LXX

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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arnoldo
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Re: LXX

Post by arnoldo »

nili wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:11 pm
arnoldo wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 5:19 pm How accurate was this translation?
How can someone answer this without knowing the Vorlage?
True, however the Hexapla is a clue that perhaps some people found issues with the LXX and felt a need to develop other translation from the Hebrew.
1. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament which the church employed. Once the church adopted it as her Old Testament, the Jews who were faithful to the Septuagint until about the beginning of the second century, abandoned it and proclaimed the sole authority of the Hebrew Bible.
When the Septuagint contained words not in the Hebrew, Origen marked them with an obelus. These were standard critical marks developed by the Alexandrian textual critics of the second century B.C. and still in use today.
2. In Alexandria and in much of the Greco-Roman world including some parts of Palestine, few of the Jews actually understood Hebrew. They were in need of a new translation into Greek, a word-for-word translation. Aquila, a Jewish proselyte living at the beginning of the second century, did that. His translation was very literal, preserving Hebrew word order and idiomatic turns of phrase. He was influenced by the Palestinian rabbis.
3. A second Jewish proselyte, living at the same period, Symmachus, produced a translation in more acceptable Greek. His work was more in the nature of a revision of the Septuagint. Apparently synagogues in Alexandria used a three-columned Bible in which, to the right of each transliterated Hebrew word was, first, its translation by Aquila, and, second, its translation by Symmachus.
4. Another Greek translation, that of Theodotion.
Jean Danilou says, "Having done all this and assembled his materials, he composed the Hexapla, i.e., he took the six texts - the Hebrew, the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew, the Septuagint, Smmachus, Aquila and Theodotion - and copied them out or had them copied in six parallel columns. In the case of the Psalms, so Eusebius says, he even produced an Octapla (nine-fold)."
Origen uses diacritical marks to indicate divergences in readings.
Later, and after he had settled in Palestine, Origen discovered two more translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek in addition to these. He supplemented the Tetrapla with the two of them.
1. An anonymous version he acquired at Nicopolis during a visit to Greece.
2. Another anonymous version, this only partial, had been discovered in the neighborhood of Jericho in a jar that contained a number of Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.
 http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/patr ... ter02.html

nili
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Re: LXX

Post by nili »

arnoldo wrote: Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:57 pm
nili wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:11 pm
arnoldo wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 5:19 pm How accurate was this translation?
How can someone answer this without knowing the Vorlage?
True, however the Hexapla is a clue that perhaps some people found issues with the LXX ...
With all due respect, that is an entirely different issue. Without access to the Vorlage there is little basis for evaluating the accuracy of a translation.
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arnoldo
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Re: LXX

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Some of the Voriage may've been burned at the orders of Hadrian in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt.
After the suppression of the revolt, Hadrian's proclamations sought to root out Jewish nationalism in Judea, which he saw as the cause of the repeated rebellions. He prohibited Torah law and the Hebrew calendar, and executed Judaic scholars. The sacred scrolls of Judaism were ceremonially burned on the Temple Mount.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt

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