The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates (his brother) that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into Koine Greek at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BC) by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel—though this story is considered to be pseudepigraphical by some scholars.Tractate Megillah 9 (9a)Tractate Soferim 1 (1:7-8)
Biblical scholars agree that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible were translated from Biblical Hebrew into Koine Greek by Jews living in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, probably in or around Alexandria, and can be dated with confidence to the mid- or late 3rd century BCE. The remaining books were presumably translated in the 2nd century BCE. The corpus continued to undergo revision and recensional development in both Jewish and Christian communities through the fourth century CE. Few people could speak and even fewer could read in the Hebrew language during the Second Temple period; Koine Greek and Aramaic were the lingua francas at that time among the Jewish community. The LXX, therefore, satisfied a need in the Jewish community. (Some targums translating or paraphrasing the Bible into Aramaic were also made during the Second Temple period.)
Etymology The term "Septuagint" is derived from the Latin phrase ("The Old Testament from the version of the Seventy Translators"). This phrase in turn was derived from the . It was not until the time of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) that the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures was called by the Latin term .Sundberg, in McDonald & Sanders, eds., The Canon Debate, p.72. The Roman numeral LXX (seventy) is commonly used as an abbreviation, in addition to or G.Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, for instance.
Composition
Jewish legend
According to tradition, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Macedonian Greek pharaoh of Egypt, sent seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel—from Second Temple era Jerusalem to Alexandria to translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into Koine Greek, for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria. This narrative is found in the possibly pseudepigraphic letter of Aristeas to his brother Philocrates, and it was repeated by Philo, Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews, and by later sources, including Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 18.42. It is also found in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud:
Philo of Alexandria writes that the number of scholars was chosen by selecting six scholars from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Caution is needed here regarding the accuracy of this statement by Philo of Alexandria, as it implies that the twelve tribes were still in existence during Ptolemy's reign, and that the Ten Lost Tribes of the twelve tribes had not been forcibly resettled by Assyria almost 500 years previously. Although not all the people of the ten tribes were scattered, many peoples of the ten tribes sought refuge in Jerusalem and survived, preserving a remnant of each tribe and their lineages. Jerusalem swelled to five times its prior population due to the influx of refugees. According to later rabbinic tradition, the LXX was given to Ptolemy two days before the annual fast of the Tenth of Tevet.Arba'ah Turim, Orach Chaim 580, quoting Simeon Kayyara.
According to Aristobulus of Alexandria's fragment 3, portions of the Law were translated from Hebrew into Greek long before the well-known LXX version. He stated that Plato and Pythagoras knew the Jewish Law and borrowed from it.Adela Yarbro Collins, Aristobulus (Second Century B.C.). A New Translation And Introduction, in James H. Charlesworth (1985), The Old Testament Pseudoepigrapha, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc., Volume 2, (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2), p. 831.
In the preface to his 1844 translation of the Septuagint, Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton acknowledges that the Jews of Alexandria were likely to have been the writers of the LXX, but dismisses Aristeas' account as a pious fiction. Instead, he asserts that the real origin of the name "Septuagint" lies in the fact that the earliest version was submitted by the authors to the Sanhedrin in Alexandria for editing and approval.
The Jews of Alexandria celebrated the translation with an annual festival on Pharos, where the Lighthouse of Alexandria stood—the location where the translation was said to have taken place. During the festival, a large gathering of Jews, along with some Gentile visitors, would assemble on the beach for a grand picnic.
History The dating of the translation of the Torah to the 3rd century BC is supported by a number of factors, including its Greek being representative of early Koine Greek, citations beginning as early as the 2nd century BC, and early manuscripts datable to the 2nd century BC.J.A.L. Lee, A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch (Septuagint and Cognate Studies, 14. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983; Reprint SBL, 2006) After the Torah, other books were translated over the next two to three centuries. It is unclear which was translated when, or where; some may have been translated twice (into different versions), and then revised.Joel Kalvesmaki, Septuagint The quality and style of the translators varied considerably from book to book, from a literal translation to paraphrasing to an interpretative style.
The translation process of the LXX, and from it into other versions, can be divided into several stages: the Greek text was produced within the social environment of Hellenistic Judaism, and completed by 132 BC. With the spread of early Christianity, the LXX in turn was rendered into Latin in a variety of versions and the latter, collectively known as the , were also referred to as the SeptuagintCornelia Linde, How to Correct the Sacra Scriptura? Textual Criticism of the Bible between the Twelfth and Fifteenth Century, Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature 2015 pp.9ff,29ff.Life after death: a history of the afterlife in the religions of the West (2004), Anchor Bible Reference Library, Alan F. Segal, p.363Gilles Dorival, Marguerite Harl, and Olivier Munnich, La Bible grecque des Septante: Du judaïsme hellénistique au christianisme ancien (Paris: Cerfs, 1988), p.111 initially in early Christian Alexandria, but elsewhere as well. The LXX also formed the basis for the Old Church Slavonic, Syro-Hexaplar version, and the Classical Armenian, Old Georgian, and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament.Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, trans. Errol F. Rhodes, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. Eerdmans, 1995.
Language The LXX is written in Koine Greek. Some sections contain Semiticisms, which are idioms and phrases based on Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Aramaic. Other books, such as Daniel and Proverbs, have a stronger Greek influence.
The LXX may also clarify pronunciation of archaic Hebrew; many proper nouns are spelled with Greek vowels in the translation, but contemporary Hebrew texts lacked niqqud (vowel marks). However, it is unlikely that all Biblical Hebrew sounds had precise Greek equivalents.Paul Joüon, SJ, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, trans. and revised by T. Muraoka, vol. I, Rome: Editrice Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 2000. This is also further complicated by modern academia's belief that the vowels of both ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek were pronounced differently than their modern versions.
Canonical differences The LXX does not consist of a single, unified corpus. Rather, it is a collection of ancient translations of the Tanakh, along with other Jewish texts that are now commonly referred to as apocrypha. Importantly, the canon of the Hebrew Bible was evolving over the century or so in which the LXX was being written. Also, the texts were translated by many different people, in different locations, at different times, for different purposes, and often from different original Hebrew manuscripts.
The Hebrew Bible has three parts: the Torah 'Law', the Nevi'im 'Prophets', and the Ketuvim 'Writings'. The LXX has four: law, history, poetry, and prophets. The books of the Biblical apocrypha were inserted at appropriate locations. Extant copies of the LXX, which date from the 4th century, contain books and additions not present in the Hebrew Bible as established in the Jewish canon and are not uniform in their contents. These copies of the LXX include books known as anagignoskomena in Greek and, in English, as deuterocanon (derived from the Greek words for "second canon"), which are not included in the modern Jewish canon. These books are estimated to have been written between 200 BC and 50 AD. Among them are the first two Books of the Maccabees; the Book of Tobit; the Book of Judith; the Book of Wisdom; Book of Sirach; the Book of Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah), and additions to Esther and Daniel. The LXX version of some books, such as the Book of Daniel and the Book of Esther, are longer than those in the Masoretic Text (𝕸), which were affirmed as canonical in Rabbinic Judaism.Rick Grant Jones, Various Religious Topics, "Books of the Septuagint", (Accessed 2006.9.5). The Septuagint Book of Jeremiah is shorter than 𝕸. The Psalms of Solomon, 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, the Letter of Jeremiah, the Book of Odes, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151 are included in some copies of the LXX.
The LXX has been rejected as scriptural by mainstream Rabbinic Judaism for a couple of reasons. First, the LXX differs from 𝕸 in many cases (particularly in the Book of Job). For example, according to Heinrich Guggenheimer, intentional mistranslations in Deuteronomy 6 make reference to ancient sources of the Passover Haggadah. Second, the translations appear at times to demonstrate an ignorance of Hebrew idiomatic usage. A particularly noteworthy example of this phenomenon is found in Isaiah 7:14, in which the Hebrew word (), which translates into English as "young woman", is translated as (), "virgin".
The LXX became synonymous with the Greek Old Testament, a Christian canon that incorporates the books of the Hebrew canon along with additional texts. Although the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church include most of the books in the LXX in their canons, Protestant churches usually do not. After the Reformation, many Protestant Bibles began to follow the Jewish Biblical canon and exclude the additional texts (which came to be called the Apocrypha) as noncanonical. The Apocrypha are included under a separate heading in the King James Version of the Bible.
+ Deuterocanonical and apocryphal books in the LXX Greek nameTimothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research .—The current standard introduction on the NT & LXX. Transliteration English nameProseuchē ManassēPrayer of Manasseh1 Esdras1 Esdras (called Τωβείτ or Τωβίθ in some sources)Tōbit (or Tōbeit or Tōbith)TobitIoudithJudithEsthērEsther (with additions)1 Makkabaiōn1 Maccabees2 Makkabaiōn2 Maccabees3 Makkabaiōn3 Maccabees4 Makkabaiōn Parartēma4 MaccabeesPsalmos 151Psalm 151Sophia SalomōntosWisdom or Wisdom of SolomonSophia Iēsou SeirachSirach or EcclesiasticusBarouchBaruchEpistolē IeremiouLetter of JeremiahDaniēlDaniel (with additions)Psalmoi SalomōntosPsalms of Solomon
Final form All the books in the western Old Testament canons are found in the LXX, although the order does not always coincide with the Western book order. The LXX order is evident in the earliest Christian Bibles, which were written during the 4th century.