[B-Greek] LXX orthography

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Tue Mar 4 15:48:58 EST 2003


Dear Rodney,
Yes, diacritics on proper nouns in Septuagint editions are a bit of a mess, and
I am not party to all the details of editorial development on that front. But
this is how I see it.
Names in the LXX are essentially of three types:
1. Cultural borrowings, e.g. Hebrew Mizraim > Aiguptos
2. Inflected transcriptions, e.g Yehudah > Ioudas
3. Transcriptions, e.g. Dauid > Dauid.

Category 1. is of course straightforward and therefore needs no comment: since
it is a Greek word it gets conventional diacritics. Rahlfs leaves both 2 and 3
without diacritics except in rare cases where the name is judged to be
virtually Greek, e.g. MWUSHS. Ziegler (and Hanhart1 in part) assign breathings
to 2, when applicable, but not accents. Wevers (and Hanhart2; as well as Swete)
assigns full diacritics to both 2 and 3.

There is  a certain logic to the evolution, since 2 are partially Semitic and
partially Greek, while 3. is Semitic only. Yet, since both categories were made
part of Greek by virtue of translation, they presumably were said out loud, in
a predominently oral culture. Thus when the Hebrew has an initial aspirate, the
Greek no doubt had it too. When the Hebrew had initial non-aspirate one need
not mark anything but in conventional Greek it was also marked. As for the
(stress) accent? Place it where the Hebrew places it.

As for your specific questions:
1. Their non-Greek-ness. For the most part transcriptions and inflected
transcriptions were created by the translation effort.
2. Current practice is to assign all diacritics except for the breathings of
medial double Rho. Initial Rho, however, is marked with a rough breathing.
Interestingly, in the name you cite, one has as it were one part Semitic (the
root word) and two parts Greek (gentilic suffix + inflection)
3. Different scholars different answers. Margolis still contains a lot of good
information but a recent study by Van den Hartog concluded that the Rahlfs text
is superior. Personally I own only part 5.
Al





bgreek at ntresources.com wrote:

> As I've been working through various LXX texts this semester, I've observed
> that there is a fair bit of divergence in the orthography of the various
> printed editions of the LXX--more so that in the NT. Rahlfs ed., e.g., never
> prints breathing marks (& rarely accents) for proper names. The Göttingen
> edition uses both breathing marks and accents. Other texts that I've checked
> (Swete, Cambridge LXX, etc.) have other variations.
>
> I have three questions:
> 1. Was there some particular factor that prompted Rahlfs to omit them?
> 2. What is currently preferred preference for such words as )AMORRAI/WN
> (Josh. 10:6)? The Göttingen edition isn't available for Josh., and I see
> some texts that print this with two breathing marks, smooth over the first
> rho, rough over the second (which I think looks rather odd).
>
> 3. (Unrelated to orthography): I just ran across Margolis' part 5 of Joshua
> in the library this afternoon. (We apparently don't have pts. 1-4.) Is this
> work still of major significance for LXX studies in Joshua? I suspect they
> are scarce and expensive on the used market, but if it's of value, I'd
> rather see a complete set on the shelf.
>
> ====================================================
> Rodney J. Decker, Th.D., Associate Prof/NT
> Baptist Bible Seminary, Clarks Summit, PA,USA
> NTResources.com  PURL: purl.oclc.org/NT_Resources/
> Email: <rdecker> at <NTResources.com>
> ====================================================
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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--
Albert Pietersma
Dept of Near&Middle Eastern Civilizations
4 Bancroft Avenue
University of Toronto
Toronto M5S 1C1
albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
homepage http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~pietersm/




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