[B-Greek] LXX question, probably for Drs. Pietersma or Buth??

Harold Holmyard hholmyard3 at earthlink.net
Sun Jul 13 17:21:50 EDT 2008


Hi, Mitch,

Sorry about the copy to your home address.


> I was told that no "true" Jew ("true" Jew was his term) of the first century would have quoted from the LXX as the Christian-"Jews" did. A "true" Jew would have only quoted from a Hebrew text, according to this individual I heard speak last night. He further argued that the LXX was primarily used by Christians in the first century, which was another reason the "true" Jew avoided the LXX. To him, the LXX was "taken over as" the Christian's OT. I'm not qualified to comment on this but it seems to run counter to what little I have read in this area. That is certainly not the general impression I have, but I am open to further confirmation by noted authorities.
>
> I don't think his argument concerned pre-Christian usage of the LXX. That is, I think he said the "true" Jews used the LXX before the time of Jesus. The impression I got was that the "exclusive" use of the LXX by Christians forced the Jews to abandon the Greek OT and thereby further separate themselves from the Christian-"Jews" by only authorizing and recognizing usage of and quotes from a Hebrew source.
>
> Can you confirm or deny this?
>   

HH: That seems to have happened 
eventually, but even after the time of
Jesus the Jews were still using the 
Septuagint because Josephus ((37 CE
– sometime after 100 CE) did, as did 
Philo (20 BCE - 50 CE). Here is a
comment about Josephus's work Antiquities:
http://www.studylight.org/his/bc/wfj/

Antiquities of the Jews
The "Antiquities of the Jews" ("Jewish 
Archeology") is a comprehensive
history of the Jewish people from the 
beginnings of Biblical history to
the outbreak of the war in 66 A.D., in 
twenty books, after the model of
the Romaike archaiologia of Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus. It was completed
in the thirteenth year of Domitian, 
93-94 A.D. For the Biblical period
(books 1 and 11) Josephus draws almost 
exclusively from the Bible in the
Septuagint version, but he modifies the 
Biblical story and supplements
it by legends, following current traditions.

HH: The following is a quote from a 
Septuagint website that broadly
confirms what you were told, but without 
trying to narrowly pinpoint dates:
http://www.kalvesmaki.com/LXX/

The earliest, and best known, source for 
the story of the Septuagint is
the Letter of Aristeas, a lengthy 
document that recalls how Ptolemy
(Philadelphus II [285–247 BCE]), 
desiring to augment his library in
Alexandria, Egypt, commissioned a 
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures
into Greek. Ptolemy wrote to the chief 
priest, Eleazar, in Jerusalem,
and arranged for six translators from 
each of the twelve tribes of
Israel. The seventy-two (altered in a 
few later versions to seventy or
seventy-five) translators arrived in 
Egypt to Ptolemy's gracious
hospitality, and translated the Torah 
(also called the Pentateuch: the
first five books of the Hebrew 
Scriptures) in seventy-two days. Although
opinions as to when this occurred 
differ, 282 BCE is a commonly received
date.

Philo of Alexandria (fl. 1st c CE) 
confirms that only the Torah was
commissioned to be translated, and some 
modern scholars have concurred,
noting a kind of consistency in the 
translation style of the Greek
Penteteuch. Over the course of the three 
centuries following Ptolemy's
project, however, other books of the 
Hebrew Scriptures were translated
into Greek. It is not altogether clear 
which book was translated when,
and in what locale. It seems that 
sometimes a Hebrew book was translated
more than once, or that a particular 
Greek translation was revised. In
other cases, a work was composed afresh 
in Greek, yet was included in
subsequent collections of the 
Scriptures. By observing technical terms
and translation styles, by comparing the 
Greek versions to the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and by comparing them to 
Hellenistic literature, scholars are
in the process of stitching together an 
elusive history of the
translations that eventually found their 
way into collections.

By Philo's time the memory of the 
seventy-two translators was vibrant,
an important part of Jewish life in 
Alexandria (Philo, Life of Moses
2.25–44). Pilgrims, both Jews and 
Gentiles, celebrated a yearly festival
on the island where they conducted their 
work. The celebrity of the
Septuagint and its translators remained 
strong in Christianity. The
earliest Christian references to the 
translation, from the mid-second
century (SS Justin Martyr and Irenaeus), 
credit the entire Old Testament
in Greek, whether originally written in 
Hebrew or not, to the
seventy-two. Thus Christians conflated 
the Septuagint with their Old
Testament canon (a canon that included 
the so-called apocrypha). For
their part, Jewish rabbis, particularly 
Pharisees, reacted to the
Christian appropriation of the 
Septuagint by producing fresh
translations of their Scriptures (e.g., 
Aquila, in 128 CE, or Symmachus
in the late 2d c. CE), and discouraging 
the use of the Septuagint. By
the second century Christian and Jewish 
leaders had cemented their
position on the form and character of 
the Scriptures. By and large,
Christians held to the peculiar, 
prophetic character of their
Septuagint, and Jews rejected it.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard







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