Dating the LXX

[MrMacSon]

... a date for the LXX ... It comes after the NT, such is for sure

I think that the LXX was either developed before or with Paul
+/- Hebrews (+/- some Catholic epistles), which all may have been in the second century

It's origins may well pre-date the Gospels ...

I'm interested in others views

[Leucius Charinus]

I think one has to differentiate between at least two different versions of the LXX

(1) Christian: Whoever wrote the Greek NTC imported a great deal of copy/pasted material from a special "Christianised" [1] version of a Greek LXX. Practically all surviving manuscripts including papyri manuscript fragments for the NT (and LXX [1]??? ) are from codices. It therefore seems reasonable to propose that the NTC and the "Christianised" LXX were always packaged together in codex form.

(2) Jewish: The Greek LXX manuscripts which do not feature runes (nomina sacra) are by scholarship, rightly or wrongly, generally attributed to Jewish provenance.

Date? Could be very late.

Examples of both of these are listed below along with estimated dates which in (nearly) all cases derived from paleography in isolation.

Evidence for the Greek LXX

(from some old notes)

DATE___________ITEM _____________________________________

281-246 BCE Rule of Ptolemy II Philadelphus Letter of Aristeas

170-130 BCE Estimated forgery of the Letter of Aristeas

2nd Cen BCE Papyrus Rylands 458 (assigned palaeographically)

1st/2nd BCE Greek papyri in the Qumran (LXX translations?)

1st/2nd BCE 9 Greek papyri in the Qumran (LXX translations?)

1st Cen BCE Papyrus Fouad 266: a papyrus manuscript in scroll form. (assigned palaeographically)

BCE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CE

050 CE P.Oxy 3522 - Job 42.11,12 (assigned palaeographically)

037-100 CE Titus Flavius Josephus aka Joseph ben Mattathias

100 CE P.Oxy 4443 - Esther 6,7 (assigned palaeographically)

150 CE P.Oxy 656 (150 CE) Gen 14:21-23; 15:5-9; 19:32-20:11;24:28-47; 27:32-33, 40-41 (assigned palaeographically)

185-254 CE Origen and the Hexapla

312-339 CE Eusebius got most, if not all, of his information about what Christian writings were accepted by the various churches from the writings and library of Origen

4th century Cotton Genesis: Illuminated manuscript copy of the Book of Genesis. It was a luxury manuscript with many miniatures.

6th century Codex Marchalianus: Greek manuscript copy of the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh or Old Testament) known as the Septuagint.

[1] Meaning an LXX version which featured runes ("nomina sacra")

[mlinssen]

... a date for the LXX ... It comes after the NT, such is for sure

I think that the LXX was either developed before or with Paul
+/- Hebrews (+/- some Catholic epistles), which all may have been in the second century

It's origins may well pre-date the Gospels ...

I'm interested in others views

"Its origins" is clearly way too diffuse to justify any comment.
One could even challenge Rowling to the origins of Harry Potter, for example

[mlinssen]

I think one has to differentiate between at least two different versions of the LXX

(1) Christian: Whoever wrote the Greek NTC imported a great deal of copy/pasted material from a special "Christianised" [1] version of a Greek LXX. Practically all surviving manuscripts including papyri manuscript fragments for the NT (and LXX [1]??? ) are from codices. It therefore seems reasonable to propose that the NTC and the "Christianised" LXX were always packaged together in codex form.

(2) Jewish: The Greek LXX manuscripts which do not feature runes (nomina sacra) are by scholarship, rightly or wrongly, generally attributed to Jewish provenance.

Date? Could be very late.

Examples of both of these are listed below along with estimated dates which in (nearly) all cases derived from paleography in isolation.

Evidence for the Greek LXX

(from some old notes)

DATE___________ITEM _____________________________________

281-246 BCE Rule of Ptolemy II Philadelphus Letter of Aristeas

170-130 BCE Estimated forgery of the Letter of Aristeas

2nd Cen BCE Papyrus Rylands 458 (assigned palaeographically)

1st/2nd BCE Greek papyri in the Qumran (LXX translations?)

1st/2nd BCE 9 Greek papyri in the Qumran (LXX translations?)

1st Cen BCE Papyrus Fouad 266: a papyrus manuscript in scroll form. (assigned palaeographically)

BCE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CE

050 CE P.Oxy 3522 - Job 42.11,12 (assigned palaeographically)

037-100 CE Titus Flavius Josephus aka Joseph ben Mattathias

100 CE P.Oxy 4443 - Esther 6,7 (assigned palaeographically)

150 CE P.Oxy 656 (150 CE) Gen 14:21-23; 15:5-9; 19:32-20:11;24:28-47; 27:32-33, 40-41 (assigned palaeographically)

185-254 CE Origen and the Hexapla

312-339 CE Eusebius got most, if not all, of his information about what Christian writings were accepted by the various churches from the writings and library of Origen

4th century Cotton Genesis: Illuminated manuscript copy of the Book of Genesis. It was a luxury manuscript with many miniatures.

6th century Codex Marchalianus: Greek manuscript copy of the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh or Old Testament) known as the Septuagint.

[1] Meaning an LXX version which featured runes ("nomina sacra")

The one important matter is sustenance of the NT. The Tanakh (MT) is strongly at odds with the pivotal verses in that regard and there does not exist any LXX that complies with the MT regardless the language it is written in. Biblical academic labels all Greek translations as LXX because that serves their cause, yet the little research that I've presented on this forum demonstrates that there are plenty of Greek translations that indeed aren't Christian by your definition right here. And the Christification that we find in the Big Five obviously adds to it all via writing XS for anointed, which evidently is an anachronism