EgyptSearch Forums: A rough draft about the Alexandrian Septuagint

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Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :

unfinished from 2004

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Anti-missionary and Messianic Judaism Exposed
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Septuagint is the accepted term for the collection of books considered
scriptural by the Hellenized Greek speaking Jewry of Alexandria Egypt.
This was the case for an about 400 year interval from around 250 BCE
until about 150 CE The Septuagint takes its name from the origin of the
first translation of the Five Books of Moses into Greek. That was done
by 72 Jews accordingto the Letter of Aristeas. When naming the work,
the number was rounded down to 70 [but see next paragraph], dubbed
the Septuagint and in time represented by the Roman numeral LXX.

Whether or not Ptolemy Philadelphus wanted to expand his library or
to disprove the divine origin of the Torah, the Jews of Alexandria and
all other Jews who were conversant in Greek but unable to understand
or speak Hebrew needed translations of all the Hebrew scriptures. The
translators of the Targum haShibiym --the Pentateuch-- were authorized
to do so. According to Mishnah Soferiym 1:8 there were exactly 70 of them
acting under inspiration. Each one of them, though working separately,
produced the exact same text including 11 deliberate "mistranslations."

Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :

Translation of the canonical Hebrew books continued but not by the same
translators nor by divine inspiration or royal edict. The Jewish community
in Egypt spoke Greek and little Hebrew. They needed a translation in the
Egyptian tinged Greek that they understood. So term Septuagint refers to
the translation of the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings into the Greek
idiom not, as originally, just to the Torah alone. Besides these, the extra-
canonical Apochrypa are also part of the Septuagint. This complete work
was used by Greek speaking Jewish communities throughout the eastern
and southern Mediterranean. It was a composite work by disparate authors
not by the same persons who did the Five Books of Moses. The quality of the
translations vary, none as high as the original translators authorized by the
Zugoth, i.e. the Nasi and the Ab Beth Diyn back in Judea. In some instances
midrash replaces the actual N"K text. The Septuagint translations of the
Nebi'iym and the Ketubi'iym were made over a hundred year period after
the Targum haShibiym was completed.Those translations weren't authorized
and their level of scribal scholarship varies from book to book. Interspersed
within the Septuagint N"K are several books that were composed after the
time of Ezra and the Anshei K*nesseth haGadol (the Men of the Great Assembly).
Due to their non-inspired origin, the added books came to be called Apocrypha or
Deuterocanonical.

Some of the Alexandrian Septuagint Apocrypha are known to pre-Temple
destruction era Tannaitic Jewry. Hhaz"l discuss the apocryphal Ecclesiasticus
and even quote it at times (TB Baba Bathra 146a, TB Niddah 16b, Yebamoth
63b, etc.) though suggesting it shouldn't be in common usage (TB Sanhedrin
100b). The Qumran library/scroll depository/copy shop, which was shut down
in 68 CE had, in Hebrew or Aramaic, the apocryphal works:
* Susanna 4Q551;
* Tobit 4Q196-9, 4Q200, 4Q478;
* Ecclesiasticus (The Wisdom of ben Sira) 2QSir;
* Psalm 151 11Q5;
* the Greek Septuagint Epistle of Jeremiah 7QLXXEpJer.

Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :

The 7th cave at Qumran contained texts written in Greek. A few of them are
actually fragments of the Septuagint (7QLXXExod and 7QLXXEpJer). It may
be possible, though unlikely, that those Qumran Hebrew texts which agree
with the Septuagint are back translations from Greek into Hebrew.

It's important to realize that the Qumran collection isn't authoritative.

A version found in Qumran doesn't mean it was the official text recognized
by Jewry outside of the Qumran sect. Many sectarian texts were found
amidst the works stored at Qumran. The people associated with Qumran
were a bit separatist and even somewhat isolationist. Would they have
valued or thought the scrolls of the Temple Court were correct? The Temple
Court scrolls were the only ones that legitimate copies could be made from.
What most never seem to note is that Qumran did have many more texts
reading like the Masoretic than it did ones reading like the Septuagint.

Another thing to note is that there was a cache of scrolls at Masada.
Masada wasn't sectarian. The scrolls there agree with the Masoretic.
The Masada scrolls were certainly copies made by the professional
sopheriym of the Temple Court. Remember, the Septuagint N"K are
unauthorized translations; the effortis mostly a poor attempt; Greek
speaking Jewry abandoned it for the Aquila circa 127 CE at which point
the Septuagint found itself on trash heaps but never stored away in a
geniza. That's why there are no authentic copies of Alexandrian Jewry's
Septuagint.

Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :

There does not exist a single surviving copy of the Alexandrian authored
Septuagint. That on going work remained in use between 280 BCE and 150 CE
when the Aquila translation replaced it. The Aquila contained only the books
re-affirmed canonical by the minor sanhedrin at Yabneh circa 92 CE. Before
Yabneh, the Apocrypha and the works labeled Pseudepigrapha (because they
were falesly attributed to famous authors) circulated among Jews. Some of these
works incorporated either alien theology blatantly pagan in origin or theology
simply outside of the received tradition. The Septuagint with its Apocrypha fell
out of Jewish usage.

Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :

Hhaz"l [the intelligentsia of Judea and the Diaspora before c.600 CE] have
pointed out the known and intentional mistranslations employed by the Jewish
translators of the Septuagint. Once Greek speaking Jewry accepted the Aquila
translation's superiority they used it up until the 7th century CE. The Septuagint
basically became worthless in the 2nd century when Jews abandoned it. The early
Christians chose the Greek Septuagint as their core Bible. Many variant copies of
it were then made by Christians. Origen derived his Septuagint (circa 245 CE)
from flawed copies floating around in the Christian community. Not one authentic
Alexandrian Septuagint was in circulation by Origen's time. In the hundred years
since Aquila they had been discarded as trash.What is true is that the Septuagint
available today is not the Alexandrian one which disappeared by 245 CE. It's not
even Origen's attempt to reconstruct the Alexandrian Septuagint. And Origen's
Hexapla Septuagint is a pastche with fabrications of his own invention. Origen
left notes indicating "defective" and "filled out" text. In other words he had no
complete copy only fragments and made up some text himself for various passages.

Even Origen's Septuagint is unavailable today. All we have are variant copies full
of copyist errors to an already admitted pastiched text derived from fragments.
What we have today is the Christian Septuagint and it shouldn't be mistaken for
the Alexandrian Jewish Septuagint TN"K compiled and used before the birth of
Christianity. There are no extant copies of the Septuagint in use by the community
of Jews in Alexandria Egypt or in their offshoot communities such as the one in
Brooklyn. Only fragments of the Jewish Septuagint remain. Most of these fragments
were found in Egypt. A few were found at the repository in Qumran. As noted above
Qumran scroll 4QJerb (written in Hebrew) is the Septuagint version of Jeremiah. The
Septuagint books of Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, and Susanna (all in Hebrew) and the letter
of Jeremiah and Psalm 151 (both in Greek) were all found at the Qumran library which
closed down circa 68 CE. That date assures that no Christian elements appear in those works.

A timeline relating to the Septuagint:

code:

 
  c280 BCE  Septuagint - Pentateuch;                         Jewish 
  c180 BCE  Septuagint - completed with N"K and Apocrypha;   Jewish 
  c 20 CE   Philo      - the "pearl" of Alexandrian Jewry 
  c 68 CE   Qumran     - library/copyshop shutdown;          Jewish 
  c127 CE   Aquila     - complete TN"K;                      Jewish 
  c240 CE   Origen     - Hexapla;                            Christian

Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :

A timeline relating to the Septuagint:

code:

 
  c280 BCE  Septuagint - Pentateuch;                         Jewish 
  c180 BCE  Septuagint - completed with N"K and Apocrypha;   Jewish 
  c 20 CE   Philo      - the "pearl" of Alexandrian Jewry 
  c 68 CE   Qumran     - library/copyshop shutdown;          Jewish 
  c127 CE   Aquila     - complete TN"K;                      Jewish 
  c240 CE   Origen     - Hexapla;                            Christian

A list of the extra-Pentateuch books in the Septuagint:

IHSOUS NAUH Joshua, the son of Nun
KRITAI Judges

ROUQ Ruth

BASILEIWN A Kings I. (1 Samuel)
BASILEIWN B Kings II. (2 Samuel)
BASILEIWN G Kings III. (1 Kings)
BASILEIWN D Kings IV. (2 Kings)

PARALEIPOMENWN A Chronicles I.
PARALEIPOMENWN B Chronicles II.

ESDRAS A Esdras I.

ESDRAS B Esdras II. (Ezra)
NEEMIAS Nehemiah
ESQHR Esther

IOUDIQ Judith

TWBIT Tobit

MAKKABAIWN A I. Maccabees
MAKKABAIWN B II. Maccabees
MAKKABAIWN G III. Maccabees
MAKKABAIWN D IV. Maccabees

YALMOI Psalms

PROSEUXH MANASSH Prayer of Manasseh

PAROIMIAI Proverbs
EKKAHSIASTHS Ecclesiastes
ASMA Song of Solomon
IWB Job

SOFIA SALWMWN Wisdom of Solomon
SOFIA SEIRAX Wisdom of the Son of Sirach

WSHE Hosea
IWHL Joel
AMWS Amos
OBDIOU Obadiah
IWNAS Jonah
MIXAIAS Micah
NAOUM Nahum
AMBAKOUM Habakkuk
SOFONIAS Zephaniah
AGGAIOS Haggai
ZAXARIAS Zechariah
MALAXIAS Malachi
HSAIAS Isaiah
IEREMIAS Jeremiah

BAROUX Baruch
QRHNOI Lamentations of Jeremiah
EPISTOLH IEREMIOU Epistle of Jeremiah

IESEKIHL Ezekiel

DANIHL Daniel

TWN TRIWN PAIDWN AINESIS Song of the Three Children
SWSANNA Susanna
BHL KAI DRAKWN Bel and the Dragon

Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :

Septuagint related reply in a Dead Sea Scrolls discussion (same year).

=-=-=-=

Bob
I probably won't have much to contribute to the discussion
but I'll try to give my thoughts on your questions here now.
A perusal of any non-polemic scholarly books, --without an
agenda or religious bias-- about the DSS will verify what I
write below.

THE SIGNIFICANCE -
A weighty question but a bit vague to me. Significance in
precise relation to what? That might narrow it down to a
few points I could reply to. If you examine an inventory
or catalog of the DSS you find many scrolls unconcerned
with TN"K. There are pseudipigraha, a "warehouse" record,
sectarian manuals, etc.

POINT OF THE DDS -
The scrolls of Qumran are just part of a repository. They're
more extensive than the Masada repository. The DSS have
Torah and TN"K versions that agree with at least 3 "schools,"
the Masoretic, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan. The point
is the DSS are a collection not an attempt to define what text
is authentic or authorized. The DSS allows us to see the
variety of Jewish thought during the time the sectarian shop
at Qumran was open and in operation, the last centuries of
the 2nd Temple era.

COUNTERING THE DSS -
I don't think what I wrote counters anything except the mistaken
notion that one set of Torah/TN"K texts found at Qumran, and a
minority text at that, prove that a "proto-Masoretic" didn't exist
at the time. The vast majority of Torah/TN"K texts of Qumran are
infact supportive of the Masoretic.

A minority of such texts are in support of the Septuagint or are
actually copies of the Septuagint.

A minority of such texts are in support of a "proto-Samaritan."
There is even a large minority of Torah/TN"K texts from Qumran
that agree with neither the Septuagint, Samaritan, nor Masoretic
but are unique to the DSS collection. (Josephus gives a verse or
two from Samuel found only in the DSS.)

All the best

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Anti-missionary and Messianic Judaism Exposed
YAHOO!lists. All rights reserved