[B-Greek] The value of the LXX

Hugh Donohoe Jr. justusjcmylord at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 10 17:28:26 EST 2008


Your response greatly touched upon the
theological/cultural significance of the LXX. Cultural
values could be behind the negligence of LXX studies
historically. I was thinking that Protestantism and
Catholicism in essence have embraced somewhat Jerome's
value system of the 'Hebrew veritas'. The Augustinian
value system of seeing the LXX as the 'inspired'
'Bible of the apostles' has only been kept alive in
the Orthodox tradition. Being that the scholarship of
Biblical Greek from the Reformation onward was
dominated for several hundred years by Protestantism.
Catholicism in the last century has been rising to the
occasion. As Pelikan pointed out, and he is entitled
to since he became Orthodox, Orthodox scholarship has
lagged behind the others historically. So maybe this
(a potentially anachronistic account) can explain the
neglect of the LXX as a result of scholastic
attitudes/values. In summary, the Orthodox church
which maintains the value system Carl touched upon,
has not been a major player in biblical scholarship
until more recently.

I know if dialog continues upon the road I am
traveling here, it will go outside the scope of this
forum. I only mention this because Carl's comments
touched upon a larger issue of why the LXX is
considered important scholastically. So please respond
to me offline if your response deviates any farther
than I have already traveled.

ex amino

Hugh Donahue


Carl wrote:
Well, at least it's really a question about the Greek
Bible and  
therefore about Biblical Greek, isn't it? And I think
that's not the  
whole answer, but it's a serious part of the answer:
for Greek- 
speaking believers in the first centuries of
Christianity the LXX was  
the OT scripture, it is what they understood by GRAFH
or GRAFAI. My  
understanding, and I trust that someone will correct
me on this point  
if I'm wrong, is that early Greek-speaking believers
did not regard  
the LXX as a translation and therefore a text only
secondary to and  
dependent upon the Hebrew text of the Law and
Prophets, but rather it  
was the Biblical text they knew and cited and from
which they worked  
out their theological understanding(s) of the faith.
While there are  
exceptions, for the most part the OT text that is
cited within the NT  
corpus is drawn from the LXX, not directly converted
into Greek from  
the Hebrew. To the extent that what I've written is
true, I think we'd
  
have to say that the LXX was THE BIBLE for
Greek-speaking Christians  
in the early centuries -- and it was the
Greek-speaking Christians  
(orthodox or heterodox or both) who played the leading
role in the  
early centuries in shaping the initial normative
structure of the  
Christian faith -- not, perhaps, the enduring
normative structure, but
  
the jumping-off point for later developments. If those
propositions  
are true, then I think that's enough reason for the
LXX to hold a  
prominent place in the study of ancient and biblical
Greek.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
(Retired)




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