλίον ἀποστασίου) is derived from Deut. 24:1-4 (P.Polit.Jud. 4). It may not confirm, however, that the Septuagint was first translated for legal reasons, but rather show how it gradually gained importance and influence by the later second century (Rajak 2009: 85). The legal theory should not be too readily dismissed, nonetheless, since it has the advantage of working from data that comes from Egypt in the same time period. Indeed, a recent study, while not fully confirming the legal theory, substantiates portions of the argument, by using papyri for the reconstruction of the social context. A comparison of linguistic features in the Septuagint with documentary papyri has led to the conclusion that the translators were most likely trained among the Egyptian scribal class. Their translation technique, vocabulary, and register all display features found among the Greek-language-trained scribes of Egypt. As such the translators were working in similar ways to Greek scribes in Egypt, and we cannot infer that the translation was conceived as a literary work if it displays the same features as documentary texts (Aitken 2014; cf. Honigman 2...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Foreword
• List of Abbreviations and Sigla
• Introduction
• Part I: Origins
• Part II: Language
• Part III: Text
• Part IV: Reception
• Part V: Theology, Translation, and Commentary
• Part VI Survey of Literature
• Glossary
• Contributors
• References
• Ancient Sources
• Biblical/Extra-Biblical References
• Modern Authors
• Subjects
• Imprint