Invitation to the Septuagint by Karen H. Jobes, Moises Silva (Baker Book House) Until now there has been no comprehensive, yet "user-friendly" introduction to the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament). Most scholarly works presuppose a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek as well as a familiarity with Septuagint studies. Karen Jobes and Moisés Silva, however, have written a primer that will be useful to students who are just beginning to study the Septuagint as well as to seasoned scholars.

The authors explore themes such as the history of the Septuagint, the various versions available, its importance for biblical studies, and the current state of research. Their work moves from basic to more advanced issues and provides a practical and valuable introduction that will be warmly welcomed by those looking for a guide to the Septuagint, including both scholars and students.

As the Bible of Hellenistic Judaism and of the early church, the Septuagint has long been important to biblical scholarship as an aid for interpreting both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament. Until now, however, no user-friendly introduction to the Septuagint has been available. Previous volumes presupposed a great deal of prior knowledge about the scholarly discussions that had been going on for decades. Writing for beginning students and seasoned scholars alike, Karen Jobes and Moisés Silva give the necessary background and provide a primer that is both accessible and comprehensive. As it moves from basic introductory matters to more advanced issues, Invitation to the Septuagint:

·        clarifies the Septuagint's importance for the field of biblical studies

·        reviews the history of early Greek versions of the Bible

·        introduces the current printed editions of the Septuagint 

·        provides explanatory notes on selected Septuagint passages

surveys the present state of Septuagint research This practical resource will undoubtedly become the standard introduction for those seeking a clear and accessible guide to the study of the Septuagint.
 
A comprehensive, accessible primer to the Septuagint Jobes and Silva have produced the first genuine introduction to the Septuagint. The timing of its appearance is fortuitous, since at least half a dozen translations of the Greek into modern languages are currently in progress-a clear testimony to wide-spread interest. The book is well organized; its scholarship is very informed and even handed. There is no doubt that the authors have discovered a need in biblical studies and have filled it superbly. -Albert Pietersma, University of Toronto A very inviting book for anyone wanting to learn about the Septuagint, not only those for whom this is a first introduction but also those who know their way in this area. -Emanuel Tov, Hebrew University This book makes a very complex subject understandable and is very fitting for students of the Bible, theologians, philologists, and historians. -Natalio Fernández Marcos, CSIC, University of Madrid This book provides up-to-date information concerning the making, transmission, and significance of the Greek Septuagint, the first translation of the Hebrew Bible. Students and pastors alike will profit from the research of Jobes and Silva, presented in clear and understandable form. -Bruce M. Metzger, Princeton Theological Seminary Invitation to the Septuagint answers the crying need for an up-to-date, well-informed introduction to the Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible. The authors have pitched the work just right for students tenderfooting their way into biblical scholarship. I dare say, though, that many a seasoned scholar who often uses the Septuagint will learn much to improve that use and prevent misuse. Here is a volume not to be missed-good for use as a textbook and good for continuing use as a reference. -Robert H. Gundry, Westmont College

Karen H. Jobes (Ph.D., Westminster Theological Seminary) is associate professor of New Testament at Westmont College in Santa Barbara , California . Moisés Silva (Ph.D., University of Manchester ) is the Mary F. Rockefeller Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton , Massachusetts .

The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research by R. Timothy McLay (Eerdmans) Too often the Septuagint is misunderstood or, worse, ignored in New Testament studies. In this book R. Timothy McLay makes a sustained argument for the influence of the Greek Jewish Scriptures on the New Testament and offers basic principles for bridging the research gap between these two critical texts.

McLay explains the use of the Septuagint in the New Testament by looking in depth at actual New Testament citations of the Jewish Scriptures. This work reveals the true extent of the Septuagint’s impact on the text and theology of the New Testament. Indeed, given the textual diversity that existed during the first century, the Jewish Scriptures as they were known, read, and interpreted in the Greek language provided the basis for much, if not most, of the interpretive context of the New Testament writers.

Complete with English translations, a glossary of terms, an extensive bibliography, and helpful indexes, this book will give readers a new appreciation of the Septuagint as an important tool for interpreting the New Testament.  

A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint. Chiefly of the Pentateuch and the Twelve Prophets by Muraoka Takamitsu (Peeters) This is a substantially expanded version of a lexicon published in 1993 dealing with the Twelve Prophets. This new edition fully incorporates the data relating to the Pentateuch, the centrepiece of the Septuagint. Some 4.500 lexemes (the vocabulary of the New Testament Greek has a little over 5.000 lexemes). Much data from outside the Pentateuch and Twelve Prophets incorporated. Some 1.500 lexemes complete for the entire Septuagint. Many of these do not occur in the Pentateuch nor in the Twelve Prophets, but occur in books for which the Gottingen edition is available. For about 60% of the 4.500+ headwords all the passages occurring in the corpus are either quoted or mentioned. Based on the critically established Gottingen edition of the Septuagint. A fully fledged lexicon, not a glossary merely listing translation equivalents in English. Important lexicographical data such as synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, distinction between literal and figurative, combinations with prepositions, noun cases, syntagmatic information such as what kind of direct or indirect objects a given verb takes, what kind of nouns a given adjective is used with, and much more information abundantly presented and illustrated with quotes, mostly translated. High-frequency lexemes such as prepositions and conjunctions fully analysed. Data on contemporary Koine and Jewish Greek including the New Testament taken into account. Morphological information provided: various tenses of verbs, genitive forms of nouns etc. Hebrew/Aramaic words which a given Greek headword is used to translate listed with frequency counts. Substantive references to the current scientific literature. An indispensable tool for students of the Septuagint, the New Testament, Hellenistic Judaism, and the Greek language.

There is now hardly any need to justify the compiling of a Septuagint lexicon. The need of a mod­em scientific Septuagint lexicon has been justly recognised by many leading scholars and by the Inter­national Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies.' Since one could hardly disagree with Schurer, who says: "Die Grundlage aller judisch-hellenistischen Bildung ist die alte anonyme griechische Ubersetzung der heiligen Schriften, die unter dem Namen der Septuaginta .. bekannt and durch die Uberlieferung der christlichen Kirche uns vollstandig erhalten ist. Ohne sie ist das hellenistische Judentum ebenso wenig denkbar, wie die evangelische Kirche Deutschlands ohne Luthers deutsche Bibelubersetzung", one wonders how much longer the serious scientific study of this document could be contemplated without the proper tools of the trade such as a dictionary and grammar. Whatever merits one may still accord to Schleusner's justly famous Lexicon', there is not a shadow of doubt that it needs to be superseded. Apart from the fundamental fact that his dictionary is not a dictionary in the usual sense of the term, but rather a collection of philological notes made from the perspective of the Hebrews word or words which a given Greek word translates in the Septuagint, the lexicon was pub­lished decades before the discovery of Greek papyri and inscriptions, which revolutionised our per­ception of the nature of the language of the Greek Bible. The importance of the Septuagint does not lie merely in its value for historians of Early Judaism, but also in the fact that it embodies quite a sizeable amount of texts witnessing to Hellenistic, Koine Greek. Some of the current lexica such as Liddell, Scott and Jones, and Bauer do make fairly frequent references to the Septuagint, but their treatment, by universal agreement, leaves much to be desired.' Furthermore, the last several decades have wit­nessed remarkable revived interests in the Septuagint, not only on the part of scholars interested in the history of the text of the Hebrew Bible, but also those who study the Septuagint as a Greek text with its own interests and perspectives, not necessarily as a translated text. All these considerations make it imperative that we have an up-to-date and scientific dictionary of the Septuagint. It was against this background that in the mid eighties I set out, together with Dr J.A.L. Lee, of Sydney University, in the compiling of a lexicon of the Septuagint of the Twelve Prophets.

The present dictionary covers all of the Pentateuch and the Twelve Prophets. However, when words occurring in the Pentateuch and the Twelve Prophets also occur outside that corpus but not too frequently, it was considered necessary and desirable to cover those latter cases as well, thus making those entries complete for the entire Septuagint.

The Septuagint can be approached from a variety of angles, and this is true even when one's inter­ests are basically those of a lexicographer. Focusing for the moment on those parts of the Septuagint which are a translation from a Semitic original - and they form the bulk of the Septuagint - a Sep­tuagint lexicographer must ask himself a series of questions: what does he understand by the meaning or usage of a given Septuagint Greek word or form?, what significance is to be attached to the Semitic text behind the translation?, what is he going to do when the Greek text reads rather oddly or makes no good sense at all?, and so on. These are some of the complexities arising from the fact that here we are dealing with a translated text, which adds a third dimension, that of translator in addition to the original author and the reader of the resultant translation12. If one is, in contrast, to define the meaning of a word in an original composition, one would attempt to determine what its author presumably meant and had in mind. However, the translator's intention is something rather elusive and not easy to comprehend with confidence. Reference to the original text, even if one is reasonably certain as to what the translator's text (Vorlage) read, does not necessarily remove all ambiguity. This is not to speak of the possibility, and even the likelihood, that the translator may have found the meaning of the Hebrew text obscure, totally unintelligible or susceptible of more than one interpretation, just as we do today. Following a series of exploratory studies and debates13, we have come to the conclusion that we had best read the Septuagint as a Greek document and try to find out what sense a reader in the last

few centuries before the turn of the era who was ignorant of Hebrew or Aramaic might have made of the translation, although we did compare the two texts all along. Thus we agree, for instance, with M. Harl14, who at Ho 13.8 assigns the latter word the meaning `famished,' thus `a hungry bear,' despite the underlying Hebrew word for `bereaved, robbed of cubs."'

It is in line with this approach that we consider it justifiable and useful to refer, where appropriate, to daughter versions based on the Septuagint on the one hand, and Greek patristic commentaries on the Septuagint on the other, although we are not particularly concerned with specifically Christian inter­pretation necessarily embedded in those daughter versions and commentaries, for our basic starting point is the Septuagint as a document of Hellenistic Judaism.

The nature of the Septuagint Greek has been debated for quite some time. Since we do not believe that this is the appropriate place for engaging with that debate, we would simply like to state our posi­tion that we regard the language of the Septuagint to be a genuine representative of the contemporary Greek, that is to say, the Greek of the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods, though necessarily influ­enced by the grammar and usage of Aramaic and Hebrew from which the bulk of the Septuagint was translated, the nature and degree of that influence varying from translator to translator and from ques­tion to question.'

Whilst every effort has been made to consult and assimilate the standard works such as Preisigke's Worterbuch, Moulton and Miligan's Vocabulary, the series New Documents, and many other studies, it has not proved practicable to comb through more recent publications of Greek papyri and inscriptions the results of which have not yet been fully incorporated into the standard reference works and other studies which have been consulted by us. See also our remark below (under Layout) on the symbol (*).

As we believe in the basic tenet of the Lagardian Ur-Septuaginta hypothesis, we submit that the fruits of study and work undertaken along that line should be fully utilised. We have thus adopted as our textual basis the excellent critical edition prepared by R. Hanhart, W. Kappler, O. Munnich, A. Rahlfs, J.W. Wevers and J. Ziegler. We also like to add that those entries which are complete for the entire Septuagint mentioned above have been completed only when the Gottingen edition is already available for all the data concerned.

We do not believe that we are obliged to redo all of the detailed textcritical work already compe­tently undertaken by Ziegler and others for the Gottingen edition. Thus our lexicon is essentially based on the critical text as established by them. Only in a handful of places was it deemed justified to depart from their text, which is clearly indicated in the lexicon.  However, where variant readings (abbrevi­ated as "v.l.") recorded by Ziegler and others or even readings attested by no Greek manuscript but established by their own authority with "scripsi" as at Ho 12.6, for which the entire body of Greek manuscripts reads, and rightly so in our view, were judged to be of some relevance for determining the sense of a given Greek lexeme or its usage, they are duly mentioned: for examples of the former category. Finally, it goes without saying that tex­tual criticism and lexicography sometimes inform each other, and future students of the Septuagint may find in this lexicon something useful for their textcritical work."

Nor does our lexicon deal with data gathered in the second apparatus of the Gottingen edition, the so-called "Three" or Hexaplaric materials. In addition to the reason advanced above, these data are mostly fragmentary and remain at word level, which does not provide a sufficient basis for lexico­graphical work.

Our lexicon is meant to be a fully fledged lexicon; it provides as much information as considered necessary and desirable regarding the morphology, semantics, and the Semitic background. Thus it differs in nature and conception from two recent related publications, though both cover the entire Septuagint.

Following the model example of S.R. Driver, who was put in charge of the bane of any lexicogra­pher, the so-called particles such as prepositions and conjunctions for `BDB', we have given full attention to those short but highly versatile words, some of which, e.g. the prepositions, the definite article, the verb, occur even in our limited corpus with frustrating frequency, but play extremely important roles from the point of view of communication and language functioning. In some such cases the line between lexicography and grammar tends to become blurred.

Whilst not every scholar publicises details of how he works, we like to share this information with the reader so that our lexicon may be better understood and more effectively used, and also in the interest of the furtherance of our discipline.

Whereas we, like many other colleagues in the field, have made extensive and grateful use of the essential tool of every scholar interested in the Septuagint, namely Hatch and Redpath's concordance, and indeed we would rather doubt that we would have ever proceeded with the project but for this tool, we did not think it sound method to work from it, the main reason being that it does not provide enough context for serious lexicographical work. In order to determine the meaning of a word, one needs to read it at least in the whole sentence of which it forms a part. It is further axiomatic to see it in paradigmatic relationships, namely by taking into account synonymic, antonymic, or some other semantically associated word or words with which it occurs. This sort of essential infor­mation cannot, in most cases, be retrieved from the concordance. To illustrate, working from the con­cordance alone one would not notice two interesting points about the use of words in the Twelve Prophets: firstly, it occurs parallel to one term, and secondly, when it does so, the former is used in a question, and the latter in a reply to it. Thus we started from the actual text, the whole text. Actually we began with the book of Obadiah. Each word occurring in the book was studied in its full context. Excepting a relatively small number of lexemes occurring even in our limited corpus with considerable frequency, the entries for all the lexemes occurring in Obadiah were completed by studying at the same time all other passages in the remaining books of the corpus where those lexemes occur. Important to point out in this connection is that we tried to study a given lexeme in relation to another lexeme or lexemes which are semantically associated with it in one way or another. Without having a full inventory of all lexemes occurring in the Twelve Prophets it was not possible to start with fully mapped-out semantic fields of the whole vocabulary of our corpus. Such networks of relationship continued to be built up by taking note of semantically related lexemes used in conjunction with the lexeme under study. Thus when the book of Obadiah was finished, we had completed rather more entries than the number of lexemes actually occurring in the book. Those related words occurring out­side of Obadiah and our corpus were sought out with the help of HR. Proceeding in this manner book after book, we reached the last book of the corpus, Joel, when there were a rather small number of lex­emes still remaining to be studied. A handful of lexemes and passages which had not been registered by Hatch and Redpath as occurring in our corpus were also picked up on the way. Information on those relatively few, high-frequency lexemes kept being collected, and their entries were completed towards the end of the whole work.

A word is hardly ever used in isolation and on its own, but normally occurs in conjunction with another word or words. Such collocations help to establish the semantic `profile' of the word con­cerned. Two words which are closely related may not wholly share their `partners,' each thus gaining its individuality. Such information about collocations a given word enters provides important clues for defining its senses and determining its semantic `contours.' It concerns questions such as what sorts of adjective a given noun is qualified by or what sorts of nouns or nominal entities a given verb takes as its grammatical subject or object." In addition to these semantic collocations, the question of syntactic collocations is equally important: which case (genitive, dative or accusative) and which preposition a given verb governs...

The Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint: A Complete Parsing Guide by Bernard Alwyn Taylor (Zondervan) Too few tools are available to help the beginning student of the Septuagint, the oldest Greek version of the Old Testament, mostly written in koine, the amalgam of Greek dialects that replaced classical Greek under the Roman Empire. This resource is designed to help students gain a better understanding of the Greek text, parsing in alphabetical sequence every Greek This all-new analytical Greek lexicon is based on the critical Greek text (UBS3) and includes Goodrick / Kohlenberger numbers and new grammatical paradigms. This is a Lightning Source, Inc. print-on-demand title and can be ordered only from Spring Arbor Distributors by calling 800-395-5599. International Customers please call 615-793-5000 ext. 24882 or fax at 615-213-5720  

Translators As Storytellers: A Study in Septuagint Translation Technique by John A. Beck (Studies in Biblical Literature, Vol. 25: Peter Lang) In the third century B.C.E., translators began retelling the stories of the Hebrew Bible in Greek. The Septuagint was born but its analysis had just begun. To date, most Septuagint translation technique analysis has focused on the linguistic sensitivity of these translators, but there is more to storytelling than linguistics. Translators As Storytellers addresses the literary sensitivity of the translators, thus, expanding the tradition of translation technique analysis to include the translator's replication of characterization, time, the patterning play of words, and the artful use of geography.

1. Bibliographies

S.P. Brock - C.T. Fritsch - S. Jellicoe, A Classified Bibliography of the Septuagint (Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Judentums, 6), Leiden , Brill, 1973.

C. Dogniez, Bibliography of the Septuagint: Bibliographie de la Septante (1970-1993) (VTSup, 60), Leiden , Brill, 1995.

Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (BIOSCS) (updated bibliography, survey of ongoing research).

2. Introductions

H.B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, Cambridge , University Press, 1900.

S. Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, Oxford , Clarendon, 1968.

E. Tov - R. Kraft, Septuagint, in IDBS (1976) 807-815.

N. Fernández-Marcos, Introducción a las versiones griegas de la Biblia (Textos y estudios «Cardinal Cisneros», 23), Madrid , Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1979.

E. Tov, Die griechischen Bibelübersetzungen, in ANRW II, 20/1 (1987) 121-189.

E. Tov, The Septuagint, in M.J. Mulder - H. Sysling (eds.), Mikra. Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, II/1), Assen - Maastricht , Van Gorcum; Philadelphia , PA , Fortress, 1988, 161-188. M. Harl, et al., La Bible grecque de la Septante. Du judaïsme hellénistique au christianisme ancien (Initiations au christianisme ancien), Paris, Cerf, 1988.

B. Botte - P.-M. Bogaert, Septante et versions grecques, in DBS XII, fasc. 68 (1993) 536-693.

M. Cimosa, Guida allo studio della bibbia greca, Roma, Società Biblica Brittanica & Forestièra, 1995.

3. Critical Editions

- diplomatic edition:

R. Holmes - J. Parsons, Vetus Testamentum Graecum cum variis lectionibus, Oxford , Clarendon, 1798-1827.

A.E. Brooke - N. McLean - H.St J. Thackeray - The Old Testament in Greek, Cambridge , University Press, 1906-1940 (Gen-Neh, Est, Jdt, Tob).

- textual reconstruction:

Septuaginta. Vetus Testamentum Graecum auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum (first volumes: Societatis Literarum) Gottingensis editum, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1931-.

4. Translations and Commentaries

L.C.L. Brenton, The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English, Bagster, London , 1851 (recent anastatic reprints: Peabody , MA , Hendrickson, 1986).

P. Giguet, La Sainte Bible. Traduction de l'Ancien Testament d'après les Septante, 4 vols., Paris, Librairie Poussielgue Frères, 1865-1872.

M. Harl (ed.), La Bible d'Alexandrie. Traduction et annotation des livres de la Septante, Paris, Cerf.

Volumes available: 1. M. Harl, La Genèse, 1986; 2. A. Le Boulluec - P. Sandevoir, L'Exode, 1989; 3. P. Harlé - D. Pralon, Le Lévitique, 1988; 4. G. Dorival, Les Nombres, 1994; 5. C. Dogniez - M. Harl, Le Deutéronome, 1992; 6. J. Moatti-Fine, Jésus (Josué), 1996. Cf. ETL 63 (1987) 386-387 (Gen); 68 (1992) 411-413 (Deut).

J.W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis (SCS, 35), Atlanta , GA , Scholars, 1993; Notes on the Greek text of Exodus (SCS, 30), 1990; Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy (SCS, 39), 1995. Cf. ETL 67 (1991) 148-150 (Exod); 71 (1995) 446-447 (Deut).

5. Concordances

C. Kircher, Concordantiae Veteris Testamenti Graecae, Ebraeis vocibus respondentes, Frankfurt/M., apud Claudium Marnium & heredes Iohannis Aubrii, 1607.

A. Trommius, Concordantiae Graecae Versionis vulgo dictae LXX Interpretum, cujus voces secundum ordinem elementorum sermonis Graeci digestae recensetur, contra atque in opere Kircheriano factum fuerat..., Amsterdam - Utrecht, sumptibus Societatis, 1718.

E. Hatch - H.A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament, Oxford, Clarendon, 1897-1906 (reprints: 1954, 1983).

E.C. dos Santos, An Expanded Hebrew Index for the Hatch-Redpath Concordance to the Septuagint, Jerusalem, Digith Publishers, Baptist House, 1973.

A Comprehensive Bilingual Concordance of the Hebrew and Greek Texts of Ecclesiastes. Edited by J. Jarick on the basis of a computer program by G. Marquis (SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies Series, 36), Atlanta , GA , Scholars, 1993.

6. Electronic Tools

Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint Studies (CATSS), Philadelphia, Penn Univ.; Jerusalem, The Hebrew University (computer readable and morphologically analysed version of the Septuagint, and a computer readable aligned version of the Hebrew and Greek texts).

Lbase, Dallas , TX , Silver Mountain Software (Dos), including a search programme for the Septuagint, based on the CATSS data.

Bible Windows, Dallas , TX , Silver Mountain Software (Windows), including a handy but less sophisticated search programme.

AcCordance, Vancouver , WA , The Gramcord Institute (Apple).

7. Grammars

F.C. Conybeare - St.G. Stock, Selections from the Septuagint According to the Text of Swete, Boston, MA, Ginn, 1905; reprint, new title: Grammar of Septuagint Greek. With Selected Readings from the Septuagint According to the Text of Swete, Peabody , MA , Hendrickson, 1988.

R. Helbing, Grammatik der Septuaginta. Laut- und Wortlehre, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1907.

Id. , Die Kasussyntax der Verba bei den Septuaginta. Ein Beitrag zur Hebraismenfrage und zur Syntax der , Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1928.

H.St.J. Thackeray, A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint, Cambridge , University Press, 1909.

B.A. Taylor, The Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint: A Complete Parsing Guide, Grand Rapids , MI , Zondervan, 1994.

8. Lexica

J.F. Schleusner, Novus thesaurus philologico-criticus, sive lexicon in lxx et reliquos interpretes graecos ac scriptores apocryphos veteris testamenti, 5 vols., Leipzig, 1820-1821; re-editions, 3 vols., Glasgow, 1822; London, 1829; Turnhout, Brepols, 1995.

F. Rehkopf, Septuaginta-Vokabular, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989.

J. Lust - E. Eynikel - K. Hauspie, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, Stuttgart, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; Part 1: -, 1992; Part 2: -, 1996 (= LSL). Cf. ETL 69 (1993) 118-124 (Part 1).

T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Twelve Prophets), Leuven , Peeters, 1993 (= MSL). Cf. ETL 70 (1994) 132-134.

9. Textual Criticism and Translation Technique

E. Tov, The Text-critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research (Jerusalem Biblical Studies, 3), Jerusalem , Simor, 1981.

S. Olofsson, The LXX Version: A Guide to the Translation Technique of the Septuagint (Coniectanea Biblica: Old Testament Series, 30), Stockholm , Almqvist & Wicksell, 1990.

I. Soisalon-Soininen, Die Infinitive in der Septuaginta (AASF, B 132/1), Helsinki , Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1965.

R. Sollamo, Renderings of Hebrew Semiprepositions in the Septuagint (AASF, Diss. hum. litt., 19), Helsinki , Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1979.

A. Aejmelaeus, Parataxis in the Septuagint. A Study of the Renderings of the Hebrew Coordinate Clauses in the Greek Pentateuch (AASF, Diss. hum. litt., 31), Helsinki, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1982.

10. General Studies and Collected Essays

S.P. Brock, The Phenomenon of the Septuagint, in OTS 17 (1972) 11-36.

A. Pietersma - C. Cox (eds.), De Septuaginta. Studies in Honour of John William Wevers on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Ontario , Benben Publications, 1984. Cf. ETL 61 (1985) 381-382.

A. Pietersma, Septuaginta Research. A Plea for a Return to Basic Issues, in VT 35 (1985) 296-311.

J.W. Wevers, An Apologia for Septuagint Studies, in BIOSCS 18 (1985) 16-38.

D. Fraenkel - U. Quast - J.W. Wevers, Studien zur Septuaginta - Robert Hanhart zu Ehren (Mitteilungen des Septuaginta-Unternehmens, 20; Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. Philologisch-historische Klasse: 3. Folge, 190), Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990.

M. Harl, La langue de Japhet. Quinze études sur la Septante et le grec des chrétiens, Paris, Cerf, 1992. Cf. ETL 68 (1992) 406-407.

A. Aejmelaeus, On the Trail of the Septuagint Translators. Collected Essays, Kampen, Kok, 1993.

M. Hengel - A.M. Schwemer (eds.), Die Septuaginta zwischen Judentum und Christentum (WUNT, 72), Tübingen, Mohr, 1994. Cf. ETL 71 (1995) 195-196.

Comments

Among the general introductions, the classical work by H.B. Swete (1900) is still very useful. In the last decennium some excellent new works have been composed. For the reception and interpretation of the Septuagint in Jewish and Christian circles, special mention is to be made of M. Harl a.o. (1988); for the history of the research, one has to refer to S. Jellicoe (1968). Bogaert's contribution is precious for its description of the present state of the research on the Septuagint and on the recensions (esp. Aquila , Theodotion, Symmachus).

The standard text-critical edition is being produced in Göttingen by «Das Septuaginta Unternehmen». A. Rahlfs opened the series with his Psalmi cum Odis published in 1931. At that time, the project was still in its initial stage, and its first product does not match the high standards of the later volumes. Therefore, an entirely new edition of the Psalms is now in the planning stage. Another early volume was Maccabaeorum liber 1 (1936) by W. Kappler. R. Hanhart completed Kappler's edition of Maccabaeorum liber 2 (1956), and continued with Maccabaeorum liber 3 (1960), Esther (1966), Esdrae liber 1 (1974), Judith (1979), Tobit (1983). The Prophetic Books (1939-1957) and some of the Wisdom Books (Iob, 1982; Sapientia Salomonis, 1962; Sapientia Iesu Filii Sirach, 1965) have been edited by J. Ziegler. The volumes covering the Pentateuch have been taken care of, and have been completed recently, by J.W. Wevers (1974-1991). For the other biblical books one has to use the Cambridge edition.

The Septuagint is not a unified work. It is the product of several translators. Each book has its own features and problems. Therefore, the respective books should be dealt with separately. An important help in this field is provided by the commentary project launched by M. Harl in Paris . Up to now, five volumes have been published: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Each volume presents an introduction, a French translation, and a succinct commentary focusing on the Greek used by the translators, the differences with the Hebrew, the early Jewish interpretations, mainly by Philo and Josephus, and the Christian interpretations by the Church fathers. A complementary project is that of J.W. Wevers. His voluminous notes on the Greek text of the Pentateuch are basically concerned with matters of textual criticism. A continuous translation is not included.

Our lexicographical work (LSL) necessitated a closer look at the concordances. One will allow us to expand a little on their history. The concordance in two volumes of E. Hatch and H.A. Redpath published in 1897, with the supplements of 1900 and 1906, remains the standard work. It notes the variants of the Codices Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus. All the occurrences of each Greek word are listed according to the order of the biblical books. No translations are given. The complete range of the formal Hebrew equivalents is listed at the head of each entry and the citation lines of all occurrences are keyed to this list of equivalents. The lack of a complete Hebrew Greek index in Hatch and Redpath has been remedied to some extent by C. dos Santos ' Expanded Hebrew Index.

The Hatch and Redpath concordance had an impressive predecessor. Completed in 1718, Trommius' work is based on the Aldine text of the printed edition published in Frankfurt in 1597(1). It lists the Greek words in alphabetical order, with a Latin translation. After each Greek word follow its Hebrew equivalents, each of them with a Latin translation when differing from that of the Greek, and with the Septuagint text of the verses in which this particular Hebrew word is rendered by the Greek term in question. The readings of the other Greek versions are given after those of the LXX. Then follow the occurrences of the Greek term for which no Hebrew counterpart can be indicated, and finally the deuterocanonical instances.

Conrad Kircher, attacked in the title of Tromm's work, produced the first printed Concordance of the Septuagint in 1607 in Frankfurt . He had organised the data in a completely different way. He starts from the Hebrew words in alphabetical order. Under each Hebrew word he lists the respective Greek translations with the references indicating where these translations occur in the Bible. At the end of the second volume, alphabetical lists of the Greek words are provided, indicating the pages where they can be found in the Hebrew-Greek concordance. Kircher's approach is not without advantages. A combination of Tromm's and Kircher's methods might be interesting. A good computer programme could facilitate that project. As far as I know, however, the existing programmes enable interesting grammatical searches of the morphologically encoded Greek text, but none of them allow the searcher to find immediately the Hebrew equivalents of the Greek word or grammatical construction, or, when starting from the Hebrew encoded text, to find the Greek equivalents. G. Marquis seems to have come closest to the realisation of such a tool. A lack of the necessary funds thwarts the completion of his project.

Lexicon of the Septuagint

Trommius' concordance was used and copied extensively in the lexica of the Septuagint, especially that of Biel (2). In a previous contribution we dealt with that topic(3). Here we may suffice with a presentation of the lexica in use. The last major lexicon specifically geared to the requirements of the Septuagint is based on Biel 's work. It is now more than a century and a half old: J.F. Schleusner's Novus thesaurus (1820-1821). Notwithstanding the reprints in 1822 and 1829, surviving copies are rare. Therefore an anastatic reprint of the second edition has been provided by the publisher Brepols in Turnhout(4). It was and is a good tool, nevertheless, it is antiquated. Since its appearance many new papyri have been found, the vocabulary of which sheds a new light on several terms of the Septuagint, also numerous lexicographic studies have been published which refined our knowledge of biblical and Koinè Greek. It should also be observed that Schleusner did not produce a lexicon of biblical Greek in the strict sense of the word, but rather a lexicon of biblical Hebrew.

Recently several attempts have been made towards the compilation of a new lexicon. When we limit our survey to the ones that reached some degree of completion, we have to mention first Rehkopf's Septuaginta-Vokabular (1990). The title of this modest but trustworthy work tells the reader clearly that it is not a real lexicon or dictionary, but a simple vocabulary listing all the words occurring in Rahlfs' edition of the Septuagint, with a translation. Reference is also to be made to Taylor 's so-called Analytical Lexicon (1994), which is in fact a grammatical parsing guide rather than a lexicon in the usual sense of the word. It does not provide any information about the meanings of the Greek words, it simply lists all the words as they occur in Rahlfs' edition of the text, with their morphological analysis and with the dictionary form of the word. To some extent it is to be compared with B. Davidson's well known Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon of the Old Testament (London, Bagster, 1963), the main difference being that Davidson offers a translation of the dictionary forms whereas Taylor does not. Next, a word is to be said about Muraoka's lexicon (MLS, 1993). It is an excellent work, but its scope is limited to the Book of the Twelve Prophets. In an earlier contribution we compared it with our own lexicon: Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (LSL, 1992-1996)(5). We conclude our survey with a summary of this comparison.

Scope. With the exception of proper names, our lexicon covers all the words in Rahlfs' edition of the Septuagint. Muraoka's lexicon (MLS) also excludes proper names, but is based on the critical edition of Ziegler. This distinction is rather theoretical only since the vocabulary of Ziegler's main text hardly differs from that of Rahlfs. Being confined to the Minor Prophets, the scope of MLS is much more limited. It treats 281 words beginning with an , whereas the Leuven Lexicon, covering the whole Bible, has 1528 -words. MLS mentions variant readings, but not exhaustively. Neither MLS nor LSL discuss the vocabulary of the Theodotion, Symmachus, and Aquila .

Morphology and Statistics. In both lexica, each word is provided with morphological tagging. In addition to this, LSL provides statistics telling the reader how often a word occurs in the respective books of the Greek Bible. MSL most often mentions all the passages of the Minor Prophets in which a given word occurs, but gives no statistics concerning the Bible as a whole. As far as we could see, MSL does not note which words of the Septuagint are used in the New Testament. In LSL the words in question are marked with the sign +.

Translations and Definitions. In LSL, each word is given one or more translations rather than a description of its meaning. For each translation implying a new meaning, a reference is given to an example. MSL offers definitions rather than translations, and is more generous with its references and examples. For every single sense almost all the applicable passages in the Twelve Prophets are mentioned, and often the actual Greek text is quoted, an English translation of which is enclosed. Dealing with the Bible as a whole, LSL can hardly mention or quote all the passages in which a word occurs. In addition to the respective translations with their examples, it indicates several categories of special cases when available. First, expressions which can be labelled as classical Greek. Second, passages in which the Greek text may be corrupt. Third, passages in which the LXX differs from the MT, having misread the Hebrew, or read it differently, or having used a slightly divergent text. In MSL differences between the Greek and the Hebrew are treated more succinctly at the end of the lemma. We give these differences a good share of the attention because we are convinced that the language of the Septuagint is first of all translation Greek trying to render the underlying Hebrew as faithfully as possible. Therefore, special attention should be given to the instances in which the Greek appears to differ from the Hebrew. When the deviations can be explained on the level of the word form this should be noted.

Neologisms and Bibliographical Information. When a word seems to be proper to the Septuagint and the literature depending on it, LSL marks it as a neologism. When it occurs in the Septuagint as well as in the contemporary papyri and in the literature from the period of Polybius onwards, a question mark is added to the label. No such information appears to be given in MSL. In LSL, at the end of the treatment of each lemma, bibliographical information is provided. For each word, abbreviated references are given to lexicographical bibliography, when available.

J. Lust

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