Question about the Apocrypha

[patrick457]

Lamentations: Four scrolls were found in the caves at Qumran: one in Cave 3, another in Cave 4, and two in Cave 5, the oldest of which (4QLam) was copied around the early Herodian period (ca. 30 BC-AD 1). All contain a text similar to the traditional Hebrew text, although 4QLam and 5QLam[sup]c[/sup] preserve several distinctive readings that do not agree with either the Masoretic Text or the Septuagint.

Lamentations 1:7-9 (4QLam)

Remember, O LORD,
all our pains (MT, LXX: In the days of her affliction and of miseries Jerusalem remembers all the precious things)
that were from days of old;
When her [people] fell into the hand of the adversary,
and none did help;
her adversaries mocked (MT, LXX: help her; the adversaries saw her, they mocked)
at [al]l her calamities. (MT, LXX: at her desolations)

Jerusalem has sinned grievously;
there[fore] she has become one who shows grief; (MT, LXX: she has become an unclean thing)
all that honored her despise, (MT, LXX: despise her)
because they have seen her [nak]edness;
[she] also [sighs
and turns] away.

Her uncleanness was in [her] sk[irts;
she did not consider her end,
therefore she has come down *ap]pallingly; (4QLam feminine; masculine MT)
and (not in MT, LXX) she has no [comforter.
“O LORD, behold my affliction,
for the enemy] has magnified himself.”

Ezekiel: Six copies of the book were found at Qumran (one each in Caves 1, 3, 11 and three in Cave 4), with one (MasEzek) found at Masada. The oldest of these is 4QEzek[sup]c[/sup], which dates between the early and mid-1st century BC. All seven manuscripts preserve a textual form similar to that of the Masoretic (especially 11QEzek). Relatively few variant readings are preserved, although two of the scrolls seem to have had shorter readings in comparison with the modern text (11QEzek seems to have a shorter text for 5:13, and 4QEzek[sup]a[/sup] lacks space for all of 23:16-17).

Daniel: A total of eight scrolls of Daniel were found at Qumran (two in Cave 1, five in Cave 4, and one in Cave 6), copied in the space of 175 years (125 BC-AD 50). Seven of the eight scrolls originally contained the book in the shorter form found in the received Masoretic text, not the longer form preserved in the Septuagint. (1QDan[sup]b[/sup] and 4Dan[sup]b[/sup] omits the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men.) It is possible that the eighth manuscript, 4QDan[sup]e[/sup] is an abbreviated text that included only Daniel 9:4b-19 (the prayer of Daniel), since it preserves text only from chapter 9. No major disagreements exist between all eight scrolls against the Masoretic, although 1QDan[sup]a[/sup] is the closest. Some interesting variants include the omission of “he related the sum of the words” at the end of Daniel 7:1 (4QDan[sup]b[/sup]), as well as 10:16 “something like a human hand touched my lips” (pap6QDan, in agreement with the Septuagint) as opposed to “one like the sons of man” (Masoretic, Theodotion).

Minor Prophets: Ten manuscripts were found in the Judaean desert, eight of which come from Qumran (seven in Cave 4, one in Cave 5). The dates of these range from 150 BC (4QXII[sup]a[/sup] and perhaps 4QXII[sup]b[/sup]) to 25 BC (4QXII[sup]g[/sup]). Two more scrolls were found at locations used by Jewish rebels during the Bar Kokhba Revolt (AD 132-35): one at Wadi Muraba’at, and the other (in Greek) at Naḥal Ḥever. These were copied in the later 1st century BC (8ḤevXII gr) and between approximately AD 75 and 100 (MurXII).

The manuscripts contain a text generally close to the traditional Hebrew one; even the Greek scroll from Naḥal Ḥever contains a version systematically ‘corrected’ to conform more closely to the proto-Masoretic Text. On the whole these manuscripts follow the traditional Hebrew order (Hosea-Joel-Amos-Obadiah-Jonah-Micah-Nahum-Habakkuk-Zephaniah-Haggai-Zechariah-Malachi); even the Naḥal Ḥever fragments display this order, not that of the Septuagint (Amos-Micah-Joel-Obadiah-Jonah). However, the oldest manuscript, 4QXII[sup]a[/sup], suggests a third order in which Jonah follows Malachi as the last book of the collection. Despite this there are also many variant readings, especially in 4QXII[sup]a[/sup], 4QXII[sup]x[/sup] 4QXII[sup]e[/sup], and 4QXII[sup]g[/sup]. This suggests that the text of several Minor Prophets scrolls, while being quite close to the traditional text, also shows some agreement with the Septuagint, as well as displaying some unique readings (a category which we could call “non-aligned.”) In Hosea 13:14, for example, the longer text found in 4QXII[sup]g[/sup] also occurs in the Greek, but not in the Masoretic (“Yet I have been the LORD your God**, who fortifies heaven and creates the earth, whose hands made the whole host of heaven, but I did not show them to you to go after them, but I brought you up** from the land of Egypt…”); in Malachi 2:13, 4QXII[sup]a[/sup] contains wording very similar to the Greek Bible, but differs from the Masoretic Text (“You cover the altar of the LORD with tears, and with weeping, and with sighing because of troubles; does he still regard the offering and accept it with favor from your hand?”).

 

[patrick457]

It always bothered me that anyone would give preference to the Masoretic text as the Protestant translations do because it wasn’t finalized as a text type until the 800s or 900s–is that correct? And that was what Jewish scholars came up with and not christans.

To quote again from Timothy Lim’s The Dead Sea Scrolls:

Before the discovery of the Qumran scrolls, scholars had to be satisfied with studying Hebrew biblical manuscripts that date to the mediaeval period. The Nash Papyrus, dating to the first and second century BCE, was the only extant exception, although it was not a biblical text as such but a liturgical anthology of quotations of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. The Masoretic Text, as the mediaeval text was called, is the textus receptus or received text. English translations available today are based on the Masoretic Text and most modern ones are translated from the Leningrad Codex of the St. Petersburg Library in Russia (dating to ca. 1000).

The Qumran biblical scrolls attest to the antiquity of the biblical books. They are approximately one thousand years older than the Masoretic Text, dating to between 250 BCE and 100 CE. They are much closer in time to the composition of the biblical books. The one thousand year period is also significant because it stretches back to a time when the biblical texts remained fluid. By about 100 CE all the biblical texts had unified into the proto-Masoretic Text or proto-Rabbinic text-type and the textual variation was limited to orthographical differences. Some scholars describe this terminus as the time of the fixation of the biblical text; others would prefer to see it as a selection of the Masoretic Text as the authoritative text over against other text-types. In any case, by about 100 CE all the biblical manuscripts found in various locations in the Judaean Desert, not only at Qumran, are Masoretic Texts.

Geza Vermes (The Story of the Scrolls: The Miraculous Discovery and True Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls) goes into more detail:

The distinctive mark of the biblical texts found in the Qumran library is their elasticity. Before the establishment of the authoritative wording of the Hebrew Scriptures, as a result of the Pharisaic-rabbinic reorganization of Judaism in the decades following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, textual pluriformity reigned. The choice of the text and its interpretation were left in the hands of the local representatives of doctrinal authority. We even have evidence that a Qumran Bible commentator was aware of the existence of variants and was ready to employ them in his exposition of a biblical passage. In Habakkuk 2:16, ‘Drink and show your foreskin!’ (he’arel from the root ‘RL), the traditional Hebrew uses the image of a drunkard, who like Noah, discards his clothes and allows his foreskin to be seen. The Septuagint, in turn, translates a slightly differently structured Hebrew verb, hera’el (from the root R’L, made up of the same consonants as the forgoing verb ‘RL but placed in a different order) which means ‘to stagger’, and gives, ‘Drink and stagger!’ The author of the Qumran Habakkuk Commentary, applying the prophecy to the ‘Wicked Priest’, the priestly enemy of the Dead Sea Community, skillfully plays with both ideas: ‘For he did not circumcise the foreskin (‘RLH from ‘RL as the traditional Hebrew) of his heart and walked in the ways of drunkenness’, i.e. staggered as in the LXX (Commentary of Habakkuk 11:13-14). By contrast, the biblical manuscripts dating to the early second century, yielded by the caves of Murabba’at, attest only the traditional (proto-Masoretic) form of the scriptural text.
The causes of the textual elasticity of the Qumran Bible are manifold. On a superficial level they may be seen as the result of efforts of modernization of spelling and grammar, the search for stylistic variation and harmonization, but above all, in Professor Shemaryahu Talmon’s words, they are due to ‘insufficiently controlled copying’. Put positively, the Qumran scribes arrogated to themselves the right to creative freedom and considered it their duty to improve the work they were propagating. Such relative liberty could go hand in hand with the conviction that all they were doing was to transmit faithfully the true meaning of Scripture. As is often the case, Flavius Josephus has the final word on the matter. In his Jewish Antiquities 1:17, he maintains that he has reproduced the details of the biblical record without adding anything to it, or removing from it, when in fact he has been doing the exact opposite while intending to transmit what in his view Scripture really meant. Allowing us to perceive the situation that preceded the enforced unification of the biblical text is one of the chief innovations of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is a major, indeed unique, contribution to an improved understanding of the history of the Bible.

I guess what I’m really saying is that for the Majority of instances that the “Septuagint like” text is a more accurate translation than the “Masoretic like” text.

Is that correct?

As Dave said, “I think all you can say is that the two are different.” In this regard comparing the Septuagint with the Masoretic is very much like comparing apples with oranges: they are the respective products of different textual versions of (apparently) equal antiquity, so directly comparing one with the other to see which is ‘superior’ or ‘accurate’, as if one is directly derived from the other, is ultimately IMHO pointless.

 

[Jerry-Jet]

So when the Old Testament of the NAB was translated are you saying that it was pointless to the scholars involved as to whether a septuagint or masoretic translation was more accurate?

I don’t understand.

Does it make any difference in regards to Isaiah 7:14?

If you asked the gospel writers which translation of Isaiah 7:14 was more accurate what would they say?

 

[patrick457]

Does it make any difference in regards to Isaiah 7:14?

Not exactly a direct answer to your question, but in case you’re wondering: the copy of Isaiah found in Qumran which preserves the relevant portion (1QIsa[sup]a[/sup]) mostly agrees with the Masoretic. In other words, it has that word hā‘almâh.

1QIsa[sup]a[/sup] (Col. 6, lines 28-29)

Line 28: … ]לכן יתן יהוה הוה ל
Line 29: ה העלמה הרה וילדת בן וקרא (=יקרא?) שמו עמנואל…]

lkn ytn yhwh hwh l…]
…]h h’lmh hrh wyldt bn wqr’ (= yqr’?) šmw 'mnw’l

“Therefore Yhwh Himself will give you [a sign: behold,] the almâ shall conceive, and shall bring forth a son, and his name shall be called (wəqārā’) Immanuel.”

Masoretic Text

‏לָ֠כֵן יִתֵּ֨ן אֲדֹנָ֥י ה֛וּא לָכֶ֖ם א֑וֹת הִנֵּ֣ה הָעַלְמָ֗ה הָרָה֙ וְיֹלֶ֣דֶת בֵּ֔ן וְקָרָ֥את שְׁמ֖וֹ עִמָּ֥נוּ אֵֽל׃

lāḵēn yitēn ’ăḏōnāy hû’ lāḵem ’wōṯ hinnēh hā‘almâ hārâ wəyōleḏeṯ bēn wəqārā’ṯ šəmwō ‘immānû ’ēl.

“Therefore Adonai Himself will give you a sign: behold, the almâ shall conceive, and shall bring forth a son, and you shall call (wəqārā’ṯ) his name Immanuel.”

 

[gus]

Finally, I know I’m quoting this a lot nowadays, but I find convincing E.P. Sanders’ argument (expressed comprehensively in the paper Jesus in Historical Context) that contrary to what some scholars may think, the Galilee and Judaea were not thoroughly Hellenized or Romanized and that it is still mainly ‘Jewish’ in identity.

In order to clarify the extent and the non-extent of Romanization and Hellenization in Palestine, I wish now to offer one more analogy: post-war Germany. The British and Americans (I shall ignore the French) established armies of occupation in Germany after the second world war. Because of the cold war, large concentrations of English-speaking troops have resided in Germany ever since. Moreover, Germany is a frequent place of tourism for Americans. Finally, most German children study English for several years in school. The consequence of all this is that a lot of Germans know a lot of English. There has been far more Anglo-American influence in Germany than there was Greco-Roman influence in Palestine. Yet, if there arose a German evangelist who had a message for the villagers, he would not go to the small churches of the towns and villages and speak English. Much less would he speak in English aphorisms. If by some chance he wandered onto an American military base, and was stopped by the MPs, he might be very glad that he could speak and understand a little English, but otherwise he would not have much use for the language. I believe that the application to Jesus is clear enough. Some scholars propose that he taught in Greek, and specifically in Greek aphorisms.

A very false Dicotomy
Palastine had been Hellenizes for 300 years prior the birth Christ. A better example would be North America Native Americans and. English.
Never. heard Pequot spoken by. anyone.
In the 70 years the Jews were in Babalon.
Aremacic replaced Hebrew as the spoken language.
Also the Dead Sea Scrolls proved.
that retranslatons of the Greek back into Hebrew occurred.
I would agree that the term LXX is loose.
This was a. problem for the fathers determiing Canon
ie IV Macebees was from about 100 AD
The canon was limited to those scripture in common use at the time of Christ.
They did a pretty good job.

 

[patrick457]

A very false Dicotomy
Palastine had been Hellenizes for 300 years prior the birth Christ. A better example would be North America Native Americans and. English.
Never. heard Pequot spoken by. anyone.

Did you read the article? Did you read the article?

These are exciting days to study Jesus in context. Archaeology is flourishing, and people are coming up with all kinds of interesting proposals. Many of the most recent proposals maintain, in effect, that Jesus was not very Jewish. He lived, they claim, in an urban, cosmopolitan world, and he was at least as influenced by Greek and Roman culture as by Jewish. Scholars create whole new worlds, or (more often) they simply shift second, third, and fourth-century evidence to Jesus’ lifetime. 61. Prime examples are the claims by Kee and Batey (see notes 17 and 18 above) that, during Jesus’ lifetime, Sepphoris was the home of the Roman administration and that there were pagan temples there. Batey (for example) cites a third-century coin as evidence of the presence of a Roman temple in Jesus’ day (n. 18). In fact, the government of Sepphoris, as well as its name, changed after the second revolt against Rome in the 130s C.E. Only after 135 C.E. is there any evidence for pagan temples and the presence of Roman soldiers and officials. (See, for example, Eric Meyers, “Aspects of Roman Sepphoris in the Light of Recent Archaeology,” Liber Annuus: In honor of Father E. Testa, forthcoming.) In general, there were dramatic changes in Galilee from the second to the fourth centuries, and a lot of the developments that Kee, Batey, and others assign to the pre-70 period actually took place after 135 C.E.] When all is said and done, though, it is clear that Jesus lived in a Jewish context. Judaism was in various ways Hellenized; that is true. It was, however, more deeply Persianized in an earlier period. But throughout the Persian, Macedonian, and Roman periods, the Hebrew Scripture and the learning experiences provided by the appointed times–sabbath and the festivals–meant that most Jews were reminded again and again of their inheritance. They would give up their lives more readily than their laws and traditions, and they proved that more than once. Many of the scholars whose views we have discussed make an enormous mistake in describing Jesus’ context. They think that a few Greek inscriptions and the construction of a few Hellenistic buildings by Herod prove that Palestinian Jews were swamped by, and accepted whole-heartedly, the entirety of Greco-Roman culture. They gave up the Bible in favor of Homer; instead of attending the pilgrimage festivals in Jerusalem, they went to Greek plays and took holidays in the gentile cities of the Phoenician coast; their teachers modeled themselves on Cynics rather than on Elijah, Isaiah, and the other prophets-and so on. In fact, the evidence shows that Palestinian Jews were by no means inundated by Hellenistic institutions and gentile customs, and the majority resented even the fringe aspects of Greco-Roman culture that were present. 62. Cf. the remarks of Sean Freyne, “Urban-Rural Relations in First-Century Galilee: Some Suggestions from the Literary Sources,” in Galilee, p. 84: “Jews had learned to accommodate themselves to [a Hellenistic] environment while retaining their distinct identity, even in the Galilee, as the examples of Scythopolis and Caesarea indicate.”] Moreover, Jews in the Diaspora, who actually did live in the midst of the gentile world, were extremely careful about which aspects of Greco-Roman culture they participated in. They observed the sabbath and ate kosher food; only a few attended the theatre; they seldom married pagans, and a very small number studied Greek philosophy. 63. Philo, of course, studied Greek philosophy, but other literature from the Greek-speaking Jewish Diaspora reveals excellent knowledge of the Bible and virtually no knowledge of philosophy. Paul, for example, shows no philosophical education, though he knows and occasionally uses a favorite Stoic word or so (e.g., autarkeia in 2 Cor. 9.8; autarkes in Phil. 4.1 1). For the other points, see my Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1990), ch. IV; and the summary in Sanders, Judaism, pp. 211-212.] There is no evidence to indicate that Palestinian Jews accepted a level of cultural Hellenization that Jews in the diaspora avoided, and a great deal of evidence against it: the entirety of Josephus, the Gospels, and Acts.

In the 70 years the Jews were in Babalon.
Aremacic replaced Hebrew as the spoken language.

Not completely. While Aramaic apparently did become the language of choice for most people in Palestine (especially in the Galilee where Jesus hailed), Hebrew (contrary to the assertions of earlier scholarship) did survive in a few places as a spoken vernacular (mainly in rural areas of Judaea).

Also the Dead Sea Scrolls proved.
that retranslatons of the Greek back into Hebrew occurred.

Proof?

 

[Dave_Noonan]

So when the Old Testament of the NAB was translated are you saying that it was pointless to the scholars involved as to whether a septuagint or masoretic translation was more accurate?

I guess it depends on which elements of the Septuagint you are referring to. There are many places where the Septuagint mistreats the Hebrew source text because the translators were limited in what they knew about the language. A good example here is Genesis 2:17 “…you shall surely die” (KJV, a valid translation choice); versus “…you will die death” (LXX clunky at best, simply wrong at worst).

Another example would be Gen. 2:8 were the simple garden in Hebrew “gan” becomes a “paradeisos” in the LXX via Persian influence, and eventually takes off a theological life of its own as a paradisus in the Vulgate.

In other cases the Septuagint simply differs from the Masoretic Text—and Isaiah 7:14 is a good example. As Patrick and I have already pointed out above, I don’t think you could say that one is “more accurate” than the other–just different. Since we don’t have the original texts (whatever forms those took) and know little for certainty regarding their composition history, it’s really impossible to tell.

Isaiah 7:14 is one case where Bible translators often flip to the Septuagint as a source text in the case of one word (for theological reasons) and then flip back to the Masoretic Text and continue on with their translation. This is almost always noted in a footnote. I would imagine there are endless numbers of threads here at CAF on this topic.

If you asked the gospel writers which translation of Isaiah 7:14 was more accurate what would they say?

It seems the gospel writers were most familiar with some form of the Septuagint, but what they would have thought about the accuracy of their translation—or how well they would have known Hebrew versus Aramaic to even be able to judge the accuracy of their translation—there’s really no way of knowing that I can think of.

 

[patrick457]

I guess it depends on which elements of the Septuagint you are referring to. There are many places where the Septuagint mistreats the Hebrew source text because the translators were limited in what they knew about the language. A good example here is Genesis 2:17 “…you shall surely die” (KJV, a valid translation choice); versus “…you will die death” (LXX clunky at best, simply wrong at worst).

Another example would be Gen. 2:8 were the simple garden in Hebrew “gan” becomes a “paradeisos” in the LXX via Persian influence, and eventually takes off a theological life of its own as a paradisus in the Vulgate.

In other cases the Septuagint simply differs from the Masoretic Text—and Isaiah 7:14 is a good example. As Patrick and I have already pointed out above, I don’t think you could say that one is “more accurate” than the other–just different. Since we don’t have the original texts (whatever forms those took) and know little for certainty regarding their composition history, it’s really impossible to tell.

It really all boils down to the fact that the quality and style of translation differs per book, since as mentioned these were originally different, probably independent translations of Scriptural books made at different times by different translators.

In the case of Genesis, the translation style is overall strictly literal, although there are instances where the translator/s produce renderings that are closer to Greek than Hebrew idiom, or that which contextualize a given passage for the benefit of the Greek reader in one way or another. (The NETS introduction to the book goes into more detail here.) Genesis 2:17 in Hebrew has the Semitic expression mōṯ tāmûṯ “a dying you will die.” This construction (an infinitive absolute) emphasizes the certainty of death (“you’ll certainly, surely die”); you can compare it with the other uses of the expression in the OT (cf. Isaiah 6:9 “Hear to hear, but do not understand, and see to see, but do not know;” Hosea 1:6 “Call her name ‘Lo-Ruḥamah’, for I will add no more to pity the house of Israel, but taking away I will take them away”). In the case of Greek it has added a cognate noun to the verb as an attempt to translate of the Hebrew infinitive absolute: θανατω αποθανεισθε “death you will die.”

Translating gan as παράδεισος paradeisos isn’t too far-fetched either: originally the Avestan word pairi.daēza meant “walled enclosure” but subsequently came to indicate walled estates, especially the carefully tended royal parks and menageries. It was in this sense that the word was borrowed into Greek (‘park’, ‘park for animals’ as per Xenophon), Aramaic (pardaysa ‘royal park’), and even Hebrew (pardes ‘orchard’, ‘fruit garden’). In fact the idea of a walled enclosure was not preserved in most Iranian usage, and generally came to refer to a plantation or other cultivated area, not necessarily walled. For example, the Old Iranian word survives in New Persian pālīz/jālīz ‘vegetable patch’.

 

[patrick457]

Septuagint Isaiah is a bit of a tricky matter: quoting from the NETS preface to Isaiah (Esaias):

TRANSLATION PROFILE OF THE GREEK

Attempts to evaluate the Greek translation of Esaias in the past have typically failed to note the complexity of such a task. One can find numerous passages where the translator has failed to understand the Hebrew text and where his Greek appears to be solecistic and even unintelligible. It is therefore natural to infer that he lacked competence. The problem with this conclusion, however, is that it does not take into account the skill knowledge and creativity that he displays in many other passages. Moreover, any generalizations about the translator s technique run afoul of the startling variations in his approach.
Consider, for example, the first half dozen verses in chapter 43. It is apparent that the translator had no trouble whatever understanding the Hebrew text and that he was capable of representing the meaning of the original in simple, clear and faultless Greek. His approach here may be characterized as moderately literal, resulting in a certain quaintness of style that betrays its Semitic background. Admittedly, the Hebrew of this passage is not particularly difficult. Elsewhere, if the translator encounters a rare word, he seems to lose his bearings. In 28.20, the Hebrew appears to mean “For the bed is too short for stretching, and the covering [too] narrow for gathering * oneself.” Here the Hebrew words for “bed” (which appears nowhere else in the Bible) and “stretching” (which is rare) stumped the translator. Exercising his imagination, he came up with this, “We are in straits and unable to fight, and we ourselves are too weak to be mobilized.” We should remember, however, that even modern scholarship is less than confident about the meaning of numerous sentences in the Hebrew text of Isaiah.
In some of his renderings, the translator appears to be slavishly literal, but it is clear that, as a whole, he felt free to vary his vocabulary and restructure the syntax if it served his purposes. That sense of freedom allowed him at times to go off on tangents that have little connection with the Hebrew. Indeed, on occasions the meaning of his translation is patently contrary to that of the original (cf. the negative he introduces at 8.14 “you will not encounter him as a stumbling caused by a stone”). What may have been going on in his mind at those times is an intriguing question, but we would be wrong to infer that he was unconcerned about being faithful to the text. There can be no doubt that he struggled mightily to make sense of difficult passages, and that even when he seems to go beyond the text, he is sensitive to the thrust of the book as a whole and seeks to come up with teachings that are up-building (note that at the beginning of 8.14 the addition of the clause “if you trust in him” effectively links this verse with a recurring theme in the book).
All of this means that we cannot easily describe lexical and grammatical patterns to the translator’s handling of the Hebrew text. Some can certainly be identified, but the exceptions to those patterns are significant, and they prevent us from making many valid generalizations. As we might expect, he follows some of the lexical equations established by the Greek translators of the Pentateuch, such as ברית = διαθήκη in the sense of “covenant.” For Hebrew שיול he normally uses Ἀΐδης (“Hades”), but in 28.15, 18 we find θάνατος, “death.” There is no need to multiply examples. Beyond these more-or-less standard calques, the translator naturally comes up with a few equivalences of his own, but not in uniform fashion. With regard to syntax, while his tendency is to follow the simple structure of the Hebrew clauses, he does not hesitate to introduce variety and to exploit some of the resources of the Greek language; still, many of the niceties one routinely finds in original Greek composition are missing. Special note should be made of the translator’s fairly consistent representation of the Hebrew perfect tense (which can have various temporal references with the Greek aorist (a simple past tense). Although the choice of the aorist is appropriate when the context clearly indicates a past action or a gnomic idea (e.g., 1.3, “The ox knew =knows] its owner”), his overuse of the tense lends a distinct and odd quality to his translation.*

 

[Dave_Noonan]

In the case of Greek it has added a cognate noun to the verb as an attempt to translate of the Hebrew infinitive absolute: θανατω αποθανεισθε “death you will die.”

The problem is that the Greek (and the Vulgate which follows it closely) shows no modification whatsoever in the sense of the verb, which is required by the infinitive absolute/finite verb construction—plus the translators misread an infinitive as a noun. I think the translators simply didn’t know what to make of these forms and went in an almost hyper-literal direction that doesn’t render the meaning of the text.

If someone did this on an exam I would definitely count off

 

[beehumble]

You also have to remember that the term “Septuagint” is really more of a catch-all term for different (originally independent) translations various books into Greek made from the period between around the 3rd century BC up to the 1st century AD.

And I heard recent finds have been made of some of these books, in Hebrew. My take is the Church uses what Jesus and His followers used in His day. The Jews altered it later, as did the Protestants. Catholics use what Jesus, Who is God and hence the Word, used.

God bless you.

 

[Mystophilus]

I guess it depends on which elements of the Septuagint you are referring to. There are many places where the Septuagint mistreats the Hebrew source text because the translators were limited in what they knew about the language. A good example here is Genesis 2:17 “…you shall surely die” (KJV, a valid translation choice); versus “…you will die death” (LXX clunky at best, simply wrong at worst).

Now, I am only seeing one side of this because I cannot read Hebrew, but I am not sure why θανατωι αποθανεισθε should be called an example of a mistreatment of the source text, rather than of the target language. θανατωι is the instrument rather than the object, and so it is “you will die of/by death”, which is possible in Greek but is not nearly as definite as τεθνηξεσθε would have been, especially when the LXX is in the habit of using the future as a dummy imperative and so αποθανεισθε risks looking like a command. This and the numerous other non-Greek usages in the LXX lead me to suspect that its clumsy renderings have more to do with the translators’ poor Greek than their poor Hebrew.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Now, I am only seeing one side of this because I cannot read Hebrew, but I am not sure why θανατωι αποθανεισθε should be called an example of a mistreatment of the source text, rather than of the target language. θανατωι is the instrument rather than the object, and so it is “you will die of/by death”, which is possible in Greek but is not nearly as definite as τεθνηξεσθε would have been, especially when the LXX is in the habit of using the future as a dummy imperative and so αποθανεισθε risks looking like a command. This and the numerous other non-Greek usages in the LXX lead me to suspect that its clumsy renderings have more to do with the translators’ poor Greek than their poor Hebrew.

You’re right–dative of instrument.

As Patrick explained above, Biblical Hebrew uses a construction combining an infinitive absolute followed by a finite verb of the same root so as to modify the meaning of the second verb, usually to indicate an intensification of that finite verb in some way. The problem with the Septuagint (and this is certainly not the only example) is that the translator clearly doesn’t understand how the Hebrew construction is supposed to work and thus has mistakenly read the infinitive absolute for a noun. Potential translations of the Hebrew text could be (such at the King James) “…you will surely die” or perhaps even “you deserve to die”—if one looks at how these particular constructions are often used in legal texts. Even a hyper-literal rendering of the Hebrew text would be: “dying, you will die” indicating that they are both verbal forms. But rendering one of these two Hebrew forms as a noun (instrument-die of/by death) is simply wrong. Also, leaving the verb unmodified: “…you will die” is not really correct either.

Sight unseen I don’t usually bet against the King James–those guys were amazingly smart for their time

 

[Mystophilus]

The problem with the Septuagint (and this is certainly not the only example) is that the translator clearly doesn’t understand how the Hebrew construction is supposed to work and thus has mistakenly read the infinitive absolute for a noun. Potential translations of the Hebrew text could be (such at the King James) “…you will surely die” or perhaps even “you deserve to die”—if one looks at how these particular constructions are often used in legal texts. Even a hyper-literal rendering of the Hebrew text would be: “dying, you will die” indicating that they are both verbal forms. But rendering one of these two Hebrew forms as a noun (instrument-die of/by death) is simply wrong. Also, leaving the verb unmodified: “…you will die” is not really correct either.

Certainly, there was a problem in the translation process, but what I am not getting here is why you presume that the misunderstanding is at the Hebrew-reading end rather than the Greek-writing one.

After all, someone reading and comprehending the Hebrew infinitive absolute could want to convey that sense of certainty of which you speak, in which case τεθνηξεσθε, the future perfect (“you will have died”, i.e. “you certainly shall die”), would be a far better Greek choice than αποθανεισθε; alternatively, they could wish to mimic that “dying, you will die” form which you mention with the participle-verb combination αποθνησκοντες αποθανεισθε. Thus, they could manage either sense or form in good, idiomatic Greek so long as they knew good, idiomatic Greek. Instead, they choose θανατωι αποθανεισθε, a grammatically-simple way of rendering it.

Also, you mention in another post that they are misreading an infinitive as a noun, but I would say that that is not quite the case here because θανατωι, while grammatically a noun, is semantically adverbial. Is not the infinitive part of the Hebrew infinitive absolute adverbial, in that it modifies the finite verb?

Along these lines, Robert Hiebert, in the preface to the New English Translation of the Septuagint which patrick457 linked, does make a comment about “renderings that reflect Greek usage rather than Hebrew idiom, or that, in one way or another, contextualize a given passage for the benefit of the Greek reader” (p.1). The comment about the reader is significant, not least because that alone is sufficient to explain the choice (in some locations, not Gen 2:17 or 6:14) of Greek rather than Hebrew style. He then goes on to talk about semantic levelling and stereotyping (pp.2-3), both of which are common features of poor target language skills. He further says, “As Jews conversant with the Hebrew Bible, the LXX translators …] apparently knew of no Greek counterparts that could serve as suitable equivalents.” (p.3). Thus, I cannot help but think that the tradition is at least correct in saying that the translators were Jews, not Greeks, and that Gen 2:17 is a demonstration of this.

 

[patrick457]

And I heard recent finds have been made of some of these books, in Hebrew. My take is the Church uses what Jesus and His followers used in His day. The Jews altered it later, as did the Protestants. Catholics use what Jesus, Who is God and hence the Word, used.

God bless you.

Well, we can make the case that we use the Scriptural books used by the authors of the NT and first-generation Christians. But do we use the same canon that they did? As we’ve seen, given that there was no proper, official ‘canon’ (in the sense of a dogmatically fixed, closed set of books) in those days I’d say no: our canon is closed, but their de facto one seems to have been still open.

And as mentioned, we have a very small bit of the Letter of Jeremiah (in Greek), Aramaic and Hebrew fragments of Tobit, and Hebrew copies of Sirach (Ben Sira). In the case of Sirach, Hebrew copies dating from the 11th-12th centuries have already been found in the Cairo Genizah, which substantially agree with the DSS versions; all that the Qumran discoveries proved was that these (more substantial) copies from Cairo were not mere retranslations from Greek but are reliable witnesses to the original.

Tobit is a more interesting case. The Greek text of Tobit survives in two versions: a longer one and a shorter one. For a long time, scholars preferred the shorter version, mainly because it is the better attested of the two (most Greek manuscripts contain this version). But when fragments of four Aramaic manuscripts and one Hebrew copy of Tobit turned up in Cave 4 of Qumran, they were found to substantially agree with the longer version, with the result that now, the longer version is considered to be more original.

 

[patrick457]

I should also add this: the version of the Septuagint circulating in Christian manuscripts is not the original version (which we could call here the Old Greek) but any one of the many recensions of the text that were produced in an effort to produced a standardized and authoritative text, or combined versions thereof. St. Jerome in his day identified three Christian recensions of the Old Greek text, made by Origen (Hexaplaric), Lucian of Antioch, and Hesychius of Jerusalem, respectively. There is also the so-called Kaige recension, so called because it renders the Hebrew וגם consistently as kai ge. (The Naḥal Ḥever Minor Prophets scroll is usually considered to belong to this category.) This recension is sometimes labelled as ‘Theodotion’, because the characteristics of this recension seems to have been also shared in the so-called Theodotion recension (sixth column of Origen’s Hexapla), in the fifth column of the Hexapla, in Codex Washingtonensis, in the LXX versions of Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Daniel, in several parts of Codex Vaticanus (Judges, 2 Samuel 11:1-1 Kings 2:11, 1 Kings 22:1-2 Kings 25:30), and in biblical quotations by Justin Martyr. More recent studies understand these similarities not as attesting to a single overall recension but to a group of recensions. It remains uncertain if all recensions date as early as the one attested by 8ḤevXII gr. It is now thought that Theodotion was not the author of the Kaige recension/s, and that at least portions of it are pre-Christian, i.e. the reworking of the Old Greek towards the consonantal text of the pre-Masoretic text is not a Jewish response to its appropriation by early Christianity but started earlier and has other causes.

 

[patrick457]

I have heard it said that the apocrypha is not inspired scripture because Jesus and the apostles did not teach from these books. I’m confused about how to respond to these claims.

Can anyone point me to scripture where Jesus and his apostles are teaching from the deuterocanonical books?

To answer the actual question indirectly, first of all, I think that just because the NT authors use some books but not others is no automatic guarantee that they are considered inspired and vice versa. St. Paul quotes from and makes allusions to various Greek philosophers, and as mentioned the Epistle of Jude quotes from 1 Enoch, but no Christian considered or probably would consider Epimenides’ or Aratus’ works as Scripture, and only the Ethiopians presently include the latter book in the canon. Not to mention that the gospels do not show Jesus as directly quoting Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, or Song of Solomon, but no Christian had or probably would ever consider chucking them out.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Certainly, there was a problem in the translation process, but what I am not getting here is why you presume that the misunderstanding is at the Hebrew-reading end rather than the Greek-writing one.

The assumptions lies in that the infinitive absolute and the noun in Hebrew are easily confused forms; it would be an understandable mistake for them to have made.

Yes I think the participial form, though still not correct, would have been a much more logical choice for the translators attempting to set out a sort of word-for-word, almost “interlinear” match between Hebrew and Greek.

I also think there is a distinct possibility that the translators had difficulties with both languages.

 

[Mystophilus]

I also think there is a distinct possibility that the translators had difficulties with both languages.

With that kind of competence at work, the story that it was a government-run project sounds even more plausible.

 

[bitznbitez]

Can anyone point me to scripture where Jesus and his apostles are teaching from the deuterocanonical books?

I have been studying into this for along time now. Wisdom 2 contains a very strong prophecy of Christ. Its what started me toward the Catholic faith.

“Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.
He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
the very sight of him is a burden to us,
because his manner of life is unlike that of others,
and his ways are strange.
We are considered by him as something base,
and he avoids our ways as unclean;
he calls the last end of the righteous happy,
and boasts that God is his father.
Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
for if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him,
and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
Let us test him with insult and torture,
that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.”
Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray,
for their wickedness blinded them,
and they did not know the secret purposes of God,
nor hope for the wages of holiness,
nor discern the prize for blameless souls;
for God created man for incorruption,
and made him in the image of his own eternity,
but through the devil’s envy death entered the world,
and those who belong to his party experience it.

It is my belief that Christ was summarizing part of the first chapter of Wisdom of Solomon right before he told the scribes and pharisees that the Queen of the South would rise and condemn them because she listened to it, and that he said this pointing them to the prophecy above. I try to explain this here ( beyond-m42.net/deutero/article/3/ ). What is more the prophecy above is repeatedly referenced by the interactions between Christ and the Pharisees/Scribes/etc that Matthew chose to record. Its almost as if Matthew is demonstrating the degree to which Christ fulfilled Wisdom 2 by what he wrote. I try to explain what I am finding here ( beyond-m42.net/deutero/xref/wisdom-two/ )

A second example, and a very clear one, is that Paul opens Romans with a strong and lengthy paraphrase of Wisdom of Solomon 13 ( beyond-m42.net/deutero/article/2/ )

There are other examples.

Finally this was known in the protestant world until about the mid 1800’s. For example the KJV as published in 1611 and available in facsimile edition here : sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=kjbible This text includes the cross references in the margins between Wisdom of Solomon 2 and key parts of the passion etc. I took the time to transcribe all of the marginal references in the 1611 KJV Deuterocanonical works of the Catholic Canon and the New Testament and have published them here ( beyond-m42.net/deutero/xref/KJV1611/ ). I include brief notes showing what the connection between the two passages seems to be. They often focus on Christological interpretations of the Deuterocanonical books, focusing on the Word and Wisdom in the sense that Christ is the personification of Wisdom etc. Misspellings ( including yoke and yolk ) will eventually be removed.

NOTE : I am posting links to a subsection of my personal website. I hope I don’t get in trouble for that, but I have been scribing information from old documents, such as the 1611 KJV, and others that I am still getting it ready to publish. This particular list of cross references is not available elsewhere to my knowledge. If this is not ok please someone yell at me.