Download PDF | The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint by Alison G. Salvesen and Timothy Michael Law, Oxford Universtiy Press 2021.
817 Pages
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Anneli Aejmelaeus is Professor (emerita) of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Culture and Literature at the University of Helsinki.
James K. Aitken is Reader in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College.
Felix Albrecht is Arbeitsstellenleiter of the project ‘Die Editio critica maior des griechischen Psalters’ at the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen.
Hans Ausloos is Professor of Biblical Studies at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and Maitre de recherches of the Fund for Scientific Research (ER.S.-FNRS).
John Barton is Emeritus Oriel & Laing Professor ofthe Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford, and a Senior Research Fellow at Campion Hall, Oxford.
Pierre-Maurice Bogaert is Professor Emeritus of the Université catholique de Louvain, and director of the Revue bénédictine.
Eberhard Bons is Professor of Old Testament at the University of Strasbourg, France. Luciano Bossina is Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Padua, Italy.
Cameron Boyd-Taylor is an affiliate of the John William Wevers Institute, Trinity Western University, Canada.
Dirk Büchner is Professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity Western University, Langley, Canada.
Livia Capponi is Associate Professor of Roman History at the University of Pavia, Italy.
Reinhart Ceulemans is Associate Professor of Greek and Byzantine Literature at KU Leuven.
Lorenzo Cuppi (PhD Durham) is Professor of Italian and Latin at the Keynes High School, Bologna, and PhD student at the University of 'La Sapienza; Rome.
Dries De Crom is Lecturer in Classical Languages at the School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University.
Rodrigo F. de Sousa is Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at the Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence.
Cécile Dogniez, Dr. Habil., is honorary researcher at UMR 8167 Orient & Méditerranée (CNRS/Université Paris Sorbonne).
Trevor V. Evans is Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Sydney.
Natalio Fernández Marcos is Research Professor at the CSIC, Madrid and Fellow of the British Academy for humanities and social sciences.
Peter J. Gentry is Donald L. Williams Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.
Maria Gorea is Professor of Ancient Semitic Languages at the University Paris VIII and Auxiliary of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, for the Cabinet of Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum.
Michael Graves is Armerding Professor of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College, Illinois.
Katrin Hauspie is co-author of Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint.
Robert J. V. Hiebert is Professor of Old Testament at the Graduate School of Theological Studies of Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada.
Tuukka Kauhanen is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki.
Maja Kominko is Director of Cultural Programmes, Arcadia Fund, London.
Siegfried Kreuzer is Professor emeritus at the Kirchliche Hochschule/Protestant University in Wuppertal, Germany.
Julia G. Krivoruchko is Research Associate of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, University of Cambridge.
Timothy Michael Law was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Göttingen.
John A. L. Lee is Honorary Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney.
Bénédicte Lemmelijn is Professor of Old Testament and Director of the Centre of Septuagint Studies and Textual Criticism at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of KU Leuven, Belgium.
Marketta Liljestrém is a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki and associate member of the Centre of Excellence ‘Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions.
David Lincicum is Rev. John A. O’Brien Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
Scott Mandelbrote is Fellow, Director of Studies in History, and Perne Librarian at Peterhouse, Cambridge.
Bradley John Marsh, Jr. is an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Researcher at the Martin-Luther- Universitat, Halle-Wittenberg.
Michaél N. van der Meer teaches religious education at a secondary school and Old Testament exegesis at several universities in the Netherlands.
Mogens Müller is Professor emeritus of New Testament Studies at the Theological Faculty, University of Copenhagen.
Olivier Munnich is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the Sorbonne, Paris, and Chair of Religious Literature in Late Antiquity.
Staffan Olofsson is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Exegesis at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Sarah J. K. Pearce is Ian Karten Professor of Jewish Studies, Department of History, University of Southampton.
Andrés Piquer Otero is Professor of Hebrew Studies at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and current editor of 2 Kings for the HBCE project.
Tessa Rajak is Professor of Ancient History Emerita at the University of Reading and Senior Research Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.
Matthieu Richelle is Professor of Old Testament at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium).
Alison G. Salvesen is Professor of Early Judaism and Christianity at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, and Polonsky Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Jewish Studies.
Timo Tekoniemi is a postdoctoral researcher in Biblical Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Michael P. Theophilos is Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies and Ancient Languages at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne.
Pablo A. Torijano is Associate Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic Studies at Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Eugene Ulrich is John O’Brien Professor of Hebrew Scriptures emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
Giuseppe Veltri is Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion, Director of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, and Director of the Academy of World Religions at Hamburg University; and Honorary Professor of Comparative Religion at Leipzig University.
Laurence Vianés is Maitre de Conférences in Greek Language and Literature at Grenoble Alpes Université, France.
J. Ross Wagner is Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Duke University Divinity School.
Introduction
ALISON G. SALVESEN
THIS volume is a response to the growing recognition of the phenomenon of the Septuagint, whose significance is much wider than is often perceived among biblical scholars. The term ‘Septuagint’ is not limited either to the first Greek translation of the Torah or to the interface between the Hebrew texts and their Greek renderings, as demonstrated by Cameron Boyd-Taylor's overview essay "What Is the Septuagint?’ at the start of this volume (Chapter 1). The Septuagint is a complex entity, which developed over a long period. Moreover, the study of the Septuagint relates in important ways to many other fields, including Hellenistic and Byzantine Judaism; New Testament and early Christianity; patristic biblical exegesis; Greek lexicography; daughter' versions; liturgy; papyrology and manuscript studies; translation studies; modern theology. We have endeavoured to cover as many of these areas as possible.
The two other essays in Part I set out the development of Septuagint studies in Western European scholarship, following the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the consequent flow of Greek scholars and manuscripts to the West. Scott Mandelbrote (Chapter 2) notes the way in which the rediscovery ofthe Septuagint and the Greek language influenced and was itself influenced by the movements of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Such study was therefore not merely an academic pursuit but until well into the nineteenth century was regarded as of great significance for the ‘recovery’ of authentic biblical tradition: the Oxford scholar Edward Grinfield even set up an annual lectureship to promote the Septuagint’s ‘value as an evidence ofthe authenticity of the Old and New Testaments. Over the course of five hundred years, printed Septuagint books have moved from diplomatic editions of single manuscripts (sometimes in polyglot volumes) to full eclectic critical editions that aim to recover the oldest possible form of the Septuagint (usually termed ‘Old Greek in the case of translations), based on a very large number of manuscripts and with one or more detailed apparatus. The most important of these are the editions of single books of the Septuagint corpus produced by the Góttingen Unternehmen and still to be completed, as detailed in Chapter 3 by Felix Albrecht. However, Albrecht also notes that the concept of editing the Septuagint ultimately goes back to both early Jewish Hebraizing revisions and to the Classical Alexandrian tradition of text-editing, both reflected in the work of Origen on the Hexapla.
Part II reviews the socio-historical setting of the Septuagint translations and related Jewish religious literature in Greek. Although it is usually assumed that all originated in the substantial Jewish communities in Egypt, especially in Alexandria, this may not be so for every book. In Chapter 4 James Aitken looks at the political situation and the extent of Greek knowledge in Palestine and the Diaspora outside Egypt, concluding that although there can be no certainty, a non-Egyptian origin is possible in the case of some compositions in Greek such as Sibylline Oracle 3 and 4 Maccabees. Livia Capponi (Chapter 5) assesses the evidence for the civic status and social circumstances ofthe very large Jewish community in Egypt, especially in Alexandria, during the Hellenistic and Roman periods until the virtual destruction of Egyptian Jewish life in the suppression of the revolt in 117 CE. She reflects on issues of Jewish identity for Jews living in the land of Egypt, speaking Greek. The Septuagint was translated into the Greek of the Hellenistic period, yet demonstrates some features alien to both literary and Koine Greek of the period, most often due to the nature oftranslation from Hebrew. For instance, the verbal system and basic syntactical constructions are very different in the two languages. In his chapter on language and lexicography (Chapter 6), Trevor Evans describes the development of the study of the syntax and vocabulary of the Septuagint, from the notion that the language of the LXX was a kind of Jewish Greek dialect, to a more informed appreciation of the points of contact between the usages of the LXX corpus, contemporary documentary papyri, and literary Greek. He also compares the methodologies employed by modern lexicons of the Septuagint. A controversial area is the degree to which LXX translators introduced religious ideas of their own period into their renderings. Mogens Müller (Chapter 7) argues for the importance of distinguishing between what translators may have intended and how later readers understood the resulting texts. He examines terms used for God, the rendering of the Hebrew word Torah by the Greek nomos, and possible messianic and eschatological references, all of which in due course influenced the New Testament and later Christianity as well as being an integral part of Judaism expressed in Greek. The origins of the Septuagint translation, which it is generally agreed began with the renderings of the books of the Pentateuch (Torah), are shrouded in mystery. However, a pseudonymous work known as the Letter of Aristeas composed by a well-educated Greek Jew in the second century BCE tells of the rationale and circumstances behind the Pentateuch's translation in such a compelling manner that it was not until the seventeenth century that its historicity was challenged. It is due to this work that we use the term ‘Septuagint; derived from Pseudo-Aristeas’s account of seventy-two translators who came down from Jerusalem to Alexandria at the invitation of King Ptolemy to translate the books of the Torah for his library. Dries De Crom in Chapter 8 notes how much of a sway ‘Aristeas’ still has on the scholarly imagination. He provides a critique of recent attempts to rehabilitate aspects of the narrative, concluding that it should be seen as 'performative rather than objective history: More reliable indicators of the early history of the Septuagint can be obtained from the papyrus fragments and inscriptions that attest it. In Chapter 9 Michael Theophilos explains the methodology of papyrological study and epigraphy, and their significance for Septuagint studies, as well as the difficulties in distinguishing Jewish and Christian provenance of manuscript fragments. In the next phase of transmission of Septuagint texts, as Luciano Bossina writes (Chapter 10), the codex began to replace the roll: traditionally regarded as indicating a distinction between Jewish and Christian practice, along with the use of the nomina sacra, in recent times this dichotomy has been questioned. In the ninth century the use of Greek uncials in manuscripts was superseded by minuscules. The dates of surviving manuscripts can give an indication of fluctuations in book production, usually related to economic and social stability of a particular period. Prior to the adoption of printing books were very expensive to produce in terms of materials and scribal labour, with ‘complete’ Bibles, pandects, being particularly rare. In Chapter 11 Hans Ausloos explains the methods and purpose of translation technique as seen in the Septuagint translations. The Hebrew and Greek languages are very different in structure as well as script. Literary translation between the two was virtually unknown in the period in which the first LXX books came into being. Moreover, there was no scientific understanding of Hebrew grammar, and little in the way of lexical aids until the early Islamic period. The translators employed various ways of dealing with idioms in Hebrew, and in the Pentateuch they established certain patterns in syntax and lexicography that would prove influential for the rendering of later books. The study of such practices by modern scholars is now well-established and has great importance for textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible in that it plays a vital role in establishing the details of the original Hebrew text that the translators worked from.
In Part III, the focus shifts to the corpus of the Septuagint itself, with an emphasis on the translated books, but also including those often found in Christian collections from early times. As mentioned above, the Pentateuch covering the five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy was almost certainly the foundation for the other translations, both because the books of the Torah were at the heart of Jewish life everywhere, and also because the influence of the Pentateuch translation can be seen in other books. Dirk Büchner (Chapter 12) notes the presence of adaptations to the new Hellenistic environment, as in the example of the legal issue of a householder' killing ofa burglar, as well as the possibility of exegetical interpretation of passages concerning sacrifice, and what this might imply about the audiences expectations of a rendering of the Hebrew Torah. The books known as the Former Prophets within the Jewish canon, and the Historical Books from a Christian point of view, have a complex textual history in both Hebrew and Greek. Natalio Fernández Marcos (Chapter 13) believes that Joshua was translated early, after the Pentateuch, noting that the book is a little shorter than in its Hebrew Masoretic version. However, although LXX Judges appears in two different forms in the oldest manuscript tradition, a single translation seems to underlie both, and goes back to a form of Hebrew close to the Masoretic Text (MT). The Books of Samuel, examined by Anneli Aejmelaeus in Chapter 14, are treated by LXX tradition as part ofa four-book group covering 1 Samuel to 2 Kings known as 1-4 Kingdoms or Reigns. The challenge in the LXX manuscripts of Samuel, as also in Kings, is to find the original Greek rendering (Old Greek, OG) of the translator behind the layers of revision and recension in the manuscript tradition, especially the Hebraizing activity termed Kaige and the stylistic changes found in manuscripts and quotations associated with the region of Antioch and sometimes attributed to Lucian. However, there are clear differences in the lexical equivalents used by the original translator compared with the vocabulary used not only by the Kaige revisers but also with that of books apparently translated later than Samuel. Recovering the OG enables us to perceive developments in the older Hebrew textual tradition as well. Similar issues affect the study of LXX 1-2 Kings (3-4 Kingdoms): in Chapter 15, Andrés Piquer Otero, Pablo Torijano, Timo Tekoniemi, and Tuukka Kauhanen discuss evidence for the probable history ofthe literary development of those books in Hebrew and Greek. The books of Chronicles in Hebrew have a complicated relationship with Samuel and Kings, and their LXX version, Paralipomena or 'things omitted, only serves to increase the difficulty. Laurence Vianès sets out the main issues (Chapter 16), and highlights that not only does the end of 2 Paralipomena also coincide to a large extent with chapters 1-2 of Greek 1 Esdras, because at that point they each translate very similar Hebrew texts, but those same chapters also show influence from 4 Kgdms 23-4. The pattern of divergences and parallels between LXX Kingdoms and Paralipomena is not easy to unravel. Unusually among the LXX translations, Paralipomena may have originated in Palestine.
Among the Prophetic books, the Septuagint version of Isaiah has provoked the most scholarly discussion in recent decades. Highly influential among New Testament and appreciated by patristic authors, the Greek rendering is often attractive yet may diverge considerably from what we would consider to be the meaning of the Masoretic Hebrew text. Rodrigo de Sousa (Chapter 17) sets out the debates over whether the translator was 'actualizing' the message of Isaiah for his contemporary community in Alexandria, or grappling with a Hebrew text beyond his capabilities. De Sousa argues for caution in detecting consistent theological exegesis in the translation, but stresses that the translator was intent on communicating meaning to his community in his translation. The issues in Jeremiah are quite different (Chapter 18): as recognized even in antiquity, the book exists in a long Hebrew form (MT) and a short LXX form, with differences in the order of chapters. Furthermore, the book of Baruch is appended to Jeremiah in the manuscript tradition. Matthieu Richelle agrees with a number of other scholars that the two forms of Jeremiah must reflect two literary editions, with the Greek text reflecting an earlier Hebrew version, but he disputes the notion that differences between the first and second halves of LXX Jeremiah are due to two different translators or revisers. As for Baruch, itis unclear whether the whole or a part of it is a translation of a lost Hebrew original, as opposed to a composition in ‘Septuagintal style. In Chapter 19 Katrin Hauspie surveys the development of scholarship on LXX Ezekiel over the course of the past hundred years, noting how the publication of the pre-hexaplaric Papyrus 967 has revolutionized perception of the books origins, even though critical editions still give it only a ‘marginal’ place. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel probably existed in variant literary editions. The newest line of approach has been the application of Skopostheorie to the difficult issues in the last nine chapters. This method, along with further investigation into the vexed question of divine names, may be usefully directed towards the rest of the book in future. Daniel is not considered among the Prophetic books in the Hebrew canon of Scripture. However, the book and the associated tales of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon, along with extra material within Daniel itself, are part of the Greek tradition, but represented by two different translations. These are referred to ‘Septuagint Daniel’ (Dan-o’) and “Theodotion Daniel’ (Dan-0"). Olivier Munnich (Chapter 20) demonstrates the importance of Papyrus 967 for the study of Daniel also. He also considers the problem of the differences between MT and Theodotion Daniel, and the question of the order of the deuterocanonical additions. He concludes that along with the Qumran fragments of Danielic material, both Greek forms provide information about the literary evolution of the Hebrew and Aramaic text of the book. In Chapter 21 Cécile Dogniez describes the nature ofthe Old Greek translation ofthe Twelve Minor Prophets, which was probably carried out by a single translator in Alexandria sometime after that of Isaiah. The style of the rendering varies between literalism and freedom, perhaps because of the difficulty of the underlying Hebrew coupled with the desire to offer readers a degree of eloquence in translation. The discovery at Nahal Hever in 1952 of a scroll of the Twelve Minor Prophets containing a Hebraizing version ofthe LXX Minor Prophets led to Dominique Barthélemy's groundbreaking theory that a revision of this nature preceded the work of the second-century CE translator Aquila. Features of this isomorphic ‘Kaige’ recension may be seen not only in this Dead Sea text but also in the manuscript tradition of some other books.
Chapter 22 focuses on the corpus of short books known in Judaism as the five Megillot, or Scrolls, and associated with festivals in the Jewish calendar: Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth), Lamentations, and Esther. As Robert Hiebert points out, in their Septuagint Greek form the first four often have features in common with the Kaige recension. However, OG Esther incorporates sections not found in MT Esther, and there is a further Greek Esther text known as the Alpha-Text: the precise relationship of OG Esther and this Alpha-Text remains obscure. The Septuagint Psalter has been particularly influential in Christian liturgy and devotion, as attested by the huge number of manuscripts containing it. Staffan Olofsson (Chapter 23) notes the debates over an Egyptian versus a Palestinian provenance, over a liturgical versus educational origin for the translation, and over the possible presence of Kaige elements in the translation. Olofsson argues that in the last case, the influence goes the other way, with vocabulary from the LXX Psalm translation being adopted by later Hebraizing revisers of other books. Another issue is the position of those who believe that the LXX Psalter was designed from the outset to be treated in an 'interlinear' manner, effectively as a crib to the Hebrew and to be understood only in the light ofthe meaning of the original, never having been designed to be read independently of its source text. While agreeing that the general tendency in the LXX Psalter is towards literal renderings, Olofsson notes that it also has non-literal traits. The Septuagint of Proverbs is a very different proposition as a translation. Lorenzo Cuppi (Chapter 24) lists the many features that conspire to make this a peculiarly difficult text to pin down. It has free renderings and additions, double translations, and different ordering of sections and chapters, all of which render the editors task particularly challenging. The Hebrew Vorlage may also have differed from MT Proverbs. However, there are also intriguing renderings suggestive of the translator's cultural ambience in second-century BcE Alexandria. In the case of the book of Job (Maria Gorea in Chapter 25) we have two much clearer layers: there is the Old Greek rendering of its difficult Hebrew poetic text, which it has effectively abridged or summarized in many places, often ducking the more problematic theological ideas of the Hebrew book, plus the supplementation with wording supplied from "Iheodotion by Origen, marked in the best witnesses by asterisks. The hybridity of the resulting text must have been puzzling for readers since it combined stylish and more literary Greek with Hebraizing renderings. In Chapter 26 Alison Salvesen surveys the miscellaneous books labelled ‘deuterocanonical’ or ‘apocryphal’ These were Jewish in origin, and either compositions in Greek or translated from a lost Semitic Vorlage. They were adopted by Christians as further religious literature, even though their status was lower than that of the canonical works or even disputed as worthy of consideration.
Part IV examines the Septuagint in its Jewish context, starting with the two most important Jewish authors writing in Greek, Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus. Their use of forms of the Septuagint text indicates its acceptance as Jewish Scripture in both Egypt and Palestine. As is well known, Philos primary interest was the Pentateuch, whereas Josephuss interest in historiography meant that he focused on narrative. Sarah Pearce (Chapter 27) reviews Philos treatment of the LXX Pentateuch in his works, his citation practice, the account he gives ofthe origin of the Pentateuch translation, and his high view ofthe Torah in Greek. Finally she discusses the question of how much Hebrew he would have known. In Chapter 28 Tessa Rajak establishes the significance of the Greek Bible for Josephus, especially in view of his sound knowledge of both Hebrew and Aramaic, and discusses recent scholarship on the type of Greek text that he knew. Taking examples from the Tabernacle account in Exodus, the stories of Samuel and Esther, she concludes that Josephus used the Greek Scriptures as 'a literary springboard' but that the Hebrew text remains ‘a tantalizing presence’ in his works. His largely faithful retelling of the Letter of Aristeas implies a precedent for his own reworking of biblical narrative. In Chapter 29 Eugene Ulrich notes how the discovery of the scrolls from the Dead Sea region in the mid-twentieth century revolutionized biblical studies. It has raised the possibility of variant Hebrew Vorlagen and alternative literary editions behind the Septuagint translations. In addition to the scriptural texts in Hebrew, a handful of small fragments of Greek versions of the Pentateuch were also found in Qumran Caves 4 and 7, along with the scroll of the Minor Prophets at Nahal Hever containing a revision of the Old Greek text. As the earliest, and non-Christian, witnesses to Greek renderings of Scripture, these have all been highly significant for our knowledge of the early history of the Septuagint. As the Nahal Hever text of the Twelve Minor Prophets reveals, dissatisfaction with the original form of the Septuagint translations set in early, with revisional activity taking place even before the Common Era. Such activity, which aimed to make the Greek translation of Scripture conform more closely still to the wording and current interpretation of the emerging Hebrew standard text, continued to at least the end of the second century cE. In Chapter 30, Siegfried Kreuzer discusses the nature of what has been termed the Kaige recension, how it may be identified in various texts by its more literal and Hebraizing renderings, and its likely relationship to the version known as Theodotion. Until the identification of the Kaige recension, Aquilas work was considered to be the first radical attempt to modify the Greek text. Even though this has been disproved, Aquilas work is important in other ways, not least stylistically and lexicographically as wellas for its long-term influence on later Jewish Greek interpretation of Scripture. In Chapter 31 Giuseppe Veltri and Alison Salvesen review Christian patristic and rabbinic Jewish attitudes towards Aquila's version, and the surviving evidence for it. Another reviser, Symmachus, is often called the freest translator, yet his work is demonstrably close to the standardized Hebrew text. Thus, while he certainly issues a more stylistically impressive Greek text, he stands in the same stream of revision that sought conformity to the Hebrew. Michaél van der Meer (Chapter 32) explores the motivation behind his version, and what we may know of the translator’s religious affiliation, identity, and political outlook. Further revisions were included in Origen’s Hexapla, though the names of their revisers are unknown. Their versions, however, have been recognized for their importance in the text history of several books. In Chapter 33, Bradley Marsh, Jr. examines what is known about the versions known as Quinta, Sexta, and Septima (Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh’), perhaps from their position in the columns of the Hexapla. Bradley Marsh also looks at the phenomenon of the Greek version of the Samaritan Pentateuch (Chapter 34), evidence for which is preserved almost exclusively by Christian sources. Finally, although the Septuagint’s influence in Jewish circles faded over time, conceptually it enjoyed an afterlife, in the continuing need for Greek renderings and glosses for the Hebrew Bible, as evidenced by manuscripts and fragments discovered in the Cairo Geniza. In Chapter 35 Julia Krivoruchko surveys this afterlife of Greek biblical texts in Byzantine and medieval Jewish communities, into the Constantinople Pentateuch and beyond.
Part V moves on to the reception of the Septuagint as Christian Scripture. The obvious starting point is the use of citations from Greek Scripture by New Testament writers, surveyed by David Lincicum in Chapter 36. He points out that the New Testament ‘supplies a unique window into the shifting state of the Greek text in the first century; and a ‘key stage’ in the process of appropriation of the Septuagint as the Christian Old Testament. As time went on, educated Christians found it more difficult to defend the Greek style of the Septuagint, and textual witnesses originating from the region of Antioch may display stylistic adjustments. The character of the Greek version apparently edited by Lucian in Antioch at the end of the third century cE is one of the most significant and contentious issues in current research. It has been argued that the oldest readings in the Greek tradition may be found in Antiochian witnesses to the Kaige sections of 1-4 Kingdoms; these would then predate the historical Lucian and approximate to the Old Greek. Untangling the layers of the Antiochian text has proven difficult, as Tuukka Kauhanen explains in Chapter 37. Another direction for revision among early Christian scholars was that of Origen of Caesarea, whose massive work of biblical scholarship known as the Hexapla is responsible for preserving much of what we know of the ancient Jewish revisions. However, little survives of the version, and there has been a great deal of debate about several aspects of Origen’s textual work, including its precise format, as Peter Gentry details in Chapter 38. Gentry sets out the patristic testimonies about the Hexapla, and also provides translations of several colophons of manuscripts containing texts ultimately deriving from Origen and his successors in Caesarea. John Lee’s contribution (Chapter 39) focuses on the liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church. Being full of allusions to Scripture, the liturgy is steeped in the language of both the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. Lee notes many instances of vocabulary derived from LXX sources, demonstrating the Septuagint's profound influence on early Christian spirituality as well as theology, from antiquity to the present. Questions remain, however, about how the liturgy relates to or derives from synagogue practice in the earliest period, and especially regarding the central role of the Psalms in Christian worship. Following on from this, Reinhart Ceulemans (Chapter 40) looks at the way in which the Septuagint profoundly shaped patristic and Byzantine Christianity, an influence seen not only through the vast literature of Greek biblical exegesis, but in a wide variety of other texts, documents, amulets, buildings, and ceremonies. Ceulemans explains the nature of various forms of exegesis, including commentaries, homilies, synopses, and catenae, the last being one ofthe most understudied areas of research on the LXX. Catenae often contain fragments from earlier, lost commentaries, so work in this area is throwing fresh light on the entire tradition. The Septuagint was also enormously influential in Latin Christianity, being rendered into Latin very early, as described by Michael Graves (Chapter 41). Revisions took place in the third and fourth centuries, and were even undertaken by Jerome before dissatisfaction with translating a translation led him to return to the ‘Hebrew Truth’ for what became the Vulgate Old Testament. However, the Old Latin version remained very popular for a long time, and both Augustine and Jerome used it for their commentaries.
Part VI concerns the Septuagint in its many translated forms, starting with the ancient ‘daughter’ versions. The first of these was the Vetus Latina or Old Latin (VL), mentioned already above. Chapter 42, Pierre-Maurice Bogaerts detailed overview, explains the nature of this version and the challenges in using it. The early date of the Vetus Latina makes it highly significant for reconstructing a possibly older form of the Septuagint that predates much revisional activity, and it may even hint at the existence of variant literary editions in Hebrew. However, the origins ofthe VL are shrouded in mystery and due to the success of Jerome’s iuxta Hebraeos version, it is poorly preserved. Bogaert notes its importance for the textual history of the books of Exodus, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Proverbs in particular. Pablo Torijano provides a survey ofthe Armenian, Georgian, and Church Slavonic translations (Chapter 43). These represent the first works of their national literatures and caused the invention of their respective scripts; allowing access to the Christian Bible for the Caucasus and the Slav peoples. However, it has proved difficult to create modern critical editions of each of them. In Chapter 44 Marketta Liljestróm discusses the version known as the Syrohexapla, dating from the early seventh century. Although the Syriac churches already possessed the Old Testament books rendered directly from Hebrew since the beginning of the third century, the Syrohexapla represents part of a theological and translational movement that looked to Greek sources. Uniquely, it is largely but not entirely dependent upon the Hexaplaric manuscripts deriving from Origens Hexapla, and preserves many of Origens critical signs. Its marginal notes give many readings from Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. The ‘mirror-translation nature of the Syrohexapla makes it especially valuable for discovering the nature of Origens textual work. Chapter 45 (Andrés Piquer Otero) sets out the main issues involving the study of three other daughter versions of the Septuagint: Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic. The situation with Coptic is complicated by the existence and influence of different dialects, principally but not exclusively Sahidic and Bohairic. Arabic renderings of the Septuagint were used by Christian communities whose vernacular was Arabic and who sometimes used Greek letters to write the language, but other Arabic versions of Old Testament Scripture based on Syriac or Hebrew also circulated. In the case of Ethiopic, the Septuagint was rendered only into Geez, but the witnesses are hard to date and also tend to be comparatively late. Much more recently, different teams of scholars have translated the Septuagint into several major modern languages including English, German, French, and Italian. Eberhard Bons (Chapter 46) compares the various approaches taken by these large-scale projects, and notes the difficulties involved in translating a text that is itselfa translation.
Part VII takes a wider look at the significance of the Septuagint, principally for biblical studies and theology, but also for art history. In Chapter 47 Bénédicte Lemmelijn reflects on the changing role of the Septuagint for biblical textual criticism: from a tool to help establish a single Urtext, with the LXX as ‘handmaid’ to the Hebrew, to become in the post-Qumran period a witness of scribal and editorial activity indicating textual plurality. In the case of the New Testament, Ross Wagner (Chapter 48) demonstrates that the Septuagint is vital for understanding both religious terminology and investigating the pluriformity of scriptural texts in the first century cE. In Chapter 49 John Barton discusses the implications of the Septuagint for Christian theology more broadly, singling out some areas for further reflection. These include the lack of a fixed and stable text of the Septuagint; the problem of what a canon of the LXX corpus would consist of, and how this could be seen as a single entity for the purposes of an overarching interpretation; whether it is desirable or possible to attempt a “Theology of the LXX; and the possibility of seeing both LXX and MT as canonical or at least authoritative. Finally, Maja Kominko (Chapter 50) shows how image and text work together in illustrated manuscripts of the Septuagint, sometimes drawing on extra-biblical or non-canonical elements, and providing visual exegesis ofthe Bible.
The present volume should be seen as complementary to other projects, especially to the series La Bible d'Alexandrie, the New English Translation ofthe Septuagint, the twovolume commentary Septuaginta Deutsch: Erläuterungen und Kommentare, the Septuagint Commentary Series, and most especially to the exceptional and ongoing textual work of the Góttingen Septuaginta Unternehmen. The contributions in this Oxford Handbook owe a great deal to all of these, and they will be referred to many times in the following pages. Other important projects were published during the extended period this volume took to appear, among them the first volumes of the Handbuch zur Septuaginta series edited by Martin Karrer, Wolfgang, Kraus, Siegfried Kreuzer, and others; the T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint edited by James Aitken; Brill's Textual History of the Bible edited by Armin Lange and Emanuel Tov. It therefore proved difficult to incorporate many references to them throughout the volume without delaying its submission to the Press even further. The reader is strongly encouraged to consult these works alongside the present one.
Thanks are due to Tom Perridge, Commissioning Editor at OUP, who suggested back in 2011 (apparently at the prompting of John Barton) that the Press should publish a Handbook of the Septuagint; and to Michael Law, who persuaded me to take on this project, came up with a fully developed overview of the subject, and did much of the initial work securing and working with contributors. Most of all, I thank the contributors themselves for their patience.
The volume is dedicated to Sebastian Brock, for his ongoing inspiration both academically and personally; but most pertinently in the case of this volume, for teaching me Septuagintal textual criticism when I was an undergraduate, and then suggesting I should write my doctoral dissertation on Symmachus, work which he then supervised. Though he is best known for his enormous contribution to Syriac studies, his name appears many times in the pages of this volume as well.
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