JoyJuice

Just perusing the net in regards to the Septuagint and I have seen where the often-inferred 3rd century translation was only a translation of the Pentateuch? If this is true then:

• Do we know when were the remaining books translated?

• Is this true: “Used for centuries by both Jews and Christians it underwent corruption and interpolation, and, notwithstanding the multitude of materials for its restoration, the original text has yet to be recovered.â€?

• Could there be a possibility that the “parthenosâ€? used to justify the virgin of Isaiah 7 is a corruption?

• Is there any early evidence of the Isaiah verse being disputed by the early Jews?

• If we don’t have the original, what is the earliest complete Septuagint?

Thanks in advance

spin

The reason for the 3rd c. BCE dating is due to a text usually referred to as the Letter of Aristeas which tells the tale of the translation of the law (whatever that meant at the time of writing) by 72 scribes into Greek ostensibly for the library of Ptolemy Philadelphus. The text is undatable and many people simply take it at face value and so ascribe the translation under Philadelphus as representative of the whole text. However, while none of this is sustainable historically, ie nothing actually supports the claim that the law was translated into Greek in the 3rd c. BCE, there are a few anachronisms in the telling of the contextualisation, ie some of the facts are wrongly located in time, it is probable that the text was not written near the time referred to in the text. This means we should scratch the 3rd c. BCE data as without significance. Josephus seems to know the Aristeas tale for he alludes to it in the prologue to his Antiquities.

It's rather difficult to know, but Josephus does say that he has to translate the historical material he cites in his Antiquities from the Hebrew, ie the histories had not at that time been translated.

Whenever a copy of a text was made invariably some slight changes crept in. In the Dead Sea Scrolls there are different flavours of biblical text in Hebrew, presumably all eventually based on the same original sources.

The Hebrew word is quite clearly "young female/girl". It in itself in no way suggests being a virgin. The text tells us that the young woman is with child, so no Jew could conceive that she was virgin. The translation into Greek could easily have yielded "parthenos" in a not too literal translation. I think when the Jews saw how the passage started to be misused, they allowed another translation to be made, actually a couple more, one more stiltedly literal in order to avoid such abuses of inaccurate translations.

Not that I know of.

Probably Sinaiticus (mid 4th c. CE).


spin

redzrx

Just a little input .. the 72 scribe thing spin mentions was only for the first five books of the OT.. Not the Prophets.. that was done later and may help explain the mistranslations/corruption in the prophet books.

Mario

spin

If you read Aristeas it doesn't even say what it means by the books of the law. There is no "five". I only have a translation and it says, "The books of the law of the Jews (with some few others) are absent from the library."


spin

redzrx

You have corrected me on this.. It does not say which books..

I'm looking into it though.

Mario

redzrx

Actually .. 5 books

The earliest, and best known, source for the story of the Septuagint is the Letter of Aristeas, a lengthy document that recalls how the Ptolemy (Philadelphus II [285–247 BCE]), desiring to augment his library in Alexandria, Egypt, commissioned a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. The Ptolemy wrote to the chief priest, Eleazar, in Jerusalem, and arranged for six translators from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. The seventy-two (altered in a few later versions to seventy or seventy-five) translators arrived in Egypt to the Ptolemy's gracious hospitality, and translated the Torah (or Pentateuch: the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures) in seventy-two days. Although opinions as to when this occurred differ, scholars find 282 BCE an attractive date.

From this site http://students.cua.edu/16kalvesmaki/lxx/

spin

You will note I told you Aristeas didn't say that.

If you refuse to read the text, you will never know. So start here.


spin

redzrx

Spin.. It could be me and I would like to hear from the collective on this one.


It sounds funny that a letter from 200-300 BC remains remarkably intact and we argue why the sep and mas text are so different. I will look into this Nazarene College and get back to you..

Please comments from anyone else...

Now spin I just want to get the truth .. there is a lot of conflicting info here.

Mario

JoyJuice

Thank you both spin and redzrx

spin, In my OP line of questioning you can guess where I'm going with this. If Josephus has to use the original language as source material in regards to the remaining books, is there a possiblity that the prothetic books were translated late, lets say around the Christian era to once again shoehorn Jesus into the virgin birth mistranslation?

What I find extremely odd is throughout the book of Isaiah, the writer has no problem using the direct denotated word used for 'virgin' but yet when it comes to something as meaningful as the 'vigin birth' of God incarnated, why in the world would he use the word meaning 'young girl' unless of course as per the contextual reading of this portion of Isaiah, it was not his intent at all.

alkech

spin

Did you read the first paragraph in the second post in this thread?

And also note that at Qumran there are different varieties of Hebrew text including MT-like, Samaritan-like and LXX-like, so the variation already existed in Hebrew.

If you don't like the source, I can find you the same text from elsewhere, but read the text before insisting on things.


spin