[B-Greek] Suggest order for reading the LXX

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Sun Mar 14 22:55:41 EST 2004


Dear Carl,
I have suggested beginning with the Abraham story at Gen 11.27 but the 
Joseph story is certainly  equally good. As a follow-up one might then 
read Testament of Joseph, Joseph and Asseneth, and Josephus' 
paraphrase.
While Ruth is a good yarn it also contains some really painful 
translationese. The same can be said about Samuel-Kings. It seems to me 
one does not want to develop the impression that Septuagintal is 
something TOTALLY other.
  Another good text is the BA text of Tobit. For someone only used to 
'biblical' Greek  2 Macc is a bit of a struggle though well worth the 
effort. It is bona fide Hellenistic literature of rhetorical variety. 
To ease into it one might first read 1 Macc which tells a lot of the 
same story but in syntactically  simpler (translation Greek) style.
Al
On Mar 14, 2004, at 10:35 PM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> At 10:15 PM -0500 3/14/04, Polycarp66 at aol.com wrote:
>> In a message dated 3/14/2004 9:34:49 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>> Hasvedt at aol.com writes:
>> Can anyone provide a suggested list of books to read in the LXX 
>> beginning
>> with the easiest in terms of vocabulary and syntax for someone who 
>> has been
>> reading the GNT for several years?
>> _________
>>
>> You might try Ruth.  Genesis would probably not pose too much of a 
>> problem.
>> Other than that, I haven't given much thought to what might be 
>> easiest since I
>> generally read the OT in Hebrew and only refer to sections in the LXX 
>> when I
>> want to clarify a usage in the NT.  Possibly some of the historical 
>> books such
>> as Samuel.
>
> The collection in Conybeare and Stock is actually pretty good--it 
> begins
> with Genesis--and is available in a free download from TextKit at:
>
> 	http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/144/author_id/65/
>
> We ought to get Al Pietersma's perspective on this question; I'd 
> suggest
> starting with the Joseph narrative in Genesis and moving on to other
> narrative before going to poetry. For some good high-style literary 
> Greek,
> try 2 Maccabees.
> -- 
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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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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