The Hebrew Scriptures in Greek

Septuagint is the name given to a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures and other writings. The name Septuagint is from the Latin for seventy it is often abbreviated LXX, the roman numeral representation of 70. The Septuagint has its origin in Alexandria, Egypt and was translated between 300-200 BC. With the Torah being translated first, around 300 and teh other material added later. According to an ancient document called the Letter of Aristeas, 70 to 72 Jewish scholars were commissioned during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (ruled 283 to 246 BC) to carry out the task of translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Jewish tradition has it that the 70 scholars only translated the Torah, the books of Moses. The story goes that they were locked in separate rooms so that they could not confer yet they produced identical translations. Much of that story is considered legend as even by the time of Origen (185-254) there were variations on the Greek text. Our Septuagint today contains much more than the Torah. At any rate, the Greek text of the Septuagint, not the original Hebrew, was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and part of the Arabic translations of the Old Testament and has never ceased to be the standard version of the Old Testament in the Greek church.

Ptolemy was trying to collect all human knowledge and his Idea behind the translation was to give non-Jews a glimpse into Judaism or at least the wisdom of the Jews. We note as well that "Seventy" in Jewish tradition is the number that represents "the foreign nations."  Hence, the translation of the Law into Greek, the lingua franca of the time, whatever the number of scholars involved, is called after 70 as it was translating the Law for the nations.

If material was added to this original Septuagint, the forward to the book of Sirach, although it is contained in our current Septuagint, gives us insight into the original purpose of the translation. 

Many important truths have been handed down to us through the law, the prophets, and the later authors; and for these the instruction and wisdom of Israel merit praise. Now, those who are familiar with these truths must not only understand them themselves but, as lovers of wisdom, be able, in speech and in writing, to help others less familiar. Such a one was my grandfather, Jesus, who, having devoted himself for a long time to the diligent study of the law, the prophets, and the rest of the books of our ancestors, and having developed a thorough familiarity with them, was moved to write something himself in the nature of instruction and wisdom, in order that those who love wisdom might, by acquainting themselves with what he too had written, make even greater progress in living in conformity with the divine law.

 

You therefore are now invited to read it in a spirit of attentive good will, with indulgence for any apparent failure on our part, despite earnest efforts, in the interpretation of particular passages. For words spoken originally in Hebrew are not as effective when they are translated into another language. That is true not only of this book but of the law itself, the prophets and the rest of the books, which differ no little when they are read in the original.

 

I arrived in Egypt in the thirty-eighth year of the reign of King Euergetes, and while there, I found a reproduction of our valuable teaching. I therefore considered myself in duty bound to devote some diligence and industry to the translation of this book. Many sleepless hours of close application have I devoted in the interval to finishing the book for publication, for the benefit of those living abroad who wish to acquire wisdom and are disposed to live their lives according to the standards of the law. (Sirach Introduction NAB) ( http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/sirach/intro.htm)

According to some, there are many and varying versions of the Septuagint and so the term itself is not specific enough to be useful. Even on this page there are references to 2 different critical editions. I cannot really argue that point but there is a traditional core and the only questions are about the edges. It is probably good to note here that the books of Esther and Daniel are quite different in the Septuagint. Esther is reorganized and expanded and there is additional material added to Daniel. Some of his material finds it way into our modern apocrypha.

It is clear that some form of the Septuagint was the Bible of the early Christians. In fact, there is a school of thought that because of its popularity with Christians, it fell out of favor with the Jews. The New Testament writers relied heavily on the Septuagint with the majority of Old Testament quotes cited in the New Testament coming from the Septuagint. (Other citations appear to be paraphrased from the Hebrew texts.) The Greek church fathers are also known to have quoted from the Septuagint. Even today, the Eastern Orthodox Church, among others, relies on some form of the Septuagint for its Old Testament. Most modern Bible translations use the Septuagint along side Hebrew manuscripts as their source text and you will often see LXX cited in the footnotes. (Footnotes in the New Testament are necessary because there are places where the Septuagint where its differs from the rendering of the Hebrew text that you will find in the Old Testament of the Bible you are using.) In our English Bibles we get many of our book names from the Septuagint.

What Does It Contain? There is the rub as there are varying opinions on the matter. As stated above critical editions have been prepared which standardizes the content that we commonly receive today. For the purposes of this page, the Septuagint contains the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament canon and the Jewish Tanakh, plus some additional books. Protestants call these books the Apocrypha, some of these books are known as the Deuterocanonicals, primarily in Roman Catholic circles. The term "Apocrypha" was coined by the fifth-century biblical scholar Jerome when he was translating the Vulgate. He noted that the Hebrew scriptures were different than the traditional Greek and broke with church tradition by working from the Hebrew for his translation. 

The Book of Odes, or simply Odes, is referenced in the table as Ode for the location of the Prayer of Manasseh, which is typically part of our Apocrypha. The Prayer of Manasseh is placed at the end of II Chronicles in the Vulgate.  Although Odes is not specifically listed as a separate book here, Wikipedia reports that it "is a book of the Bible found only in Eastern Orthodox Bibles." It is not in my Orthodox Study Bible, however. The Book of Odes follows Psalms in Rahlf's Septuagint. It has liturgical use in the Eastern Church, it consists mostly of prayers extracted from other parts of the Bible.

In addition to Swete, who is the main source of this table, Rahlfs also prepared a critical edition of the Septuagint and it is also referenced in the table. There are notes on these scholars following the table. Greek uses letters to represent numbers with alpha (α) having the value of 1, beta (β) 2 and so on. the designation A/ in the table stands for alpha or the number 1. In the English column the Roman numeral I in stead of the Arabic 1.

This following table relates the Septuagint to our modern book names and order.

.

Order of Books in the Septuagint
according to Vol. I, II & III of the Greek Old Testament by H.B. Swete (1835-1917)
Adapted from http://www.ccel.org/bible/brenton/

 

---

Notes on the scholars referenced above.

 

H.B. Swete (1835 – 1917) was an English Biblical scholar. In 1887 he published the first volume of his three volume edition of the Greek text of the Old Testament, completing the series in 1894.

George Buchanan Gray (1865-1922) an English OT scholar. He produced the translation of Psalms of Solomon referenced above. 

Alfred Rahlfs (29 May 1865 – 8 April 1935) was a German Biblical scholar. He studied Protestant Theology, Philosophy, and Oriental Languages.  Rahlfs edited a preliminary but influential edition of the Septuagint, which appeared in two volumes in the year he died.

Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton (16 February 1807 – 13 June 1862) was a translator who produced an English translations of the Septuagint. At time of its release, his translation of the Septuagint was the second and the latest English translation available It was first released in 1844. It is available here https://archive.org/details/septuagintversio1879bren. There are currently ongoing translation efforts.

---

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint 12/16/15 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Barclay_Swete 12/14/15

---

 

Septuagint Links:

http://www.septuagint.net/

http://www.bible-researcher.com/isbelxx02.html

• < Prev
• Next >