[B-Greek] How Markos reads the LXX (was future indicative inJonah 1:11 (Joseph Justiss)

Jack Kilmon jkilmon at historian.net
Sat May 21 09:39:50 EDT 2011



-----Original Message----- 
From: Albert Pietersma
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 10:52 PM
To: Mark Lightman
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] How Markos reads the LXX (was future indicative 
inJonah 1:11 (Joseph Justiss)

Mark,
If  you have in mind that we must read the Greek of the LXX in terms
of the Greek language of the period, I couldn't agree more and can
only wish that more scholars (including Septuagint scholars) would do
the same.  Though at times one may turn to the source language to
arbitrate between existing senses of Greek words, at no point ought
one superimpose a Hebrew sense on a Greek word simply because Hebrew X
happens to be paired with Greek Y in translation.


JK]  I have been following this thread and I am not sure I am getting the 
sense of this so I need your help on this.  The LXX was a translation of 
Early Biblical Hebrew (EBH) texts (the Pentateuch) in the Greek of the 3rd 
century BCE in use in the ANE.  Christians refer to any Greek translations 
of the remaining Navi'im and Ketuvim as "Septuagint" but they are more 
accurately called "Old Greek" translations (Cross) done over another two or 
three centuries from variant Hebrew and Aramaic (Daniel) exemplar texts and 
they append the books of the New Testament, all authored in Greek of varying 
competency from the 70's CE to 150 CE some of which is also translational 
Greek from Hebrew LXX  EBH or LBH texts and Aramaic sources for the Jesus 
materials.  I am not quite grasping how the source language can be ignored 
in an attempt to understand the sense of the Greek, particularly when a text 
like Mark was written by someone whose first language was Aramaic and whose 
Greek demonstrates Aramaic syntax and structure.  Doesn't the Semitic sense 
of a word or phrase  being translated assist in understanding the Greek 
translation?  Are you talking about a Greek for Greek's sake only method 
regardless of original source material sense and content?

BIBLICAL Greek, is, after all, a translational Greek of Semitic materials, 
is it not?

Best,

Jack

Jack Kilmon
San Antonio, TX 



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