Parallelism in Hab. 3:12 LXX
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Jan 28 06:38:16 EST 2000
If I read you rightly, Clay, you're protesting more against the manner of
translating that seems to you to destroy the Hebrew poetic parallelism
rather than offering a comment about the Greek text as such. I find the
phrasing of EN APEILHi and EN QUMWi itself interesting. You speak of the
phrases as describing "the state of the agent and/or some quality of the
action," and while that's clearly the case, I think there's a traditional
grammatical category of the instrumental dative at work here, what is
normally called a "dative of manner." What is "odd" is use of the
preposition EN with these datives of "manner"; I don't think I've seen this
before (which doesn't mean much, considering that I've not read much of the
OT prophetic corpus in the LXX, although I've read a lot in the Pentateuch
and historical books in the LXX. I haven't really checked it yet, but I
wonder whether EN with an instrumental dative of manner is ever found in
classical Attic. Well, yes, here's what LSJ at Perseus has:
====================
III. OF THE INSTRUMENT, MEANS or MANNER, en puri prêsantes Hom. Il. 7.429;
dêsai eni desmôi au=Hom. Il. 5.386, cf. Hom. Od. 12.54, etc.; but in most
cases the orig. sense may be traced, to put in the fire and burn, infetters
and bind, etc.; so en ponois damenta Aesch. PB 425 (lyr.); ezeuxa prôtos en
zugoisi knôdala IBID=au=Aesch. PB 462; ergon en kubois Arês krinei
IDEM=Aesch. Seven 414; also en ophthalmoisin or en ommasin horasthai,
idesthai, to see with or before one's eyes, i.e. have the object in one's
eye, Hom. Il. 3.306, Hom. Od. 10.385, etc.; en te têi opsei diagignôskein
kai en têi akoêi Plat. Theaet. 206a; also en ôsi nômôn ornithas Aesch.
Seven 25; also en litais by prayers, Soph. Phil. 60; en dolôi by deceit,
IBID=au=Soph. Phil. 102; en logois by words, Aesch. Lib. 613 (lyr.);
apekteinan en têi prophasei tautêi Lys. 13.12, cf. Antiph. 5.59; psauein en
kertomiois glôssais Soph. Ant. 961 (lyr.); en tois homoiois nomois
poiêsantes tas kriseis Thuc. 1.77; esp. with Verbs of showing, sêmainein en
hierois kai oiônois Xen. Cyrop. 8.7.3; ta prachthenta . . en . . epistolais
iste ye know by letters, Thuc. 7.11; en têide rhabdôi panta poiêseis
Ezek.Exag.132, cf. ti=Ezek. PMag.Osl.1.108.
=====================
At any rate the post-Homeric examples (and even the Homeric, for that
matter) show usage pretty closely parallel with those you've cited in Hab
3:12--so I guess there really is nothing distinctively Hellenistic about
it, although it doesn't seem all that common a usage either.
As for the way it's translated, this may be more a matter of taste; it
seems to me that the parallelism is pretty clearly there, even if one is
rendered as "by threatening" and the other "in anger." I too would really
prefer using "with" in both instances, and I would guess, without having
checked the Hebrew, that one would find BE or B' in both instances there.
So I agree with you that the translation as "with a threat, with wrath" is
more aesthetically satisfying, but I don't really think the parallelism of
sense is lost in the other version.
At 9:44 PM -0800 1/27/00, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>In Hab 3:12 MT the two clauses appear to be parallel both syntactically
>and semantically. By this I mean the parallelism is not just confined to
>formal elements but also appears at the level of meaning.
>
>(Note: The LXX in this verse differs from the MT at several points but
>that has little or no bearing on my question.)
>
>Hab 3:12 LXX (Rahlfs) reads:
>
>EN APEILHi OLIGWSEIS GHN
> KAI
>EN QUMWi KATAXEIS EQNH
>
>I have seen a recent private translation of Hab 3:12 LXX where EN
>APEILHi is rendered as the means by which the action of the verb is
>accomplished and EN QUMWi is rendered as the state in which the agent
>performs the action.
>
>EN APEILHi is rendered "by threatening"
>EN QUMWi is rendered "in anger"
>
>This rendering seems to negate the semantic parallelism. I suspect that
>lexical considerations were active in making this rendering. APEILH is
>often found with the meaning "threat." However LEH (vol 2. page 46)
>suggests "anger" as the best gloss for this context. Also LEH cites
> Isa 54:9 as an example in the LXX where APEILH should be rendered
>"anger."
>
>I noticed that Charles Thomson in his now ancient translation of the LXX
>preserves the semantic parallelism:
>
> Charles Thomson's Rendering:
>
>EN APEILHi is rendered "with a threat"
>EN QUMWi is rendered "with wrath"
>
>I would like to suggest that both of these clauses use the EN + dative
>to describe the state of the agent and/or some quality of the action. I
>would render them with the ambiguous English preposition "in" which
>would allow the reader to decide on one of several semantic
>instantiations.
>
>EN APEILHi "in anger"
>EN QUMWi "in fury"
>
>I am not as concerned about how this parallel structure is glossed as I
>am with preserving the semantic level of the parallelism. If anyone can
>come up with arguments for abandoning the semantic level of the
>parallelism I would like to hear them.
>
>
>--
>Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
>Three Tree Point
>P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
>
>
>---
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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