LXX

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
User avatar
arnoldo
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 6:10 pm
Location: Latin America

LXX

Post by arnoldo »

How accurate was this translation?
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: LXX

Post by DCHindley »

arnoldo wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 5:19 pm How accurate was this translation?
Depends.

The 5 books of Moses (pentateuch) was translated into Greek 1st, at the hand of 70 (Lxx) translators, around 250 BCE. I think that this was the standard version found in Christian codices and in Jewish manuscripts.

The other books circulated each in several versions, or so it seems. As new translations by Jews continued to be made, Christians sometimes vacillated between translations to endorse.

There are some glaring differences, but they largely try to capture the meaning of the original Hebrew/Aramaic, and still make it intelligible to Greek speakers. Over at CCEL they have a digitized version of H B Swete's Additional Notes to An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/swete/greekot.html

DCH
User avatar
arnoldo
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 6:10 pm
Location: Latin America

Re: LXX

Post by arnoldo »

DCHindley wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:48 pm
arnoldo wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 5:19 pm How accurate was this translation?
Depends.

The 5 books of Moses (pentateuch) was translated into Greek 1st, at the hand of 70 (Lxx) translators, around 250 BCE. I think that this was the standard version found in Christian codices and in Jewish manuscripts.

The other books circulated each in several versions, or so it seems. As new translations by Jews continued to be made, Christians sometimes vacillated between translations to endorse.

There are some glaring differences, but they largely try to capture the meaning of the original Hebrew/Aramaic, and still make it intelligible to Greek speakers. Over at CCEL they have a digitized version of H B Swete's Additional Notes to An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/swete/greekot.html

DCH
Thanks for the link, I'll definitely have to check it out. As far as the 5 books of Moses included in the LXX I am assuming they were separate scrolls. It would be interesting to find out what the earliest fragments of the extant text of the LXX are dated. Papyrus Fouad 266 is dated to the 1st century BC.
320px-Pap_266.jpg
320px-Pap_266.jpg (24.57 KiB) Viewed 18777 times
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: LXX

Post by DCHindley »

arnoldo wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:24 am
DCHindley wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:48 pmOver at CCEL they have a digitized version of H B Swete's Additional Notes to An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/swete/greekot.html
Thanks for the link, I'll definitely have to check it out. As far as the 5 books of Moses included in the LXX I am assuming they were separate scrolls.


They were the only books that all Judeans agreed were sacred. The rest of them were revered by this or that faction and some were not even agreed upon as being sacred until the 1st (or 2nd) century CE, like Daniel and some versions of the Ezra-Nehemiah books. Technically, only the 5 books of Moses were the LXX (Septuagint), the rest are technically known today as "Old Greek" versions. Judeans preserved their sacred books as scrolls, although from almost the start (maybe even the very start) Christians used the codex.
It would be interesting to find out what the earliest fragments of the extant text of the LXX are dated. Papyrus Fouad 266 is dated to the 1st century BC.
The earliest fragment is Papyrus Rylands 458, dated to 2nd century BCE, perhaps as early as the original translation project in Alexandria, Egypt.

Some Greek fragments of the bible were found in the caves near Qumran. While I have books that catalog them, they were buried in the great bookshelf collapse of a few years ago and I cannot find them at the moment. The oldest copies of Hebrew books among the DSS also go back to 2nd century BCE. In fact, there are NO biblical books, whether in Hebrew or Greek translation, that have been found earlier than the mid 2nd centry BCE, when the five books of Moses were supposedly translated from Hebrew to Greek.

DCH
User avatar
arnoldo
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 6:10 pm
Location: Latin America

Re: LXX

Post by arnoldo »

DCHindley wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:20 am
arnoldo wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:24 am
DCHindley wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:48 pmOver at CCEL they have a digitized version of H B Swete's Additional Notes to An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/swete/greekot.html
Thanks for the link, I'll definitely have to check it out. As far as the 5 books of Moses included in the LXX I am assuming they were separate scrolls.


They were the only books that all Judeans agreed were sacred. The rest of them were revered by this or that faction and some were not even agreed upon as being sacred until the 1st (or 2nd) century CE, like Daniel and some versions of the Ezra-Nehemiah books. Technically, only the 5 books of Moses were the LXX (Septuagint), the rest are technically known today as "Old Greek" versions. Judeans preserved their sacred books as scrolls, although from almost the start (maybe even the very start) Christians used the codex.
It would be interesting to find out what the earliest fragments of the extant text of the LXX are dated. Papyrus Fouad 266 is dated to the 1st century BC.
The earliest fragment is Papyrus Rylands 458, dated to 2nd century BCE, perhaps as early as the original translation project in Alexandria, Egypt.

Some Greek fragments of the bible were found in the caves near Qumran. While I have books that catalog them, they were buried in the great bookshelf collapse of a few years ago and I cannot find them at the moment. The oldest copies of Hebrew books among the DSS also go back to 2nd century BCE. In fact, there are NO biblical books, whether in Hebrew or Greek translation, that have been found earlier than the mid 2nd centry BCE, when the five books of Moses were supposedly translated from Hebrew to Greek.

DCH
The great bookshelf collapse will probably go down in history second to the The Burning of the Library of Alexandria. If there had been earlier copies of Hebrew books they may've been there or in the Jewish Temple I suppose.
semiopen
Posts: 471
Joined: Sat Mar 08, 2014 6:27 pm

Re: LXX

Post by semiopen »

Septuagint

Jewish Legend
Seventy-two Jewish scholars were asked by the Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus to translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into Greek, for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria.[13]

This narrative is found in the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas to his brother Philocrates,[14] and is repeated by Philo of Alexandria, Josephus[15][16] and by various later sources, including St. Augustine.[17] The story is also found in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud:

King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one's room and said: "Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher". God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did.[8]

Philo of Alexandria, who relied extensively on the Septuagint,[18][better source needed] says that the number of scholars was chosen by selecting six scholars from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
I think the idea was to kill the elders if there was a difference between the versions, but, baruch hashem...

The previous conversation here makes an interesting segue into the original written matter that quite possibly is questionable. The Talmud was evidently not written down until it was completed after multiple generations of work, but copies of the Pentateuch were supposedly commonplace many many hundreds of years earlier. Seems like if there is any grain of truth in the seventy some guys that they might have all known parts of it by heart and they wrote out from memory.
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: LXX

Post by Secret Alias »

What's called 'the LXX' by Christian sources wasn't the original LXX. We can see that by differences between it and what Philo cites in his works.
“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
User avatar
arnoldo
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 6:10 pm
Location: Latin America

Re: LXX

Post by arnoldo »

Regarding the Great Bookshelf Collapse, upon further research this event has become third in it’s historical importance after the Destruction of the Library of Caesarea. In this library the Hexapla was allegedly developed comparing six version of the OT. The Hexapla project is currently underway in an attempt to recreate it.
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blog ... ments.html
hexapla.png
hexapla.png (8.4 KiB) Viewed 18709 times
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: LXX

Post by DCHindley »

arnoldo wrote: Mon Mar 04, 2019 6:09 pm Regarding the Great Bookshelf Collapse, upon further research this event has become third in it’s historical importance after the Destruction of the Library of Caesarea. In this library the Hexapla was allegedly developed comparing six version of the OT. The Hexapla project is currently underway in an attempt to recreate it.
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blog ... ments.html
hexapla.png
Oh my!

DCH
nili
Posts: 116
Joined: Thu May 22, 2014 1:02 pm

Re: LXX

Post by nili »

arnoldo wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 5:19 pm How accurate was this translation?
How can someone answer this without knowing the Vorlage?
Post Reply