Septuaginta(103988)

Rating:
Summary: Good for the scholar and for the serious student of Greek
Review: A friend of mine asked if this Septuaginta edition had the approval of the Catholic Church, that is, the infamous "nihil obstat" (which is Latin meaning that "nothing impedes the publication") and "imprimatur" ("be pressed"), present in every Catholic publication that is recommended by the Church and, most important, is in accordance with the Vatican doctrine. I explained her that the Septuagint must be seen rather as a very important historical document, being not, even at the time of its first appearance, circa 170 B.C, subject to any type of such approval, because it was mostly the work of Jewish wise men intent on providing its dispersed people with the sacred content of the Holy Book, being Greek the language of choice even among dispersed Jews, not enough familiar with Hebrew.

Also worthy of notice is that Septuaginta is a misnomer for 2 reasons: first of all, there were in fact 72 and not 70(then Septuaginta) wise men charged with the task of translation; and secondly, they were devoted to the translation of the Pentateuch (285 BC) , the first 5 books of the Bible, who forms the core of Creationism, being the rest the work of countless people from various origins, as is conveniently explained by the multilingual and very interesting (in Modern Greek, Latin, German and English) prefaces and history of the Septuaginta that initiate the book. The prospective buyer has to take notice that this is only an Old Testament edition.

I would say that this is not standard Greek and you will need sometimes an ecclesiastical Greek dictionary due to the lack of standards in the Greek language. Regarding myself, I am truly satisfied with this Septuagint version, which allows me to compare the Latin texts of the Vulgate edition to this Greek rendition, and for that matter I am not at all disappointed, being given what I exactly asked for in order to practice both ancient Latin as ancient Greek.



Rating:
Summary: Various LXX versions
Review: Rahlfs' edition is also based upon Codex Vaticanus, but textual variants found in codex Alexandrinus and codex Sinaiticus are adopted in preference to those in codex Vaticanus based upon Rahlfs' critical opinion. He is using standard text critical methodology to judge which are more likely representative of the "Old Greek" version used by the majority of Jews.

Sir Lancelot Brenton's edition of the LXX (The Septuagint with Apocrypha ISBN: 0913573442 )is based upon a single source, codex Vaticanus, with some variants from codex Alexandrinus mentioned in the footnotes, but not affecting, I believe, the translation, except in a few cases where the Vaticanus manuscript was mutilated and Alexandrinus provided the next best text (and these cases are enumerated in an appendix)...

Rating:
Summary: The Oldest Manuscripts of the Old Testament
Review: While the Septuagint (LXX) is a translation into Greek of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, the oldest surviving complete manuscripts of the LXX are older than the oldest surviving complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. The oldest extant manuscript of the LXX was written before the year 400 CE, while the oldest extant manuscript of the Hebrew TANAKH was written around the year 900 CE. While five centuries might not seem like a lot, the period between the two dates includes, for instance, the Moslem invasion of Palestine and the final destruction of the library in Alexandria.

The early date of the manuscripts and the even earlier date of the translation itself (around the year 250 BCE, for the Pentateuch), give the LXX extraordinary value as a witness to the development of the canon of the Hebrew Bible, second only to the Hebrew Bible itself (of course!) To give an example of the significance of the LXX, one could compare it to the much-touted Dead-Sea Scrolls (DSS). The importance of the LXX far exceeds the significance of the DSS. (And, by the way, some of the DSS fragments are in Greek, like the LXX, and others represent Hebrew texts that are closer to the LXX than to the present Hebrew Bible.)

Even though the LXX translation was done by Jewish scholars (in Alexandria), the book is also very important for understanding early Christianity. Almost all of the quotations of the Old Testament (OT) in the New Testament (NT) are from the LXX. The LXX was THE Bible for the first Christians, and it still is (together with the Greek NT) the Bible of the eastern (Orthodox) Christians.

The OT of the earliest Latin Bible (the Itala) was translated from the LXX. Since St. Jerome, however, the canonical OT books of the Roman Catholic Bible have been translated from the Hebrew, not the LXX. The LXX has been the source for the deuterocanonical books of the Catholic Vulgate. The translators of the Revised Standard Version have, in places, preferred the LXX to the Hebrew Bible (the DSS have confirmed the choices).

As a warning, even if you know Biblical (meaning NT) Greek well, you still will have problems translating the LXX. A suggested translation aid is "The Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint" by B. A. Taylor (ISBN: 0310226457).

I am working through the Psalms, and reading them from the LXX is a revelation. For instance, in Psalm 23 (22 in the LXX), in the famous verse "in the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil", the "shadow of death" is not in the Hebrew, but the LXX has "EN MESW SKIAS THANATOU OU PHOBETHESOMAI KAKA"!