iskander wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2017 12:36 pm
The Greek translation of the Septugint was the work undertaken by Jews to allow emigrant Jews who spoke only Greek to remain Jewish. It was a work performed to avoid those emigrants to disappear down the same hole that had swallowed the ten Israelites tribes of the Northern Kingdom .
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:53 am
I know the story about the Alexandrian translation by the Seventy. I know that Philo used a Greek translation which was presumably by these men. But I have noticed differences in this text and what now passes as 'the LXX.'
What we know as the LXX today isn't the original one. I don't think anyone claims that. The LXX of today has been brought much more in line with the "Masoretic" text (well, its predecessors) in the times when the Latin Bible translations were done.
Ok. I am just trying to take this step by step. Are there any available scholarly opinions which acknowledge that so I can move forward from that point? I thought I was making a controversial point.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
iskander wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2017 1:09 pm
The Jewish Diaspora
Proff Schiffrman
Capture.PNG
Cheers. But when? Before 70 AD? Before and after 70 AD?
Was the LXX also used outside to main centers of the Diaspora? especially after 70 AD?
Jewish emigration( Diaspora) precede the war with the Romans. It would have been used anywhere by any Greek speaking Jew. Many Jews in Britain read the Hebrew Bible in English .
We do have a few fragments of Greek papyri that had the Tetragram in Aramaic or Phoenician script instead of kurios or theos. I honestly do not think that Christians, as we know them (divine redeemer worshippers), were squeamish about pronouncing the name of God, but Judeans of the Diaspora might have been.
I doubt that the Greek translations of the various Judean scriptures were by the same authors everywhere in the inhabited earth. Besides the inevitable regional variations that develop among texts as they are transmitted, there might have been local versions of various books.
We can safely say that some gentiles had became familiar enough with Judean scriptures in Greek translation to know them almost by heart. So, by what process did they become familiar with them? Did they go and buy rolls of the Greek Pentateuch translation at the ancient equivalent of a Barnes & Nobles bookstore? Probably not.
Then they must have had contact with Judeans of the diaspora who read their sacred books in Greek translation. Reading from these books was usually the task of one person who spoke aloud the words in a group setting so the group members could hear and learn. I think that there would have to have been gentiles in attendance, since later Christianity was predominantly gentile.
These gentiles must have found Judean scriptures fascinating, even to the point of having copies made, with permission of course, for their personal "reading" (just gentiles, maybe in households, maybe in the forum). Not deeply familiar with Judean culture, the names and subjects seemed to be deep mysteries. As they pondered the deep mysteries, they wanted to be a part of these people with their strange, super-just God. A "just" God running things, or just contributing to the ethics of the day, was just what the doctor ordered.
So, whatever group of gentiles (with this intense interest in Judean scriptures) it was that spawned Christianity as we know it, started to maintain their own copies, which probably meant they got them from their Judean friends.
Judeans of the diaspora certainly did seem to have a very tolerant attitude towards those gentiles who made attempts to be receptive of the Judean God, by being patrons of synagogues, etc., is known from slightly different times. Inscriptions show that friendly gentiles tried as best they could to include the Judean God into their local pantheons, usually by equating their God to a local deity, like "Most-High God," and many Judeans of the diaspora were willing to overlook this non-acknowledgement of their God's supremacy over all others, in the interests of "getting along" with their Greek neighbors. Nobody ever gets 100% of what they want, but we all have to live with a bit of disappointment in our lives. Would they lend them sacred books? Well ...... I do find that unlikely, but they got them, all of them, nonetheless.
Consequently, I would suggest that the Greek translations of books of Judean scripture that became the one transmitted by Christians do not have to be the same everywhere. There were probably several alternatives out there for each sacred book. Judeans of the diaspora could well have had texts that differed from the ones in use among the Gentile "buffs" who developed the Christ dogma.
