Hot answers tagged septuagint
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Before 1947, a good case could be made that the Septuagint represented a more ancient tradition than the Masoretic versions of the Tanakh. Since the Septuagint was produced before 132 BCE (and probably in the 3rd century BCE) and the earliest known Masoretic manuscripts date to the 10th century CE, the Greek translation might have fossilized an early ...
17
Excellent question!
The Septuagint (LXX) was the version of the Bible used by the authors of the New Testament. Therefore, the authors sometimes quote the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic (Hebrew) text.
One example:
Matthew 1:23 NRSV "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with ...
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There are plenty of web sites that will give you comparatives, however, my broad take on the subject is that the LXX is not generally speaking considered more authoritative than any Hebrew text. The translators were not especially careful (though certainly not sloppy.) The amount of textual variants in the Hebrew text are MUCH smaller than in the Greek, for ...
9
It's odd to me that this isn't literal. The early portion of Genesis (1-11) is usually very literal. In my studies, Numbers is more literal than Gen 1-11 (so literal that I called it "Greek vocabulary on top of Hebrew syntax").
Uses in the Greek
The Greek word appears in the NT three times, all in Hebrews. (All scripture references are from the ...
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Fraser Orr's answer is excellent and I only hope to supplement his excellent answer with a few thoughts regarding "reliability."
When asking a question like this, it's important to state your purpose. Why are you asking this question? The logic is such that they have reliable uses and applications within their own domains and we need to know the domain in ...
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Different ancient translators had different translation philosophies. Some were very rigid and always used Greek word X for Hebrew word Y. Others were more dynamic. We can actually use these philosophies to determine when different translators are responsible for different books. For example, the Greek of Numbers is very literal (except the name of the ...
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One of the most important aspects of the Septuagint is that it helps us understand how Greek was used by Jews in the 3rd century BC to talk about God and the Scriptures. This turns it into a valuable tool to look at the Greek of the NT and understand how to translate and examine it.
Here is an excerpt from a Christianity.SE answer that I provided to ...
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IMO it is a mistake to consider the LXX too noteworthy. The NT authors quote from it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, however that should not be taken to imply that the LXX translation as a whole is inspired.
Wouldn't it be better to reference the Hebrew original?
Yes, except when dealing with the NT quotations in question. And translators are ...
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The reason I most often use the LXX is to find the concept the NT authors were using. Yes, they wrote in Greek, but they were thinking Jewish thoughts. Many times, you can take the Greek words in the NT, find them in the LXX, and see what Hebrew words they translated.
For example, the word ecclesia is used in the NT in Matthew 16:18 and 18:17. Some argue ...
6
In Judaism the final decision of which writings (Ketuvim, the third part of the Tanakh) were canonical did not happen until at least the end of the 1st century CE. This was after Christianity and Judaism had largely split, and so the two groups made different decisions about which writings were accepted as canonical.
In particular, nascent Rabbinic Judaism ...
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The Greek translation of Jewish scripture (the Septuagint) occurred between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE. The canon of the Tanakh was finalized hundreds of years later. The Christian canon was debated from the 4th to the 16th centuries. We have a tendency of thinking of the Bible as written in stone, so to speak, but the canon has been the object of ...
5
What is a Recension?
A recension is an edit on an existing work. For the Bible, this is usually distinct from a retranslation. If you were to take the KJV (1611) and simply remove the archaic language without working from the Hebrew and Greek, this would be a recension. A recension may also refer to a family of manuscripts. For example, the NT Alexandrian ...
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I think "which is more reliable" is too imprecise a question. There are situations where the Dead Sea scrolls agree with the MT against LXX and vice-versa, and in some cases there's just no way to know which version is older. One more precise question is how often are the Qumran manuscripts close to MT and how often are they close to LXX. Wikipedia says ...
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The NET Bible note reads:
Heb “the sons of Israel.” The idea, perhaps, is that Israel was central to Yahweh’s purposes and all other nations were arranged and distributed according to how they related to Israel. See S. R. Driver, Deuteronomy (ICC), 355-56. For the MT יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּנֵי (bÿney yisra’el, “sons of Israel”) a Qumran fragment has “sons of ...
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I can't help with the Greek, but KJV's "shittim" is a transliteration of the Hebrew שִׁטִּים.
JPS translates this as "acacia" too, and that's the translation I'm most used to seeing. Like some other specialized words (dolphin skins?), it's hard to know what the original meaning was. We don't have other occurrences of שִׁטִּים that make clear what kind of ...
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I appreciate the question. I think it stems from some wrong presuppositions, though - namely, that sexual "love" is strictly within the domain of eros rather than agape. I agree that sexual love can be eros, but it is not the exclusive owner of it. In fact, all pure, other-centered love is agape. This applies just as much to the sexual arena as anything ...
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INDICATIONS OF LXX PROVERBS 1:7 IN GREEK NEW TESTAMENT(?)
Conlusion:
There are indications (reasons) to believe the LXX of Proverbs 1:7 has an canonical-theological influence, but the specific evidence of a references to this verse in the Gk. New Testament appears to be indeterminate. Nevertheless, we ourselves, may be reminded, wherever we read εὐσέβεια ...
2
The answer to this question is that a basic is fact missed: σωτηρίοv, usually in the genitive form (σωτηρίου), is an adjective (also inflected here as σωτήρια) used throughout Leviticus consistently to translate "peace offerings". It often follows "sacrifices" akin to τῶν θυσιῶν τοῦ σωτηρίου. In fact, it follows "sacrifices" in this verse (Num.29:39).
So, ...
2
As you allude to, in Gen 26:31, LXX renders "sent them away in peace" (beshalom) as "sent them away meta soterias." Similarly, Gen 28:21; 44:17.
I frankly cannot attribute three separate occurrences to scribal error or a textual issue. I suppose one could say that the translator wasn't quite up to the task. BUT. I think one of the things that jars moderns ...
2
Acts 7:14 is part of a speech which Luke records. The speech is given by Stephen, a Greek Jew who no doubt would have read the Septuagint. The Septuagint (along with the Dead Sea Scrolls) varies from the Masoretic Text in both Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5 and reads instead "75 people." It's likely Stephen was quoting this tradition.
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I propose that the variations seen in the genealogies of Genesis arose from an effort to praise or villify certain patriarchs. Specifically, there is evidence of a motivation to praise the first five generations from Adam to Mahalalel, and to villify Jared, Methuselah, and Lamech. I refer to the Wikipedia chart given above in ...
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The Hebrew Bible relates that COVENANT is the "salvation" which renders "peace." Thus the translators of the Septuagint (LXX) recognized that COVENANT was the "salvation" that brought "peace" to man.
The basic Hebrew word for peace is שָׁלוֹם, which is equivalent to the Greek word εἰρήνη; however, when the context is COVENANT in Torah, the Greek word ...
1
I would propose the following approach:
For the time before the flood:
Primacy of the Massoretic numbers. They have the greatest variance and most support by the Samaritan text (and in the three differing cases - Jared, Methuselah, Lamech - the Masoretic agrees or comes close to the Septuagint).
For the time after the flood:
Primacy of Septuagint and ...
1
The Hebrew text (here) is בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל , b'nei Yisrael, literally "sons of Israel". (This is sometimes rendered "children of Israel" because a masculine plural indicates either an all-male group or a mixed group.) I'm unaware of any other Hebrew manuscripts that have a different text. (Negatives are hard to prove, but surely some traditional ...
1
I know this isn't what you are most interested in (Jon did a good job on that), but I found this a little interesting. The type of wood in the LXX is asepton, which means "not rotted." The word is not used in the New Testament and has only a small entry under "LXX Supplement" of the Bible Works Greek data. The Vulgate uses acaciae. Brown, Driver, Briggs ...
1
The Greek Septuagint does indeed say toward the sea:
27 καὶ πέντε μοχλοὺς τῷ στύλῳ τῷ κλίτει τῆς σκηνῆς τῷ δευτέρῳ καὶ πέντε μοχλοὺς τῷ στύλῳ τῷ ὀπισθίῳ τῷ κλίτει τῆς σκηνῆς τῷ πρὸς θάλασσαν
"πρὸς θάλασσαν" literally means "toward sea".
But this isn't a case where the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew text, which the NET Bible uses. In fact, the ...
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