Septuagint


The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint, is the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible, various biblical apocrypha, and deuterocanonical books. The first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Torah or the Pentateuch, were translated in the mid-3rd century BCE; they did not survive as original translation texts, however, except as rare fragments. The remaining books of the Greek Old Testament are presumably translations of the 2nd century BCE.
The full title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas that the Hebrew Torah was translated into Greek at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by 70 Jewish scholars or, according to later tradition, 72: six scholars from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, who independently produced identical translations. The miraculous character of the Aristeas legend might indicate the esteem and disdain in which the translation was held at the time; Greek translations of Hebrew scriptures were in circulation among the Alexandrian Jews. Egyptian papyri from the period have led most scholars to view as probable Aristeas' dating of the translation of the Pentateuch to the third century BCE. Whatever share the Ptolemaic court may have had in the translation, it satisfied a need felt by the Jewish community.
Greek scriptures were in wide use by the time of Jesus and Paul of Tarsus because most Christian proselytes, God-fearers, and other gentile sympathizers of Hellenistic Judaism could not read Hebrew. The text of the Greek Old Testament is quoted more often than the original Hebrew Bible text in the Greek New Testament by the Apostolic Fathers, and later by the Greek Church Fathers. Modern critical editions of the Greek Old Testament are based on the Codices Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus. The fourth- and fifth-century Greek Old Testament manuscripts have different lengths. The Codex Alexandrinus, for example, contains all four books of the Maccabees; the Codex Sinaiticus contains 1 and 4 Maccabees, and the Codex Vaticanus contains none of the four books.

Names

"Septuagint" is derived from the Latin phrase versio septuaginta interpretum, which was derived from the. It was not until the time of Augustine of Hippo that the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures was called by the Latin term Septuaginta. The Roman numeral is commonly used as an abbreviation, in addition to or G.

Composition

Jewish legend

According to the legend, seventy-two Jewish scholars were asked by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Greek king of Egypt, to translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew to Greek for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria. This narrative is found in the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas to his brother Philocrates, and is repeated by Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and by later sources. It is also found in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud:
Philo of Alexandria, who relied extensively on the Septuagint, writes that the number of scholars was chosen by selecting six scholars from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. According to later rabbinic tradition, the Septuagint was given to Ptolemy two days before the annual Tenth of Tevet fast.

History

The 3rd century BCE is supported for the Torah translation by a number of factors, including its Greek being representative of early Koine Greek, citations beginning as early as the 2nd century BCE, and early manuscripts datable to the 2nd century. After the Torah, other books were translated over the next two to three centuries. It is unclear which was translated when, or where; some may have been translated twice, and then revised. The quality and style of the translators varied considerably from book to book, from a literal translation to paraphrasing to an interpretative style.
The translation process of the Septuagint and from the Septuagint into other versions can be divided into several stages: the Greek text was produced within the social environment of Hellenistic Judaism, and completed by 132 BCE. With the spread of Early Christianity, this Septuagint in turn was rendered into Latin in a variety of versions and the latter, collectively known as the Vetus Latina, were also referred to as the Septuagint. initially in Alexandria but elsewhere as well. The Septuagint also formed the basis for the Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian, and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament.

Language

The Septuagint is written in Koine Greek. Some sections contain Semiticisms, idioms and phrases based on Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Aramaic. Other books, such as Daniel and Proverbs, have a stronger Greek influence.
The Septuagint may also clarify pronunciation of pre-Masoretic Hebrew; many proper nouns are spelled with Greek vowels in the translation, but contemporary Hebrew texts lacked vowel pointing. However, it is unlikely that all biblical-Hebrew sounds had precise Greek equivalents.

Canonical differences

As the translation progressed, the canon of the Greek Bible expanded. The Hebrew Bible, also called the Tanakh, has three parts: the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim. The Septuagint has four: law, history, poetry, and prophets. The books of the Apocrypha were inserted at appropriate locations.
Extant copies of the Septuagint contain books and additions which are not present in the Hebrew Bible, and are not uniform in their contents. According to some scholars, there is no evidence that the Septuagint included these additional books. These copies of the Septuagint include books known as anagignoskomena in Greek and in English as deuterocanon, books not included in the Jewish canon.
These books are estimated to have been written between 200 BCE and 50 CE. Among them are the first two books of Maccabees; Tobit; Judith; the Wisdom of Solomon; Sirach; Baruch, and additions to Esther and Daniel. The Septuagint version of some books, such as Daniel and Esther, are longer than those in the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint Book of Jeremiah is shorter than the Masoretic Text. The Psalms of Solomon, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Book of Odes, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151 are included in some copies of the Septuagint.
Several reasons have been given for the rejection of the Septuagint as scriptural by mainstream rabbinic Judaism since Late Antiquity. Differences between the Hebrew and the Greek were found. The Hebrew source texts in some cases used for the Septuagint differed from the Masoretic tradition of Hebrew texts, which were affirmed as canonical by the rabbis. The rabbis also wanted to distinguish their tradition from the emerging tradition of Christianity, which frequently used the Septuagint. As a result of these teachings, other translations of the Torah into Koine Greek by early Jewish rabbis have survived only as rare fragments.
The Septuagint became synonymous with the Greek Old Testament, a Christian canon incorporating the books of the Hebrew canon with additional texts. Although the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches include most of the books in the Septuagint in their canons, Protestant churches usually do not. After the Protestant Reformation, many Protestant Bibles began to follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional texts as noncanonical. The Apocrypha are included under a separate heading in the King James version of the Bible.
Greek nameTransliterationEnglish name
Προσευχὴ ΜανασσῆProseuchē ManassēPrayer of Manasseh
Ἔσδρας Αʹ1 Esdras1 Esdras or 1 Ezra
Τωβίτ Tōbit Tobit
ἸουδίθIoudithJudith
ἘσθήρEsthērEsther
Μακκαβαίων Αʹ1 Makkabaiōn1 Maccabees
Μακκαβαίων Βʹ2 Makkabaiōn2 Maccabees
Μακκαβαίων Γʹ3 Makkabaiōn3 Maccabees
Μακκαβαίων Δ' Παράρτημα4 Makkabaiōn Parartēma4 Maccabees
Ψαλμός ΡΝΑʹPsalmos 151Psalm 151
Σοφία ΣαλoμῶντοςSophia SalomōntosWisdom or Wisdom of Solomon
Σοφία Ἰησοῦ ΣειράχSophia Iēsou SeirachSirach or Wisdom of Sirach
ΒαρούχBarouchBaruch
Ἐπιστολὴ ἸερεμίουEpistolē IeremiouEpistle or Letter of Jeremiah
ΔανιήλDaniēlDaniel
Ψαλμοί ΣαλoμῶντοςPsalmoi SalomōntosPsalms of Solomon

Final form

All the books in Western Old Testament biblical canons are found in the Septuagint, although the order does not always coincide with the Western book order. The Septuagint order is evident in the earliest Christian Bibles, which were written during the fourth century.
Some books which are set apart in the Masoretic Text are grouped together. The Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings are one four-part book entitled Βασιλειῶν in the Septuagint. The Books of Chronicles supplement Reigns, known as Παραλειπομένων. The Septuagint organizes the minor prophets in its twelve-part Book of Twelve.
Some ancient scriptures are found in the Septuagint, but not in the Hebrew Bible. The additional books are Tobit; Judith; the Wisdom of Solomon; Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach; Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, which became chapter six of Baruch in the Vulgate; additions to Daniel ; additions to Esther; 1 Maccabees; 2 Maccabees; 3 Maccabees; 4 Maccabees; 1 Esdras; Odes ; the Psalms of Solomon, and Psalm 151.
Fragments of deuterocanonical books in Hebrew are among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran. Sirach, whose text in Hebrew was already known from the Cairo Geniza, has been found in two scrolls in Hebrew. Another Hebrew scroll of Sirach has been found in Masada. Five fragments from the Book of Tobit have been found in Qumran: four written in Aramaic and one written in Hebrew. Psalm 151 appears with a number of canonical and non-canonical psalms in the Dead Sea scroll 11QPs, a first-century-CE scroll discovered in 1956. The scroll contains two short Hebrew psalms, which scholars agree were the basis for Psalm 151. The canonical acceptance of these books varies by Christian tradition.

Theodotion's translation

In the most ancient copies of the Bible which contain the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel is not the original Septuagint version but a copy of Theodotion's translation from the Hebrew which more closely resembles the Masoretic text. The Septuagint version was discarded in favor of Theodotion's version in the 2nd to 3rd centuries CE. In Greek-speaking areas, this happened near the end of the 2nd century; in Latin-speaking areas, it occurred in the middle of the 3rd century. The reason for this is unknown. Several Old Greek texts of the Book of Daniel have been discovered, and the original form of the book is being reconstructed.

Use

Jewish use

The pre-Christian Jews Philo and Josephus considered the Septuagint equal to the Hebrew text. Manuscripts of the Septuagint have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and were thought to have been in use among Jews at the time.
Several factors led most Jews to abandon the Septuagint around the second century CE. The earliest gentile Christians used the Septuagint out of necessity, since it was the only Greek version of the Bible and most of these early non-Jewish Christians could not read Hebrew. The association of the Septuagint with a rival religion may have made it suspect in the eyes of the newer generation of Jews and Jewish scholars. Jews instead used Hebrew or Aramaic Targum manuscripts later compiled by the Masoretes and authoritative Aramaic translations, such as those of Onkelos and Rabbi Yonathan ben Uziel.
Perhaps most significant for the Septuagint, as distinct from other Greek versions, was that the Septuagint began to lose Jewish sanction after differences between it and contemporary Hebrew scriptures were discovered. Even Greek-speaking Jews tended to prefer other Jewish versions in Greek, which seemed to be more concordant with contemporary Hebrew texts.

Christian use

The Early Christian church used the Greek texts, since Greek was a lingua franca of the Roman Empire at the time and the language of the Greco-Roman Church while Aramaic was the language of Syriac Christianity.
The relationship between the apostolic use of the Septuagint and the Hebrew texts is complicated. Although the Septuagint seems to have been a major source for the Apostles, it is not the only one. St. Jerome offered, for example, and,,, and as examples found in Hebrew texts but not in the Septuagint. Matthew 2:23 is not present in current Masoretic tradition either; according to Jerome, however, it was in. The New Testament writers, freely used the Greek translation when citing the Jewish scriptures, implying that Jesus, his apostles, and their followers considered it reliable.
In the early Christian Church, the presumption that the Septuagint was translated by Jews before the time of Christ and that it lends itself more to a Christological interpretation than 2nd-century Hebrew texts in certain places was taken as evidence that "Jews" had changed the Hebrew text in a way that made it less Christological. Irenaeus writes about that the Septuagint clearly identifies a "virgin" who would conceive. The word almah in the Hebrew text was, according to Irenaeus, interpreted by Theodotion and Aquila, as a "young woman" who would conceive. Again according to Irenaeus, the Ebionites used this to claim that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. To him that was heresy facilitated by late anti-Christian alterations of the scripture in Hebrew, as evident by the older, pre-Christian Septuagint.
Jerome broke with church tradition, translating most of the Old Testament of his Vulgate from Hebrew rather than Greek. His choice was sharply criticized by Augustine, his contemporary. Although Jerome argued for the superiority of the Hebrew texts in correcting the Septuagint on philological and theological grounds, because he was accused of heresy he also acknowledged the Septuagint texts. Acceptance of Jerome's version increased, and it displaced the Septuagint's Old Latin translations.
The Eastern Orthodox Church prefers to use the Septuagint as the basis for translating the Old Testament into other languages, and uses the untranslated Septuagint where Greek is the liturgical language. Critical translations of the Old Testament which use the Masoretic Text as their basis consult the Septuagint and other versions to reconstruct the meaning of the Hebrew text when it is unclear, corrupted, or ambiguous. According to the New Jerusalem Bible foreword, "Only when this presents insuperable difficulties have emendations or other versions, such as the... LXX, been used." The translator's preface to the New International Version reads, "The translators also consulted the more important early versions the Septuagint... Readings from these versions were occasionally followed where the MT seemed doubtful ..."

Textual history

Textual analysis

Modern scholarship holds that the Septuagint was written from the 3rd through the 1st centuries BCE, but nearly all attempts at dating specific books are tentative. Later Jewish revisions and recensions of the Greek against the Hebrew are well-attested. The best-known are Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. These three, to varying degrees, are more-literal renderings of their contemporary Hebrew scriptures compared to the Old Greek. Modern scholars consider one of the three to be new Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible.
Although much of Origen's Hexapla is lost, several compilations of fragments are available. Origen kept a column for the Old Greek, which included readings from all the Greek versions in a critical apparatus with diacritical marks indicating to which version each line belonged. Perhaps the Hexapla was never copied in its entirety, but Origen's combined text was copied frequently and the older uncombined text of the Septuagint was neglected. The combined text was the first major Christian recension of the Septuagint, often called the Hexaplar recension. Two other major recensions were identified in the century following Origen by Jerome, who attributed these to Lucian and Hesychius.

Manuscripts

The oldest manuscripts of the Septuagint include 2nd-century-BCE fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and 1st-century-BCE fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. Relatively-complete manuscripts of the Septuagint postdate the Hexaplar recension, and include the fourth-century-CE Codex Vaticanus and the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus. These are the oldest-surviving nearly-complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language; the oldest extant complete Hebrew texts date to about 600 years later, from the first half of the 10th century. The 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus also partially survives, with many Old Testament texts. The Jewish revisions and recensions are largely responsible for the divergence of the codices. The Codex Marchalianus is another notable manuscript.

Differences from the Vulgate and the Masoretic Text

The text of the Septuagint is generally close to that of the Masoretes and Vulgate. is identical in the Septuagint, Vulgate and the Masoretic Text, and to the end of the chapter is the same. There is only one noticeable difference in that chapter, at 4:7:
The differences between the Septuagint and the MT fall into four categories:
  1. Different Hebrew sources for the MT and the Septuagint. Evidence of this can be found throughout the Old Testament. A subtle example may be found in ; the meaning remains the same, but the choice of words evidences a different text. The MT reads "...al tedaber yehudit be-'ozne ha`am al ha-homa" . The same verse in the Septuagint reads, according to the translation of Brenton: "and speak not to us in the Jewish tongue: and wherefore speakest thou in the ears of the men on the wall." The MT reads "people" where the Septuagint reads "men". This difference is very minor and does not affect the meaning of the verse. Scholars had used discrepancies such as this to claim that the Septuagint was a poor translation of the Hebrew original. This verse is found in Qumran, however, where the Hebrew word "haanashim" is found in place of "haam". This discovery, and others like it, showed that even seemingly-minor differences of translation could be the result of variant Hebrew source texts.
  2. Differences in interpretation stemming from the same Hebrew text. An example is, shown above.
  3. Differences as a result of idiomatic translation issues: A Hebrew idiom may not easily translate into Greek, and some difference is imparted. In, the MT reads: "The shields of the earth belong to God"; the Septuagint reads, "To God are the mighty ones of the earth."
  4. Transmission changes in Hebrew or Greek: Revision or recension changes and copying errors

    Dead Sea Scrolls

The Biblical manuscripts found in Qumran, commonly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, have prompted comparisons of the texts associated with the Hebrew Bible. Emanuel Tov, editor of the translated scrolls, identifies five broad variants of DSS texts:
  1. Proto-Masoretic: A stable text and numerous, distinct agreements with the Masoretic Text. About 60 percent of the Biblical scrolls are in this category.
  2. Pre-Septuagint: Manuscripts which have distinctive affinities with the Greek Bible. About five percent of the Biblical scrolls, they include 4QDeut-q, 4QSam-a, 4QJer-b, and 4QJer-d. In addition to these manuscripts, several others share similarities with the Septuagint but do not fall into this category.
  3. The Qumran "Living Bible": Manuscripts which, according to Tov, were copied in accordance with the "Qumran practice": distinctive, long orthography and morphology, frequent errors and corrections, and a free approach to the text. They make up about 20 percent of the Biblical corpus, including the Isaiah Scroll.
  4. Pre-Samaritan: DSS manuscripts which reflect the textual form of the Samaritan Pentateuch, although the Samaritan Bible is later and contains information not found in these earlier scrolls,. These manuscripts, characterized by orthographic corrections and harmonizations with parallel texts elsewhere in the Pentateuch, are about five percent of the Biblical scrolls and include 4QpaleoExod-m.
  5. Non-aligned: No consistent alignment with any of the other four text types. About 10 percent of the Biblical scrolls, they include 4QDeut-b, 4QDeut-c, 4QDeut-h, 4QIsa-c, and 4QDan-a.
The textual sources present a variety of readings; Bastiaan Van Elderen compares three variations of Deuteronomy 32:43, the Song of Moses:

Print editions

The text of all print editions is derived from the recensions of Origen, Lucian, or Hesychius:
The first English translation was Charles Thomson's in 1808, which was revised and enlarged by C. A. Muses in 1954 and published by the Falcon's Wing Press. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English was translated by Lancelot Brenton in 1854. It is the traditional translation and most of the time since its publication it has been the only one readily available, and it has continually been in print. The translation, based on the Codex Vaticanus, contains the Greek and English texts in parallel columns. It has an average of four footnoted, transliterated words per page, abbreviated Alex and GK. Updating the English of Brenton's translation.
The Complete Apostles' Bible was published in 2007. Using the Masoretic Text in the 23rd Psalm, it omits the apocrypha. A New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included Under that Title, an academic translation based on the New Revised Standard version was published by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies in October 2007.
The Apostolic Bible Polyglot, published in 2003, is a Greek-English interlinear Septuagint which may be used in conjunction with the reprint of Brenton's translation. It includes the Greek books of the Hebrew canon and the Greek New Testament, numerically coded to the AB-Strong numbering system, and set in monotonic orthography. The version includes a concordance and index.
The Orthodox Study Bible, published in early 2008, is a new translation of the Septuagint based on the Alfred Rahlfs edition of the Greek text. Two additional major sources have been added: the 1851 Brenton translation and the New King James Version text in places where the translation matches the Hebrew Masoretic text. This edition includes the NKJV New Testament and extensive commentary from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. Nicholas King completed The Old Testament in four volumes and The Bible.
Brenton's Septuagint, Restored Names Version, has been published in two volumes. The Hebrew-names restoration, based on the Westminster Leningrad Codex, focuses on the restoration of the Divine Name and has extensive Hebrew and Greek footnotes.
The Eastern Orthodox Bible would have been an extensive revision and correction of Brenton's translation. With modern language and syntax, it would have had extensive introductory material and footnotes with significant inter-LXX and LXX/MT variants before being cancelled. The Holy Orthodox Bible, by Peter A. Papoutsis, and the Michael Asser English translation of the Septuagint are based on the Church of Greece's Septuagint text.

Society and journal

The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, a non-profit learned society, promotes international research into and study of the Septuagint and related texts. The society declared 8 February 2006 International Septuagint Day,
a day to promote the work on campuses and in communities. The IOSCS publishes the Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies.