Septuagint Lexicons

So what is the best, gucciest, and most kosher Septuagint lexicon around? The one's I'm aware of are:

T. Muraoka, A Greek English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters).

J. Lust et. al, A Greek English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft).

B. Taylor, The Analytic Lexicon to the Septuagint (Zondervan).

Martin Hengel on the OT Canon

Here's a thought-provoking throught from Martin Hengel on the OT canon:

"As a New Testament scholar and Christian Theologian, I would like to pose a question in view of the problem emerging here. Does the church still need a clearly demarcated, strictly closed Old Testament canon, since the New Testament is, after all, the 'conclusion', the goal and the fulfilment of the Old? Indeed, does not one face an essential contradiction if one, in an unhistorical biblicism, clings to a limited 'Hebrew', or better pharisaical, 'canon' from Jabneh? Must not the Old Testament remain a degree open to the New? Is not a figure like the eschatological prophet John the Baptist the most important example - in the New Testament itself - of this openness of the Old for the New, the final? ... The origin of Christianity as well as of rabbinic Judaism after 70 CE becomes at all historically interesting and comprehensible only through this literature, which includes in a wider dimension also Josephus, Philo and the Pseudepigrapha. One portion of this literature was preserved, sometimes unwillingly, by Christian tradition; the other comes to light now in the Qumran texts. The great interest that this rich 'post-biblical' Jewish tradition finds among Jews and Christians could perhaps be assessed as a sign of the relative openness of the 'canon' in both directions, given the fact that Jews and Christians parted conclusively only after the destruction of Jerusalem toward the end of the first century CE." (The Septuagint as Christian Scripture, 126).

I think it is perfectly valid to recognize that Christian sacred literature was broader than our modern "canon", but does this proposal mean (a) almost de-canonising the Old Testament since it has no limits; (b) making the Old Testament of less canonical weight than the New Testament; and (c) using the Old Testament as background reading rather than as "scripture"?

Martin Hengel on the "Centre of Scripture"

The late Martin Hengel wrote: "In view of the use of the Old Testament in early Christianity, one could speak, if one wished, of a - tacitly assumed - eschatologically determined 'centre of the Scriptures' (Mitte der Schrift), that of fulfilment in the gospel. One could also say that it was determined by Christology, soteriology and the new righteousness or - in a phrase - by the 'justification of the ungodly' (Rom. 4:5; 5:6), and that it thus essentially excluded the possibility of an external delimitation of 'the truth of the gospel' (Gal. 2:5-14) through a firmly defined collection of 'canonical' Scriptures, although one primarily concentrated on relatively few, very specific well-known Scriptures [i.e., Psalms, Isaiah, Deuteronomy]" (The Septuagint as Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of its Canon [trans. M.e. Biddle; London: T&T Clark, 2002], 108).

Apocrypha in the LXX

The Apocrypha includes those books contained in the Greek Old Testament but not found in the Hebrew Bible, yet Earle E. Ellis notes: "No two Septuagint codices contain the same apocrypha, and no uniform Septuagint 'Bible' was ever the subject of discussion in the patristic church. In view of these facts the Septuagint codices appear to have been originally intended more as service books than as a defined and normative canon of Scripture" (The Old Testament in Early Christianity [WUNT 1.54; Tubingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1991), 34-35.

Augustine on the Septuagint

I've written on Augustine and the Septuagint elsewhere, but I've recently come across this quote which is interesting:

"But, if scribal error is not involved, it must be believed that, where the sense corresponds to the truth and proclaims the truth, they [i.e., the seventy translators], moved by the divine Spirit, wished to deviate [from the Hebrew text], not in the manner of interpreters [i.e., translators], but in the freedom of those prophesying. Consequently, the apostles, in their authority, when they appealed to the Scriptures, quite rightly utilized not only the Hebrew, but also their own - the witness of the Seventy" (Augustine, City of God, 15.14).

Happy Septuagint Day

In case you missed it (and you probably did), the 8th of February was International Septuagint Day as decreed by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies. Over at the Codex, Tyler Williams has listed the top reasons for studying the Septuagint (a must read).

My own interest in the LXX has accelerated since starting a commentary project on 1 Esdras for a new Bible translation and teaching a Greek texts class which includes part of the Septuagint.

I continue to find the LXX intriguing esp. for its messianism (see Michael Knibb's book on this subject) and its interpretation of the Hebrew text (e.g. look at variations of Dan. 7.13 ,does the one like a son of man come "unto" or "as" the "Ancient of Days"?). Also Paul's midrashic exegesis of Gen. 15.6 and Ps. 32 in Romans 4 is contingent upon them sharing the word logizomai whereas the corresponding words are not shared in Hebrew versions. We should also seriously consider the role of the Septugint, with its own unique textual traditions, as part of the Christian canon since this WAS the Bible of the early church.

We should also keep in mind that "Septuagint" can be used in two senses: (1) The creation and transmission of Old Greek texts of the Hebrew Scriptures; and (2) The books eventually collected and made standardized as the Greek Bible. In other words, don't assume that Paul and the author of Hebrews had a proto-edition of Rahlfs Septuaginta in front of them when they cited Scripture.

The stability of the LXX is of some debate but there was a conscious and gradual effort at bringing the Greek texts into closer conformity to the Hebrew Scriptures over time. Some textual recensions seemed to dominate in certain locales. Jerome wrote that certain Christian regions each adopted their own particular recension of the LXX: "Alexandria and Egypt in their Septuagint acclaim Hesychius as their authority, the region from Constantinople to Antioch approves the copies of Lucian the martyr, the intermediate Palestinian provinces read the manuscripts which were promulgated by Eusebius and Pamphilus on the basis of Origen's labors, and the whole world is divided between these three varieties of text"(Praef. in Paralipp.; compare Adv. Ruf., ii.27).

Remember, only 123 sleeps until International Peshitta Day and only 233 sleeps until International Vulgate Day!

Augustine on Translation, the Study of Languages, and the LXX

Thanks to Archaic Christianity, I found these interesting quotes from Augustine's On Christian Doctrine book 2 on Bible translation, the importance of study of the biblical languages, and the Septuagint.

6. And hence it happened that even Holy Scripture, which brings a remedy for the terrible diseases of the human will, being at first set forth in one language, by means of which it could at the fit season be disseminated through the whole world, was interpreted into various tongues, and spread far and wide, and thus became known to the nations for their salvation. And in reading it, men seek nothing more than to find out the thought and will of those by whom it was written, and through these to find out the will of God, in accordance with which they believe these men to have spoken.

16. The great remedy for ignorance of proper signs is knowledge of languages. And men who speak the Latin tongue, of whom are those I have undertaken to instruct, need two other languages for the knowledge of Scripture, Hebrew and Greek, that they may have recourse to the original texts if the endless diversity of the Latin translators throw them into doubt. Although, indeed, we often find Hebrew words untranslated in the books as for example, Amen, Halleluia, Racha, Hosanna, and others of the same kind. Some of these, although they could have been translated, have been preserved in their original form on account of the more sacred authority that attaches to it, as for example, Amen and Halleluia. Some of them, again, are said to be untranslatable into another tongue, of which the other two I have mentioned are examples. For in some languages there are words that cannot be translated into the idiom of another language. And this happens chiefly in the case of interjections, which are words that express rather an emotion of the mind than any part of a thought we have in our mind. And the two given above are said to be of this kind, Racha expressing the cry of an angry man, Hosanna that of a joyful man. But the knowledge of these languages is necessary, not for the sake of a few words like these which it is very easy to mark and to ask about, but, as has been said, on account of the diversities among translators. For the translations of the Scriptures from Hebrew into Greek can be counted, but the Latin translators are out of all number. For in the early days of the faith every man who happened to get his hands upon a Greek manuscript, and who thought he had any knowledge, were it ever so little, of the two languages, ventured upon the work of translation.

22. Now among translations themselves the Itala is to be preferred to the others, for it keeps closer to the words without prejudice to clearness of expression. And to correct the Latin we must use the Greek versions, among which the authority of the Septuagint is pre-eminent as far as the Old Testament is concerned; for it is reported through all the more learned churches that the seventy translators enjoyed so much of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in their work of translation, that among that number of men there was but one voice. And if, as is reported, and as many not unworthy of confidence assert,(2) they were separated during the work of translation, each man being in a cell by himself, and yet nothing was found in the manuscript of any one of them that was not found in the same words and in the same order of words in all the rest, who dares put anything in comparison with an authority like this, not to speak of preferring anything to it? And even if they conferred together with the result that a unanimous agreement sprang out of the common labor and judgment of them all; even so, it would not be right or becoming for any one man, whatever his experience, to aspire to correct the unanimous opinion of many venerable and learned men. Wherefore, even if anything is found in the original Hebrew in a different form from that in which these men have expressed it, I think we must give way to the dispensation of Providence which used these men to bring it about, that books which the Jewish race were unwilling, either from religious scruple or from jealousy, to make known to other nations, were, with the assistance of the power of King Ptolemy, made known so long beforehand to the nations which in the future were to believe in the Lord. And thus it is possible that they translated in such a way as the Holy Spirit, who worked in them and had given them all one voice, thought most suitable for the Gentiles. But nevertheless, as I said above, a comparison of those translators also who have kept most closely to the words, is often not without value as a help to the clearing up of the meaning. The Latin texts, therefore, of the Old Testament are, as I was about to say, to be corrected if necessary by the authority of the Greeks, and especially by that of those who, though they were seventy in number, are said to have translated as with one voice. As to the books of the New Testament, again, if any perplexity arises from the diversities of the Latin texts, we must of course yield to the Greek, especially those that are found in the churches of greater learning and research.

Note in this last quote, Augustine asserts the inspiration of the Septuagint as a Bible specifically for the nations. What is more, Augustine's version of the superiority of the Greek texts over the Latin witnesses is the exact opposite of Ambrosiaster.