[B-Greek] LXX Exodus 20:16

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Fri Apr 23 21:37:27 EDT 2004


While it is true, as Harold notes, that the redundancy, strictly 
speaking, is not due to the Hebrew, it nevertheless  is occasioned by 
the Hebrew. Note that quantitatively the Greek equals the Hebrew. Of 
course, G could have used APOKRINOMAI to translate (NH, as he does 
several times elsewhere, but that would have resulted in very odd 
Greek. Though some other translators would not have shied away from it 
for this reason, the Exodus translator is not quite as set on 
one-to-one equivalence. Thus he uses a contextually suitable verb 
(PsEUDOMARTUREW).  As a result he no longer had semantic need for  
MARTURIAN PsEUDH, but had he not used it the Greek would quantitatively 
  have been out of sync with the Hebrew; and that for most LXX 
translators was more serious than semantic redundancy.
Just keep your eyes peeled for such items and you'll see plenty of them 
in the LXX. Just think of the footstool under the feet (Ps 98[99]:5)
Al
On Apr 23, 2004, at 8:24 PM, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:

> Dear Shawn,
>
>> LXX Exodus 20:16
>>
>> OU YEUDOMARTURHSEIS KATA TOU PLHSION SOU MARTURIAN YEUDH.
>>
>> This is typically rendered as "you shall not bear false testimony 
>> against your neighbor."  The MARTURIAN YEUDH at the end of the verse 
>> seems either redundant or out of place to me as OU YEUDOMARTURHSEIS 
>> means "you shall/will not bear false testimony."
>>
>> Does the inclusion of the MARTURIAN YEUDH add or change something in 
>> the meaning?
>>
>> In translating this verse, I translated it as "You will/shall not 
>> falsely testify false testimony against your neighbor."  Does this 
>> translation capture the *full* translation or am I off somewhere.
>>
>> Any help or insight into this would be appreciated.  Thank you.
>
>
> HH: I was going to say that the Greek probably reflected redundancy in 
> the Hebrew, but it does not. However, the translator was most probably 
> a Jew who knew Hebrew. In Hebrew such redundancy is common and is 
> called a cognate accusative. The verb and its object stem from the 
> same root. So a literal translation of a clause might be: You shall 
> not lie lies. That's the way Hebrew is regularly, even though it does 
> not happen to be that way at Exod  20:16. The LXX sometimes uses Greek 
> that matches Hebrew style and syntax, so maybe the translator did that 
> here.
>
> 						Yours,
> 						Harold Holmyard
>
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—
Albert Pietersma
Professor of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto
Home: 21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm




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