On The Septuagint
and the art of translation
So stop me if you’ve heard this one: Seventy-two rabbis (or maybe it was seventy) walk into a Greek library. The Greek librarian says, “what can I do for you?” The head rabbi says, “we’ve come to offer you our holy books, translated into your language.” The librarian says, “what’ll it cost?” The head rabbi says, “nothing, but you have to let us join the Alexandrian Country Club.” The librarian says, “ok, but you’ll have to tell everyone you’re Greek.” And the head rabbi says, “It’s a deal; we just need you to sign, and you get the wisdom…”
Now that you’re done laughing, I can tell you that that hilarious and topical joke was actually based on real events, a now somewhat obscure episode in history that was to have Earth-changing ramifications. Over the course of about two centuries two cultures, vastly different in many fundamental ways, came together at a single purpose, the result of which was a collection of religious scriptures that were essential to the formation of basic Christian doctrine. This was the Septuagint, the Hebrew Bible translated into Koine Greek, which served as the basic scripture of the early Church until it was supplanted in the West by the Latin Vulgate and later among Protestants by the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint is still used by the Eastern Churches, in particular the Orthodox Church, which makes for some scriptural contrasts that pose a challenge for those inclined to think of ‘a’ Bible.
Nearly everything I just wrote requires a heavy dose of qualification. First, the idea of ‘a’ Septuagint is itself problematic. Scholars believe that the Septuagint as we know it today was actually a compendium of individual books translated at different times by different authors using different methodologies. Those books were in turn edited (producing what are known as “recensions”) over subsequent centuries, usually with the aim of aligning them with trends in Hebrew scholarship. There was not, until perhaps as late as the 2nd century AD, a fixed canon of the Hebrew Bible, and works we know today like Isaiah and Ruth sat alongside Tobit and Bel and the Dragon. For our purposes we will consider the Septuagint those texts translated from Hebrew into Greek before the 1st century BC. Also, and I wish to make this point early and often, while there are differences, occasionally very significant differences between the Bibles commonly used in the confessions noted above, they are very much different versions of the same book. It is easy to make more of the distinctions that necessary when noting them, but to be clear, they are not different movies, just different cuts.
By way of background, the Septuagint emerged in a world that had just experienced one of the biggest upheavals in history. Alexander the Great tore through the Persian Empire and beyond, marching his forces through Central Asia into the Punjab, retreating only upon threat of mutiny. He died in Babylon without a clear heir in 323 BC, leaving his generals, the Diadochoi (successors) to fight it out among themselves. A number of successor states emerged, the most stable of which was the one set up in Egypt by Ptolemy (Ptolemaios), one of Alexander’s top commanders and possibly his half-brother. Ptolemy became known to history as Ptolemy I Soter (savior) and inaugurated the period of Greek rule in Egypt known as the Ptolemaic Period.
Though they ruled from the Greek colony of Alexandria-by-Egypt (there were a lot of Alexandrias), the Ptolemies (nearly all the male rulers bore that name) realized that they lorded over a restive population, the majority of whom were native Egyptians who regarded the Greeks, however powerful they now seemed, as being newcomers; after all, the Pyramids were ancient before the Mycenaeans ever set foot in the Balkans. In addition, Alexander’s conquests had shaken the world like a snowglobe, with people lifted up from one place and dropped in another as colonists, mercenaries, refugees, slaves, merchants, or just curious footloose younger sons. People from all over the world flocked to the Ptolemies’ new metropolis, quickly making it the largest city by far in what came to be known as the Hellenistic World, so called because Greek culture and language predominated. As such, to rule successfully, the Ptolemies would need to both respect and bridge the differences between the diverse people in their kingdom.
One such people were the Jews. The Ancient Israelites had a long relationship with Egypt, from what were probably their days guarding the northeastern marches until Moses led them to Canaan to a return in the days of Jeremiah, where exiles from the collapse and conquest of the southern kingdom of Judah made their way there as refugees. After the conquests of Alexander Jews with an eye for the main chance quickly made their way to Alexandria from other parts of the world such that they quickly made up some 30-40% of the population. While they generally inhabited two of the five districts of the city there were no legal restrictions as such keeping them there, and there was a great amount of cultural exchange, most notably evidenced in the fact that the Jews of Alexandria quickly became native speakers of Greek. The Jews, then as now, valued literacy highly, and with no native philosophical tradition of their own, many readily took up the speculative work of Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic philosophers like Epicurus, Zeno (a fellow Semite), and Euhemerus, among many others. Many Greeks, for their part, found the monotheism and antiquity of the Jewish religion attractive, and some converted, while others joined various theophoboi (God-fearer) groups that embraced certain aspects of Jewish worship without a full commitment that would have entailed circumcision. One should not go too far and imagine everything between the two communities was always peaceful, but the fact that these very different people saw so many attractive aspects in each other’s cultures says something quite positive about humanity.
The history of the Septuagint proper begins with an origin story, the most famous one dealing with the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. It comes from the “Letter of Aristeas” supposedly written contemporaneously with the events it describes but probably from a century later. The author describes King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (the son of Ptolemy I) wishing to acquire literature from all over the world and asking Demetrius of Phaleron, the head librarian at his House of the Muses (which housed the more famous Library of Alexandria) to send for Jews from Jerusalem to provide their Hebrew scriptures in his own native Greek. The high priest there complied and sent 72 learned men (in later versions of the story this number for some reason became 70). Demetrius put them into separate rooms where they toiled individually, then came together with the happy result that they’d all come up with the exact same translation. This was read to the leaders and people of Alexandria’s Jewish community and everyone agreed it was absolute gold and that it would serve as their scripture from now on. This text became known in Greek as ‘η μετάφρασις τῶν Ἑβδομήκοντα (The Translation of the Seventy), in Latin Vetus Testamentum ex versione Septuaginta Interpretum, (The Old Testament from the Version of the Seventy Translators) from which ‘Septuagint’ serves as shorthand. It is generally further abbreviated by scholars as LXX (the Roman numerals for 70) when it is cited.
Scholars generally regard this story as fiction, but not pure fiction. The idea that the translators came from Jerusalem is belied by the Septuagint’s distinctively Egyptian dialect of Greek and various loanwords common to speakers of Greek in Egypt. Imagine being told that a team of translators came to Georgia from Columbia University to translate the Iliad into English, with the result that Achilles declares to Hector that “lions ain’t fixin’ to make pacts with men” and cornbread and moonshine are offered to the propriate the gods. One might suspect a more native product. It’s also unclear from the letter exactly what has been translated- which books that is. The letter mentions that the “laws of the Jews” were what was rendered into Greek, which could mean anything from just Leviticus and Numbers to the whole canon as we know it today. What comes out as most plausible is the impetus for the project. The Ptolemies- Philadelphus very much included- really were eager to legitimize their novel regime through cultural patronage, and while their main goal was certainly the propagation of Greek culture, they were interested in acquiring works from all over. It would make sense for them to dole out some shekels to the learned men of the local Jewish community if the result would be his increased prestige and their increased loyalty.
For their part, Greek had probably supplanted Aramaic (which had long since supplanted Hebrew) as the both the native language of the Jews in Egypt and the language of daily discourse, though the degree to which this is true is debated. However, having the scriptures in Greek would not only allow synagogue congregations to hear them being read in a language they could understand but also serve to make them accessible to the wider educated Greek world. In other words, the Septuagint could serve as a gateway between communities and foster understanding, as well as bring Judaism into direct contact with Greek philosophy by creating a shared and standardized vocabulary for discussion of philosophy and theology.
Based on linguistic research, the general consensus among scholars is that the Pentateuch, the five books of the Torah, were translated first, and it does seem like a group worked on them collectively at around the time of Ptolemy II.1 The approach these anonymous men took to translating was to approximate the Hebrew as closely as possible in Greek, to the point of occasionally using grammar and syntax (parataxis, resumptive pronouns, etc.) that would have sounded odd to a Greek speaker. There is also the way reported speech is handled; you may recall this phrasing from some older translation of the Old Testament that preserves something of the effect this had in Greek:
“Then Moses answered and said (ἀπεκρίθη δὲ Μωυσῆς καὶ εἶπεν) ...”
There’s no need for both “answered” and “said” in the clause, either in Greek or English, but because it’s rendered that way in Hebrew the Greek translators maintained the construction and older English versions kept it as well; many newer versions dispense with it, as can be seen at the link. You may also remember it from the New Testament, “and Jesus answered him, saying . . .” More on this to come. However, despite their fidelity to the Hebrew the translators were not averse to updating specific words for a ‘modern audience.’ In the Joseph narrative from Genesis Pharoah is described as καταστησάτω (setting up or appointing) τοπάρχας (toparchas, lit. ‘place-principle people’).2 That latter word referred to a specific type of agricultural official who was part of the Ptolemaic government; it would be like translating ‘publican’ as ‘IRS agent.’
As for the rest of the books now considered part of the Old Testament Canon, there is a great deal of debate as to which order they were written and when. Some of the translators tried to imitate the style of the translation of the Pentateuch (Pentateuchal). Others took a freer hand in rendering Hebrew into Greek (paraphrastic); still others tried to be still more literal (revisional). As for the former, there were a number of ‘updates’ like with the toparchas- Isaiah in Hebrew depicts wicked Israelites setting tables “for Gad” and serving mixed wine “to Meni.” Both of these references to Semitic deities, who would have been unfamiliar to Greek-speaking Jewish Alexandrians, are replaced by "for Demon” (τῷ δαίμονι) and “to Fate” (τῇ τύχῃ), which has the effect of making the passage both more relevant while also more abstract.3 References like those, along with outside testimony, the dating of manuscripts (often in fragments) and some inference, allow for an educated estimate that the individual books that make up the whole of what we now know today as the Septuagint or Greek Old Testament were all complete in some form between the start or end of the second century BC, though some may be later.4
This was a monumental achievement. Though not a single, conscious project, the translators of the Septuagint had done what no other people had yet done in history, render their whole corpus of religious scriptures into another language. This involved mastery not only of both tongues but a sublime philosophical sophistication; Greek, after all, was the language of speculation and abstraction in the ancient world, and the choices the translators made, using words like logos, sophia, etc. would serve to equip an army of theologians for debates to come. It is important to note, however, that the anonymous authors and editors of the Septuagint books did not translate the Hebrew scriptures, but rather, the ones they had. And those texts differed in sometimes significant ways from those back in Jerusalem.
Some of the books of the Septuagint are shorter than those that would later be assembled into the Masoretic Text, like Jeremiah. Some of them order things differently; the Ten Commandments in the LXX are not numbered as the are in the MT. The books came to bear different titles- 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings become 1-4 Kingdoms (Βασιλέων). Of the latter, the story of David confronting Goliath is significantly different in an interesting way from that of the MT. Read them both and see if you can spot it. Also, famously, the anonymous translator of Isaiah rendered the word meaning “young woman” (almah) in the MT version as “virgin” (παρθένος) in the Greek at 7:14. Was this because that is what the Hebrew version he was working from said, or did he choose that word for other reasons? We don’t know, but that, among other choices, was to have profound implications for the development of Christianity.
By the time of Jesus the Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures were in wide circulation. This was true even in the relative backwater of the hill country of Galilee, where several of Jesus’ apostles bore Greek names or nicknames like Φίλιππος (Philip; ‘lover of horses’) or Ἀνδρέας (Andrew, ‘manly, brave’) and where the Greek version of scripture would have sat side-by side with Hebrew and perhaps Aramaic texts. Aramaic would have been the day-to-day language, but someone like Jesus, able to debate rabbis, would have known Hebrew and someone able to engage with Roman Centurions would probably have known Latin as well. His calling Simon (Hebrew) both Kephas (Aramaic) and Peter (Greek, Πέτρος) further indicates his personal facility with language (apart from the fact that as the Son of God he knew everything, of course). Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls also serves to confirm the multilingual penetration of even remote areas. In this milieu, it is not unreasonable to suppose that eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life could be recorded in Greek for wider distribution into the Hellenized Jewish community throughout the Roman Empire, which not only ruled Judea but had supplanted the Ptolemies in Egypt, as well as controlling Greece and the rest of the Mediterranean rim.
The writers of the the books of what came to be compiled into the New Testament quoted the texts of the Septuagint far more than any other scripture and used particular phrases from the LXX to support their arguments for the divinity of Jesus Christ and the significance of his death and resurrection, often making cases that would have had far less support had they come directly from the Hebrew text. They also very consciously modeled their writing on the text of the Septuagint, seeking to read like the older scriptures. All of this in turn led to two parallel and competing frameworks for understanding the Septuagint as Christianity and Judaism diverged into distinct religions. The Septuagint came to be understood as the ‘Christian’ text, while its use in supporting Christian arguments led to Jews coming to reject it and a movement to create a single, authoritative Hebrew body of scripture where there hadn’t been before. This was really the origin of what came to be the Masoretic Text, a project that took on greater urgency with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans following their revolt and the loss of much religious material.
Paradoxically, as the Hebrew text was ‘corrected’ and the corpus purified of deviant readings, many Christians, especially those with knowledge of Hebrew, saw a benefit in using these insights to correct ‘errors’ in their own version of Jewish scripture. The great textual scholar Origen, writing in both Alexandria and Caesarea in Palestine in the early 3rd century, created a monumental critical project called the Hexapla, which made use of Hebrew and various versions of the Greek Old Testament text to iron out differences in a way that tended to privilege newer developments in Hebrew Scholarship. The older version of Daniel, for example, was chucked in favor of the updated Jewish one. Origen also produced critical editions of the New Testament texts, correlating their scriptural citations with his updates. Origen’s composite text of the entire Bible, minus his critical marks, was probably the version Constantine offered to copy at state expense for use in Churches throughout his empire, thereby helping to establish it as the standard, canonized Greek version.
About a century after Constantine, another Christian scholar working in Palestine, Jerome, set about his own reform project. Fluent in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew (scholars argue about his relative facility with each, however), Jerome was tasked by Pope Damasus I to produce a better Latin translation of scriptures. At the time, the version used was the Vetus Latina, a collection of translations of varying quality of the Septuagint texts. Jerome largely preserved Origen’s Greek NT work, but decided to translate the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew of the proto-Masoretic Text. He did employ the Septuagint, but only to plug holes where the MT was lacking or to where he thought the MT didn’t actually represent an improvement (his book of Psalms came from the LXX/Vetus). The result was the Vulgate (common book), which came to be the dominant version (indeed, the official version) of scripture used by the Roman Catholic Church. A version remains so to this day.
Protestants, on the other hand, have generally rejected the Septuagint wholly, preferring instead the Masoretic Text in its final form, which was fully established by around the 9th century AD. It represents a monumental work all its own, the result of a centuries-old critical project the early Reformers- highly literate men of the printing press era Northern Renaissance- must have deeply admired. Luther drew heavily on the MT; both the King James Version of the Anglicans and the rival Geneva Bible of the Puritans used it. It remains the basis for what the average normie American churchgoer thinks is ‘the’ Old Testament.
Only the Orthodox Church continues to use the Septuagint, arguing that its privileged status in the early Church is a sign that is is both based on an older and more correct version of the theoretical Hebrew ur-text and that it has superseded further amendments on the part of Jews by the nature of the history of its reception in the Church. This claim is one that must appeal to faith, as no extant ur-text exists, nor are there sufficient materials for such a reconstruction that would put all doubt to rest. My Orthodox Study Bible has the Septuagint as its OT; my New Oxford Annotated Bible With Apocrypha has the MT. I read them both. But while the Orthodox must concede that the MT has the most widespread support, those who use the Masoretic text must in turn acknowledge that to enter the mind of the Early Church one must enter its scriptures, and that necessarily means engaging with what might seem like a somewhat alien version of something comfortably considered familiar.
See Gregory R. Lanier and William A. Ross, The Septuagint: What it is and Why it Matters (Wheaton: Crossway, 2021), 54.
Ibid, 64-72.
Karen H. Jobes and Moises Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), 4.
Ibid, 20.
I read claims by some on the far Right that the Masoretic text changed the original Hebrew to edit out prophecies related to Jesus -- such as changing "virgin" to "young woman". Didn't know what to think of the argument at the time. Your article has me thinking more on this.
And it also has me wanting to look more carefully at George Lamsa's translation of the Aramaic Peshitta for Old Testament as well as New Testament differences.
The Ethiopian Bibles might provide some tie-breakers where versions differ -- given how there was Hebrew commerce with Ethiopia in Solomon's day.
Thanks for sharing this!
I often wonder if other manuscripts have the same multilayered, winding translation history as the Scriptures. Have your studies offered you any insight into that? Any Greek texts translated at various times into various Latin dialects that are later fused together? Anything from Chinese or Japanese literature? I believe God has guided the historical development of the Scriptures, but I wonder if that development has occurred to a unique degree, or the processes you described were more routine.