A translation into Greek of the Hebrew Bible, obtaining its name (meaning translation of the 70) from a legend in the Letter of Aristeas (2nd-c BC) about its composition as the work of 72 scholars, six from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. The translation was begun c.3rd-c BC to meet the need of Greek-speaking Jews in the Diaspora, but work progressed by several stages over about a century. It has a different order of books from that in the Hebrew canon, and contains some works not in that canon. When it was adopted by Christians as their preferred version of the Old Testament, it lost favour among the Jews.
The Septuagint (or simply "LXX") is the name commonly given in the West to the ancient, Koine Greek version of the Old Testament translated in stages between the 3rd to 1st century BC in Alexandria. The name means "seventy" and derives from a tradition that seventy-two Jewish scholars (LXX being the nearest round number) translated the Pentateuch (or Torah) from Hebrew into Greek for one of the Ptolemaic kings. Also, the LXX version of some works, like Daniel and Esther, are longer than the Hebrew.
The LXX was held with great respect in ancient times; Besides the Old Latin versions, the LXX is also the basis for Gothic, Slavonic, old Syriac (but not the Peshitta), old Armenian, and Coptic versions of the Old Testament. Of significance for all Christians and for bible scholars, the LXX is quoted by the Christian New Testament and by the Apostolic Fathers. Some of the Dead Sea scrolls attest to Hebrew texts other than those on which the Masoretic Text was based; in many cases, these newly found texts accord with the LXX version.
Naming and designation
The Septuagint derives its name from Latin septuaginta interpretum versio, "translation of the seventy interpreters" (hence the abbreviation LXX).
Textual history
Modern scholarship holds that the LXX, beginning with the Pentateuch, was written during the 3rd through 1st centuries BC.
Later Jewish revisions and recensions of the Greek against the Hebrew are well attested, the most famous of which include the Three: Aquila (ca 128 CE), Symmachus, and Theodotion. Modern scholars consider one or more of the Three to be totally new Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible. In the first column was the contemporary Hebrew, in the second a Greek transliteration of it, then the newer Greek versions each in their own columns. Origen also kept a column for the Old Greek (the Septuagint) and next to it was a critical apparatus combining readings from all the Greek versions with editor's marks indicating to which version each stitch belonged. Perhaps only three copies of the voluminous Hexapla were ever made, but Origen's combined text was copied, eventually without the editing marks, and the older uncombined text of the LXX was neglected. Thus this combined text became the first major Christian recension of the LXX, often called the Hexaplar rescension.
The oldest manuscripts of the LXX include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. Relatively complete manuscripts of the LXX postdate the Hexaplar rescension and include the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century and the Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th century. While there are differences between these three codices, scholarly consensus today holds that one LXX — that is, the original pre-Christian translation — underlies all three.
Relationship between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text
The sources of the many differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text have long been discussed by scholars. The most widely accepted view today is that the Septuagint provides a reasonably accurate record of an early Semitic textual variant, now lost, that differed from ancestors of the Masoretic text. Early Christians—who were largely unfamiliar with Hebrew texts, and were thus only made aware of the differences through the newer Greek versions—tended to dismiss the differences as a product of uninspired translation of the Hebrew in these new versions. Following the Renaissance, a common opinion among some humanists was that the LXX translators bungled the translation from the Hebrew and that the LXX became more corrupt with time. The discovery of many fragments in the Dead Sea scrolls that agree with the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text proved that many of the variants in Greek were also present in early Semitic manuscripts.
These issues notwithstanding, the text of the LXX is in general close to that of the Masoretic. For example, Genesis 4:1-6 is identical in both the LXX and the Masoretic Text. There is only one noticeable difference in that chapter, at 4:7, to wit:
| Genesis 4:7, LXX (Brenton) | Genesis 4:7, Masoretic (Artscroll) |
| Hast thou not sinned if thou hast brought it rightly, but not rightly divided it? |
This instance illustrates the complexity of assessing differences between the LXX and the Masoretic Text.
The differences between the LXX and the MT thus fall into four categories. Most obvious are major differences in Jeremiah and Job, where the LXX is much shorter and chapters appear in different order than in the MT, and Esther where almost one third of the verses in the LXX text have no parallel in the MT. The same verse in the LXX reads according to the translation of Breton "and speak not to us in the Jewish tongue: and wherefore speakest thou in the ears of the men on the wall." Scholars at one time had used discrepancies such as this to claim that the LXX was a poor translation of the Hebrew original.
II) Differences in interpretation stemming from the same Hebrew text.
IV) Transmission changes in Hebrew or Greek (Diverging revisional/rescentional changes and copyist errors)
Use of the Septuagint
Jewish use
By the 3rd century BCE, Jewry was situated primarily within the Hellenistic world. Outside of Judea, many Jews may have needed synagogue readings or texts for religious study to be interpreted into Greek, producing a need for the LXX.
Starting approximately in the 2nd century CE, several factors led most Jews to abandon the LXX. Christians naturally used the LXX since it was the only Greek version available to the earliest Christians; Perhaps more importantly, the Greek language — and therefore the Greek Bible — declined among Jews after most of them fled from the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire into the Aramaic-speaking Persian Empire when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.
What was perhaps most significant for the LXX, as distinct from other Greek versions, was that the LXX began to lose Jewish sanction after differences between it and contemporary Hebrew scriptures were discovered. Even Greek-speaking Jews — such as those remaining in Palestine — tended less to the LXX, preferring other Jewish versions in Greek, such as that of Aquila, which seemed to be more concordant with contemporary Hebrew texts.
Christian use
The early Christian Church continued to use the Old Greek texts since Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire at the time, since Greek was the language of the Church, and since the Church Fathers tended to accept Philo's account of the LXX's miraculous and inspired origin.
When Jerome undertook the revision of the Old Latin translation of the Septuagint, he checked the Septuagint against the Hebrew that was then available. He came to believe that the Hebrew text better testified to Christ than the Septuagint. He broke with church tradition and translated most of the Old Testament of his Vulgate from Hebrew rather than Greek.
The Hebrew text diverges in some passages that Christians hold to prophesy Christ, and the Eastern Orthodox Church still prefers to use the LXX as the basis for translating the Old Testament into other languages. Many modern critical translations of the Old Testament, while using the Masoretic text as their basis, consult the Septuagint as well as other versions in an attempt to reconstruct the meaning of the Hebrew text whenever the latter is unclear, undeniably corrupt, or ambiguous.
Many of the oldest Biblical verses among the Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly those in Aramaic, correspond more closely with the LXX than with the Masoretic text. This tells us that there were originally several different Hebrew texts and that the LXX represents a separate tradition from that which was standardized as the Masoretic tradition by ca.
Of the fuller quotations in the New Testament of the Old, nearly one hundred agree with the modern form of the Septuagint and six agree with the Masoretic Text.
Language of the Septuagint
Some sections of the Septuagint may show Semiticisms, or idioms and phrases based on Semitic languages like Hebrew and Aramaic. Other books, such as LXX Daniel and Proverbs, show Greek influence more strongly. The book of Daniel that is found in almost all Greek bibles, however, is the not from the LXX, but rather from Theodotion's translation, which more closely resembles the Masoretic Daniel.
The LXX is also useful for elucidating pre-Masoretic Hebrew: many proper nouns are spelled out with Greek vowels in the LXX, while contemporary Hebrew texts lacked vowel pointing. But although the 'sh' sibilant was by convention spelled with a sigma ('s'), ancient Greek texts are useful for pronouncing names and titles of books.
Books of the Septuagint
See also Table of books below.
All the books of western canons of the Old Testament are found in the Septuagint, although the order does not always coincide with the modern ordering of the books.
Some books that are set apart in the Masoretic text are grouped together. For example the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings are in the LXX one book in four parts called Βασιλειῶν ("Of Reigns");
Some scripture of ancient origin are found in the Septuagint but are not present in the Hebrew.
Printed Editions
All the printed editions of the Septuagint are derived from the three recensions mentioned above.
Translations of the Septuagint
The Septuagint has been translated into English. This translation is based on Greek Orthodox Biblical and Liturgical texts of the Septuagint as used in The Holy Orthodox Church.
Defining Septuagint
Although the integrity of the Septuagint as a text distinct from the Masoretic is upheld by Dead Sea scroll evidence, the LXX does show signs of age in that textual variants are attested. There is at least one highly unreliable complete text of the LXX, Codex Alexandrinus. But the LXX is a particularly excellent text when compared to other ancient works with textual variants.
The title "Septuagint" is of course not to be confused with the seven or more other Greek versions of the Old Testament, most of which do not survive except as fragments. Of these the most important are "the three:" those by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, which are identified by particular Semiticisms and placement of Hebrew and Aramaic characters within their Greek texts.
One of two Old Greek texts of the Book of Daniel has been recently rediscovered and work is ongoing in reconstructing the original form of the Septuagint as a whole.
Table of books
General
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