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Septuagint



 
 
The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek
Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
 version of the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible

The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
, translated in stages between the 3rd
3rd century BC

The 3rd century BC started the first day of 300 BC and ended the last day of 201 BC. It is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period....
 and 1st centuries BC in Alexandria
Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
.

It is the oldest of several ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
, the lingua franca
Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
 of the eastern Mediterranean Basin
Mediterranean Basin

The Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around and surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have a Mediterranean climate, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub...
 from the time of Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
 (356-323 BC).






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Codex Vaticanus
The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek
Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
 version of the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible

The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
, translated in stages between the 3rd
3rd century BC

The 3rd century BC started the first day of 300 BC and ended the last day of 201 BC. It is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period....
 and 1st centuries BC in Alexandria
Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
.

It is the oldest of several ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
, the lingua franca
Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
 of the eastern Mediterranean Basin
Mediterranean Basin

The Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around and surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have a Mediterranean climate, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub...
 from the time of Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
 (356-323 BC). The word septuaginta means "seventy" in Latin and derives from a tradition that seventy (or seventy-two) Jewish scholars translated the Pentateuch (Torah) from Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
 into Greek for Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Ptolemy II Philadelphus

Ptolemy II Philadelphus , was the king of Ptolemaic Egypt from 283 BC to 246 BC. He was the son of the founder of the Ptolemaic kingdom Ptolemy I Soter and Berenice I of Egypt, and was educated by Philitas of Cos....
, 285–246 BC.

The Septuagint includes some books not found in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible

The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
. Many Protestant Bibles follow the Jewish canon
Biblical canon

A Biblical canon or canon of scripture is a list or set of Bible books considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community, generally in Judaism or Christianity....
 and exclude the additional books. Roman Catholics, however, include some of these books in their canon while Eastern Orthodox Churches use all the books of the Septuagint. Anglican lectionaries also use all of the books except Psalm 151
Psalm 151

'Psalm 151' is the name given to a short Psalms that is found in most copies of the Septuagint but not in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. The title given to this psalm in the Septuagint indicates that it is supernumerary, and no number is affixed to it: "This Psalm is ascribed to David and is outside the number....
, and the full Authorized (King James) Version includes these additional books in a separate section labelled the "Apocrypha
Biblical apocrypha

The biblical apocrypha are Books of the Bible published in an edition of the Bible whose Biblical canon the publisher either rejects or doubts....
".

The Septuagint was held in great respect in ancient times; Philo
Philo

Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Judaism philosopher born in Alexandria, Egypt....
 and Josephus
Josephus

Josephus , also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu and, after he became a Roman citizenship, as Titus Flavius Josephus, was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70....
 ascribed divine inspiration to its authors. Besides the Old Latin versions
Vetus Latina

Vetus Latina is a collective name given to the Bible texts in Latin that were Bible translations before St Jerome's Vulgate Bible became the standard Bible for Latin-speaking Western Christianity....
, the LXX is also the basis for the Slavonic, Syro-Hexaplar
Hexapla

Hexapla is the term for an edition of the Bible in six versions. Especially it applies to the edition of the Old Testament compiled by Origen of Alexandria, which placed side by side:...
 (but not the Peshitta
Peshitta

The Peshitta is the standard version of the Christian Bible in the Syriac language.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated from the Hebrew , probably in the second century....
), Old Armenian
Armenian language

The 'Armenian language' is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh....
, Old Georgian
Georgian language

Georgian is the official language of Georgia , a country in the Caucasus .Georgian is the primary language of about 3.9 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad ....
 and Coptic
Coptic language

Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the final stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic languages language spoken in Egypt until at least the seventeenth century....
 versions of the Old Testament. Of significance for all Christians and for Bible scholars, the LXX is quoted by the Christian
Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
 New Testament
New Testament

The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christianity Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
 and by the Apostolic Fathers
Apostolic Fathers

The Apostolic Fathers are a small number of Early Christianity authors who lived and wrote in the second half of the 1st century and the first half of the 2nd century....
. While Jews have not used the LXX in worship or religious study since the second century AD, recent scholarship has brought renewed interest in it in Judaic Studies. Some of the Dead Sea scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea scrolls consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea....
 attest to Hebrew texts other than those on which the Masoretic Text
Masoretic Text

The Masoretic Text is the Hebrew language text of the Jewish Bible . It defines not just the Development of the Jewish Bible canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their niqqud and cantillation for both public reading and private study....
 was based; in many cases, these newly found texts accord with the LXX version. The oldest surviving codices of LXX (Codex Vaticanus
Codex Vaticanus

The Codex Vaticanus, , is one of the oldest and most valuable extant Biblical manuscript of the Greek Bible. The codex is named for its place of housing in the Vatican Library....
 and Codex Sinaiticus
Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus ]]The story of how von Tischendorf found the manuscript, which contained most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament, has all the interest of a romance....
) date to the fourth century AD.

Creation of the Septuagint


Jewish scholars first translated the Torah into Koine Greek
Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
 in the third century BC. Further books were translated over the next two centuries. It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where; some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, and then revised. The quality and style of the different translators also varied considerably from book to book, from the literal
Literal translation

Literal translation, also known as direct translation, is the rendering of text from one language to another "word-for-word" rather than conveying the Word sense of the original....
 to paraphrasing
Paraphrase

Paraphrase is restatement of a text or passage, using other words. The term "paraphrase" derives via the Latin "paraphrasis" from the Greek language para phrase?n, meaning "additional manner of expression"....
 to interpretative. According to one assessment "the Pentateuch is reasonably well translated, but the rest of the books, especially the poetical books, are often very poorly done and even contain sheer absurdities".

As the work of translation progressed gradually, and new books were added to the collection, the compass of the Greek Bible came to be somewhat indefinite. The Pentateuch always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon
Biblical canon

A Biblical canon or canon of scripture is a list or set of Bible books considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community, generally in Judaism or Christianity....
; but the prophetic collection changed its aspect by having various hagiographa incorporated into it. Some of the newer works, those called anagignoskomena
Biblical apocrypha

The biblical apocrypha are Books of the Bible published in an edition of the Bible whose Biblical canon the publisher either rejects or doubts....
 in Greek, are not included in the Jewish canon
Development of the Jewish Bible canon

Rabbinic Judaism recognizes the twenty-four books of the Masoretic Text, commonly called the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible. Evidence suggests that the process of canonization occurred between 200 BCE and 200 CE....
. Among these books are Maccabees
Books of the Maccabees

The Books of the Maccabees are books concerned with the Maccabees, the leaders of the Jews rebellion against the Seleucid dynasty, or related subjects....
 and the Wisdom of Ben Sira
Ben Sira

Sirach, by Ben Sira, also known as The Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, or Ecclesiasticus, is a work from the second century BC, originally written in Hebrew language....
. Also, the Septuagint version of some works, like Daniel
Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew language and Aramaic language, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC....
 and Esther
Book of Esther

The Book of Esther is one of the books of the Ketuvim of the Tanakh and of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim....
, are longer than those in the Masoretic Text. Some of the later books (Wisdom of Solomon
Book of Wisdom

Book of Wisdom or Wisdom of Solomon or simply Wisdom is one of the deuterocanonical books of the Bible. It is one of the seven Sapiential or wisdom books of the Septuagint Old Testament, which includes Book of Job, Psalms, Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon , and Ecclesiasticus ....
, 2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees

2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical books book of the Bible which focuses on the Jews' revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work....
, and others) apparently were composed in Greek.

The authority of the larger group of writings, out of which the ketuvim
Ketuvim

Ketuvim is the third and final section of the Tanakh , after Torah and Nevi'im. In English translations of the Hebrew Bible, this section is usually entitled "Writings" or "Hagiographa."...
 were selected, had not yet been determined, although some sort of selective process must have been employed because the Septuagint did not include other well-known Jewish documents such as Enoch
Book of Enoch

The Book of Enoch is a pseudepigraphic work ascribed to Enoch, ancestor of Noah, the great-grandfather of Noah and son of Jared .While this book today is Biblical apocrypha in most Christian Churches, it was explicitly quoted in the New Testament and by many of the early Church Fathers....
 or Jubilees or other writings that are now part of the Pseudepigrapha. It is not known what principles were used to determine the contents of the Septuagint beyond the "Law
Torah

The term "Torah" , or Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, refers to the entirety of Judaism's founding Halakha and ethical religious texts....
 and the Prophets", a phrase used several times in the New Testament
New Testament

The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christianity Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
.

Naming and designation


The Septuagint derives its name from Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 septuaginta interpretum versio, (Greek: ? µet?f?as?? t?? ?ßd?µ????ta, e metráfrasis ton hebomekonta), "translation of the seventy interpreters" (hence the abbreviation LXX
Roman numerals

Roman numerals are a numeral system of ancient Rome based on letters of the alphabet, which are combined to signify the sum of their values. The system is decimal but not directly Positional notation and does not include a zero....
) – which is also taken to imply seventy-two, six from each tribe. The Latin title refers to a legendary account in the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas of how seventy-two Jewish scholars were asked by the Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Ptolemy II Philadelphus

Ptolemy II Philadelphus , was the king of Ptolemaic Egypt from 283 BC to 246 BC. He was the son of the founder of the Ptolemaic kingdom Ptolemy I Soter and Berenice I of Egypt, and was educated by Philitas of Cos....
 in the 3rd century BC to translate the Torah
Torah

The term "Torah" , or Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, refers to the entirety of Judaism's founding Halakha and ethical religious texts....
 for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria
Library of Alexandria

The Royal Library of Alexandria or Ancient Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest Great libraries of the ancient world....
. A later version of that legend narrated by Philo of Alexandria states that although the translators were kept in separate chambers, they all produced identical versions of the text in seventy-two days. Although this story may be improbable, it underlines the fact that some ancient Jews wished to present the translation as authoritative. A version of this legend is found in the Tractate Megillah
Megillah (Talmud)

Megillah is the tenth Talmud of Mishnah in the Order Moed. It and its Gemara deal with the laws of Purim and offers exegetical understandings to the Book of Esther....
 of the Babylonian Talmud
Talmud

The Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Halakha, Jewish ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
 (pages 9a-9b), which identifies fifteen specific unusual translations made by the scholars. Only two of these translations are found in the extant LXX.

Textual history


Modern scholarship holds that the LXX was written during the 3rd through 1st centuries BC. But nearly all attempts at dating specific books, with the exception of the Pentateuch (early- to mid-3rd century BC), are tentative and without consensus.

Later Jewish revisions and recension
Recension

Recension is the practice of editing or revising a text based on critical analysis. When referring to manuscripts, this may be a revision by another author....
s of the Greek against the Hebrew are well attested, the most famous of which include the Three: Aquila
Aquila of Sinope

Aquila of Sinope was a 2nd Century AD native of Pontus in Anatolia known for producing an exceedingly literal translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek language around 130 AD....
 (AD 128
128

Events...
), Symmachus
Symmachus the Ebionite

Symmachus the Ebionite was the author of one of the Greek versions of the Old Testament. It was included by Origen in his Hexapla and Tetrapla, which compared various versions of the Old Testament side by side with the Septuagint....
, and Theodotion
Theodotion

Theodotion was a Hellenistic Jewish scholar, perhaps working in Ephesus , who translated the Hebrew Bible into Ancient Greek. Whether he was revising the Septuagint, or was working from Hebrew manuscripts that represented a parallel tradition that has not survived, is debated....
. These three, to varying degrees, are more literal renderings of their contemporary Hebrew scriptures as compared to the Old Greek. Modern scholars consider one or more of the 'three' to be totally new Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible.

Around AD 235
235

Events...
, Origen
Origen

Origen was an Early Christianity scholar, theology, and one of the most distinguished of the early Church father of the Christian Church. According to tradition, he is held to have been an Ancient Egypt who taught in Alexandria, reviving the Catechetical School of Alexandria where Clement of Alexandria had taught....
, a Christian scholar in Alexandria, completed the Hexapla
Hexapla

Hexapla is the term for an edition of the Bible in six versions. Especially it applies to the edition of the Old Testament compiled by Origen of Alexandria, which placed side by side:...
, a comprehensive comparison of the ancient versions and Hebrew text side-by-side in six columns, with diacritical markings (a.k.a. "editor's marks", "critical signs" or "Aristarchian signs"). Much of this work was lost, but several compilations of the fragments are available. 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 diacritical marks indicating to which version each line (Gr. st????) belonged. Perhaps the voluminous Hexapla was never copied in its entirety, but Origen's combined text ("the fifth column") was copied frequently, 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 recension. In the century following Origen, two other major recensions were identified by Jerome
Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Christian priest and Christian apologetics best known for translating the Vulgate. He is recognized by the Catholic Church as a canonized saint and Doctor of the Church, and his version of the Bible is still an important text in Catholicism....
, who attributed these to Lucian
Lucian of Antioch

Saint Lucian of Antioch was an early and extremely influential Theology and teacher of Christianity, particularly for the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics....
 and Hesychius
Hesychius of Jerusalem

Hesychius of Jerusalem was a Christian presbyter and Biblical exegesis, probably of the fifth century. Nothing certain is known as to the dates of his birth and death , or, indeed concerning the events of his life....
.

The oldest manuscripts of the LXX include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BC fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). Relatively complete manuscripts of the LXX postdate the Hexaplar rescension and include the Codex Vaticanus
Codex Vaticanus

The Codex Vaticanus, , is one of the oldest and most valuable extant Biblical manuscript of the Greek Bible. The codex is named for its place of housing in the Vatican Library....
 and the Codex Sinaiticus
Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus ]]The story of how von Tischendorf found the manuscript, which contained most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament, has all the interest of a romance....
 of the 4th century and the Codex Alexandrinus
Codex Alexandrinus

The Codex Alexandrinus is a 5th century manuscript of the Greek Bible,The Greek Bible in this context refers to the Bible used by Greek-speaking Christians who lived in Egypt and elsewhere during the early history of Christianity....
 of the 5th century. These are indeed the oldest surviving nearly-complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language; the oldest extant complete Hebrew texts date some 600 years later, from the first half of the 10th 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. The various Jewish and later Christian revisions and recensions are largely responsible for the divergence of the codices.

Relationship between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text


The sources of the many differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text
Masoretic Text

The Masoretic Text is the Hebrew language text of the Jewish Bible . It defines not just the Development of the Jewish Bible canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their niqqud and cantillation for both public reading and private study....
 have long been discussed by scholars. The most widely accepted view today is that the original Septuagint provided a reasonably accurate record of an early Semitic textual variant, now lost, that differed from ancestors of the Masoretic text. Ancient scholars, however, did not suspect this. 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
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
, 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
Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea scrolls consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea....
 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. Likewise, Genesis 4:8 to the end of the chapter is the same. There is only one noticeable difference in that chapter, at 4:7, to wit:










Genesis 4:7, LXX (NETS
New English Translation of the Septuagint

The New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included under That Title is a modern translation of the scriptures used by Greek-speaking Christians and Jews of antiquity....
)
Genesis 4:7, Masoretic (NRSV)
If you offer correctly but do not divide correctly, have you not sinned? Be still; his recourse is to you, and you will rule over him.If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.


This instance illustrates the complexity of assessing differences between the LXX and the Masoretic Text. Despite the striking divergence of meaning here between the two, nearly identical consonantal Hebrew source texts can be reconstructed. The readily apparent semantic differences result from alternative strategies for interpreting the difficult verse and relate to differences in vowelization and punctuation of the consonantal text.

The differences between the LXX and the MT thus fall into four categories.

  1. Different Hebrew sources for the MT and the LXX. Evidence of this can be found throughout the Old Testament. 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. A more subtle example may be found in Isaiah 36.11; the meaning ultimately remains the same, but the choice of words evidences a different text. The MT reads "...al tedaber yehudit be-'ozne ha`am al ha-homa" [speak not the Judean language in the ears of (or — which can be heard by) the people on the wall]. The same verse in the LXX reads according to the translation of Brenton "and speak not to us in the Jewish tongue: and wherefore speakest thou in the ears of the men on the wall." The MT reads "people" where the LXX reads "men". This difference is very minor and does not affect the meaning of the verse. Scholars at one time had used discrepancies such as this to claim that the LXX was a poor translation of the Hebrew original. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, variant Hebrew texts of the Bible were found. In fact this verse is found in Qumran (1QIsaa) where the Hebrew word "haanashim" (the men) is found in place of "haam" (the people). This discovery, and others like it, showed that even seemingly minor differences of translation could be the result of variant Hebrew source texts.
  2. Differences in interpretation stemming from the same Hebrew text. A good example is Genesis 4.7 shown above.
  3. Differences as a result of idiomatic translation issues (i.e. a Hebrew idiom may not easily translate into Greek, thus some difference is intentionally or unintentionally imparted). For example, in Psalm 47:10 the MT reads "The shields of the earth belong to God". The LXX reads "To God are the mighty ones of the earth." The metaphor "shields" would not have made much sense to a Greek speaker; thus the words "mighty ones" are substituted in order to retain the original meaning.
  4. Transmission changes in Hebrew or Greek (Diverging revisionary/recensional changes and copyist errors)

Use of the Septuagint


Jewish use


In the 3rd century BC, most Jewish communities were located in the Hellenistic world where Greek was the lingua franca
Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
. It is believed that the LXX was produced because many Jews outside of Judea
Judea

Judea or Jud?a is the name given to the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel , an area now divided between Israel and the West Bank ....
 needed a Greek version of the scripture for use during synagogue
Synagogue

A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer.Synagogues usually have a large hall for prayer , smaller rooms for study and sometimes a social hall and offices....
 readings or for religious study. Some theorise that Hellenistic Jews intended the septuagint as a contribution to Hellenistic culture
Hellenism

Hellenism may refer to:*Hellenism , an esthetic movement in 18th and 19th century England and Germany*Hellenism , the academic study of ancient Greece ...
. Alexandria held the greatest diaspora Jewish community of the age and was also a great center of Greek letters. Alexandria is thus likely the site of LXX authorship, a notion supported by the legend of Ptolemy and the 72 scholars. The Septuagint enjoyed widespread use in the Hellenistic Jewish diaspora and even in Jerusalem, which had become a rather cosmopolitan (and therefore Greek-speaking) town. Both Philo
Philo

Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Judaism philosopher born in Alexandria, Egypt....
 and Josephus
Josephus

Josephus , also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu and, after he became a Roman citizenship, as Titus Flavius Josephus, was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70....
 show a reliance on the Septuagint in their citations of Jewish scripture.

Starting approximately in the 2nd century AD, several factors led most Jews to abandon use of the LXX. The earliest gentile
Gentile

The term Gentile refers to non-Israelite tribes or nations in translations of the Bible, most notably the English King James Version.It serves as the Latin and subsequenly English translation of the Hebrew language words ??? and ???? in the Old Testament and the Greek language word ???? in the New Testament....
 Christians of necessity used the LXX, as it was at the time the only Greek version of the bible, and most, if not all, of these early non-Jewish Christians could not read Hebrew. The association of the LXX with a rival religion may have rendered it suspect in the eyes of the newer generation of Jews and Jewish scholars. 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
Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
 into the Aramaic-speaking Persian Empire
Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
 when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Instead, Jews used Hebrew/Aramaic Targum
Targum

A targum is an Aramaic language translation of the Hebrew Bible written or compiled from the Second Temple period until the early Middle Ages ....
 manuscripts later compiled by the Masoretes; and authoritative Aramaic translations, such as those of Onkelos
Targum Onkelos

Targum Onkelos , is the official eastern targum to the Torah. However, its early origins may have been western, in Land of Israel. Its authorship is attributed to Onkelos....
 and Rabbi Yonathan ben Uziel
Targum Jonathan

Targum Jonathan - otherwise referred to as Targum Yonasan/Yonatan is the official eastern targum to the Nevi'im. Its early origins, however, are western i.e....
.

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
Aquila of Sinope

Aquila of Sinope was a 2nd Century AD native of Pontus in Anatolia known for producing an exceedingly literal translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek language around 130 AD....
, which seemed to be more concordant with contemporary Hebrew texts.

Christian use


The early Christian Church used the Greek texts since Greek was a lingua franca
Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
 of the Roman Empire at the time, and the language of the Church. In addition the Church Fathers tended to accept Philo's account of the LXX's miraculous and inspired origin. Furthermore, the New Testament writers, when citing the Jewish scriptures or when quoting Jesus doing so, freely used the Greek translation, implying that the Apostles and their followers considered it reliable.

When Jerome
Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Christian priest and Christian apologetics best known for translating the Vulgate. He is recognized by the Catholic Church as a canonized saint and Doctor of the Church, and his version of the Bible is still an important text in Catholicism....
 undertook the revision of the Old Latin
Vetus Latina

Vetus Latina is a collective name given to the Bible texts in Latin that were Bible translations before St Jerome's Vulgate Bible became the standard Bible for Latin-speaking Western Christianity....
 translations of the Septuagint, he checked the Septuagint against the Hebrew texts that were 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
Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
 of his Vulgate
Vulgate

The Vulgate is an early Fifth Century version of the Bible in Latin, and largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of Vetus Latina....
 from Hebrew rather than Greek. His choice was severely criticized by Augustine, his contemporary; a flood of still less moderate criticism came from those who regarded Jerome as a forger. But with the passage of time, acceptance of Jerome's version gradually increased until it displaced the Old Latin translations
Vetus Latina

Vetus Latina is a collective name given to the Bible texts in Latin that were Bible translations before St Jerome's Vulgate Bible became the standard Bible for Latin-speaking Western Christianity....
 of the Septuagint.

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. The Eastern Orthodox also use LXX untranslated where Greek is the liturgical language, e.g. in the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, the Church of Greece
Church of Greece

The Church of Greece is one of the fifteen autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches which make up the Eastern Orthodox Communion. Today it is one of the most important autocephalous, or ecclesiastically independent, churches of the Eastern Orthodox communion....
 and the Cypriot Orthodox Church
Cypriot Orthodox Church

The ancient Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus is one of the Eastern Orthodox Church organization independent Eastern Orthodox churches, which are in full communion and in doctrinal agreement with one another but not all subject to one patriarch....
. Many modern critical translations of the Old Testament
Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
, 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
Dead Sea scrolls

The Dead Sea scrolls consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea....
, particularly those in Aramaic, correspond more closely with the LXX than with the Masoretic text (although the majority of these variations are extremely minor, e.g. grammatical changes, spelling differences or missing words, and do not affect the meaning of sentences and paragraphs). This confirms the scholarly consensus that the LXX represents a separate Hebrew-text tradition from that which was later standardized as the Masoretic text.

Language of the Septuagint


Some sections of the Septuagint may show Semiticism
Semitic

In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
s, or idioms and phrases based on Semitic languages like Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
 and Aramaic. Other books, such as LXX Daniel
Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew language and Aramaic language, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC....
 and Proverbs
Book of Proverbs

The Book of Proverbs is a book of the Hebrew Bible , included in the collected works known as the "Writings" or Ketuvim....
, show Greek influence more strongly. The book of Daniel that is found in almost all Greek bibles, however, is not from the LXX, but rather from Theodotion's
Theodotion

Theodotion was a Hellenistic Jewish scholar, perhaps working in Ephesus , who translated the Hebrew Bible into Ancient Greek. Whether he was revising the Septuagint, or was working from Hebrew manuscripts that represented a parallel tradition that has not survived, is debated....
 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. One must, however, evaluate such evidence with caution since it is extremely unlikely that all ancient Hebrew sounds had precise Greek equivalents.

Books of the Septuagint


See also Table of books
Septuagint

The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd century BC and 1st century BC in Alexandria....
 below.


All the books of western canons
Biblical canon

A Biblical canon or canon of scripture is a list or set of Bible books considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community, generally in Judaism or Christianity....
 of the Old Testament
Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
 are found in the Septuagint, although the order does not always coincide with the Western ordering of the books. The Septuagint order for the Old Testament is evident in the earliest Christian Bibles (5th century).

Some books that are set apart in the Masoretic text are grouped together. For example the Books of Samuel
Books of Samuel

The Books of Samuel are part of the Tanakh and also of the Christianity Old Testament. The work was originally written in Hebrew language, and the Book of Samuel originally formed a single text, as they are often considered today in Hebrew bibles....
 and the Books of Kings
Books of Kings

The Books of Kings are a part of Judaism's Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. They were originally written in Hebrew language and were later included by Christianity as part of the Old Testament....
 are in the LXX one book in four parts called ?as??e??? ("Of Reigns"); scholars believe that this is the original arrangement before the book was divided for readability. In LXX, the Books of Chronicles
Books of Chronicles

LocationIn the masoretic text, Chronicles is part of the third part of the Tanakh, namely Ketuvim . In most printed versions it is the last book in Ketuvim ....
 supplement Reigns and it is called Paraleipoménon (?a?a?e?p?µ????—things left out). The Septuagint organizes the minor prophets as twelve parts of one Book of Twelve.

Some scripture of ancient origin are found in the Septuagint but are not present in the Hebrew. These include additions to Daniel
Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew language and Aramaic language, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC....
 and Esther
Book of Esther

The Book of Esther is one of the books of the Ketuvim of the Tanakh and of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim....
. For more information regarding these books, see the articles Biblical apocrypha
Biblical apocrypha

The biblical apocrypha are Books of the Bible published in an edition of the Bible whose Biblical canon the publisher either rejects or doubts....
, Biblical canon
Biblical canon

A Biblical canon or canon of scripture is a list or set of Bible books considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community, generally in Judaism or Christianity....
, Books of the Bible
Books of the Bible

Books of the Bible are listed differently in the canons of Jews, and Roman Catholic Church, Protestantism, Greek Orthodox, Slavonic Orthodox, Georgian, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac and Ethiopian Churches, although there is substantial overlap....
, and Deuterocanonical books
Deuterocanonical books

"Deuterocanonical books" is a term used since the sixteenth century in the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Christianity to describe certain books and passages of the Christian Old Testament that are not part of the Jewish Bible....
.

The New Testament makes a number of allusions to and may quote the additional books (as Orthodox Christians aver). The books are Tobit
Book of Tobit

The Book of Tobit or Tobi is a book of scripture that is part of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy biblical canon, pronounced canonical by the Council of Carthage of 397 and confirmed for Roman Catholics by the Council of Trent ....
, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon
Book of Wisdom

Book of Wisdom or Wisdom of Solomon or simply Wisdom is one of the deuterocanonical books of the Bible. It is one of the seven Sapiential or wisdom books of the Septuagint Old Testament, which includes Book of Job, Psalms, Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon , and Ecclesiasticus ....
, Wisdom of Jesus Sirach, Baruch
Book of Baruch

The Book of Baruch, occasionally referred to as 1 Baruch, is called a deuterocanonical books or Biblical apocrypha book of the Bible. Although not in the Hebrew Bible, it is found in the Septuagint and in the Vulgate, and also in Theodotion's version....
, Epistle of Jeremy (which later became chapter 6 of Baruch in the Vulgate), additions to Daniel
Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel is a book in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Originally written in Hebrew language and Aramaic language, it is set during the Babylonian Captivity, a period when Jews were deported and exiled to Babylon following the Siege of Jerusalem of 597 BC....
 (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children
The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children

The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Holy Children is a lengthy passage that appears after Book of Daniel 3:23 in Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church Bibles, as well as in the ancient Greek Septuagint translation....
, Sosanna
Susanna (Book of Daniel)

Susanna or Shoshana is one of the additions to Daniel, considered apocryphal by Protestants, but included in the Book of Daniel by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church churches....
 and Bel and the Dragon
Bel and the Dragon

The tale of Bel and the Dragon incorporated as chapter 14 of the Additions to Daniel was written in Aramaic around the late second century BC and translated into Greek in the Septuagint....
), additions to Esther
Book of Esther

The Book of Esther is one of the books of the Ketuvim of the Tanakh and of the Historical Books of the Old Testament. The Book of Esther or the Megillah is the basis for the Jewish celebration of Purim....
, 1 Maccabees
1 Maccabees

1 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical books book written by a Jewish author after the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom, probably about 100 BC....
, 2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees

2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical books book of the Bible which focuses on the Jews' revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work....
, 3 Maccabees
3 Maccabees

One of the Pseudepigrapha, the Bible book 3 Maccabees is found in most Eastern Orthodox Church Bibles as a part of the deuterocanonical books, but Protestantisms and Catholics do not include it in their list of apocrypha books, except the Moravian Brethren who included it in the Apocrypha of the Bible of Kralice....
, 4 Maccabees
4 Maccabees

The book of 4 Maccabees is a homily or philosophy discourse praising the supremacy of pious reason over passion. It is not in the Bible for most churches, but is an appendix to the Greek Bible, and in the canon of the Georgian Bible....
, 1 Esdras
1 Esdras

1 Esdras is a book from the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament regarded as canonical in Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodoxy, but regarded as Biblical apocrypha by Jews, Catholics, and most Protestantism....
, Odes
Book of Odes (Bible)

Odes is a book of the Bible found only in Eastern Orthodox Bibles and included or appended after Psalms in Alfred Rahlfs' critical edition of the Septuagint, coming from the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus....
, including the Prayer of Manasses, and Psalm 151
Psalm 151

'Psalm 151' is the name given to a short Psalms that is found in most copies of the Septuagint but not in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. The title given to this psalm in the Septuagint indicates that it is supernumerary, and no number is affixed to it: "This Psalm is ascribed to David and is outside the number....
. The canonical acceptance of these books varies among different Christian traditions, and there are canonical books not derived from the Septuagint; for a discussion see the article on Biblical apocrypha
Biblical apocrypha

The biblical apocrypha are Books of the Bible published in an edition of the Bible whose Biblical canon the publisher either rejects or doubts....
.

Printed editions


All the printed editions of the Septuagint are derived from the three recensions mentioned above.

  • The editio princeps
    Editio princeps

    In classical scholarship, editio princeps is a term of art. It means, roughly, the first printed edition of a work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which were therefore circulated only after being copied by hand....
     is the Complutensian Polyglot. It was based on manuscripts that are now lost, but seems to transmit quite early readings.
  • The Aldine edition (begun by Aldus Manutius
    Aldus Manutius

    Aldus Pius Manutius , the Latinized name of Teobaldo Mannucci, sometimes called Aldus Manutius, the Elder to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius the Younger) was an Italian Renaissance humanism who became a printer and publisher when he founded the Aldine Press at Venice....
    ) appeared at Venice in 1518. The text is closer to Codex Vaticanus than the Complutensian. The editor says he collated ancient manuscripts but does not specify them. It has been reprinted several times.
  • The most important edition is the Roman or Sixtine, which reproduces the Codex Vaticanus" almost exclusively. It was published under the direction of Cardinal Caraffa, with the help of various savants, in 1586, by the authority of Sixtus V, to assist the revisers who were preparing the Latin Vulgate edition ordered by the Council of Trent. It has become the textus receptus of the Greek Old Testament and has had many new editions, such as that of Holmes and Pearsons (Oxford, 1798-1827), the seven editions of Constantin von Tischendorf
    Constantin von Tischendorf

    Lobegott Friedrich Constantin Tischendorf was a noted Germany Biblical scholar. He deciphered the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, a 5th century Greek language biblical manuscript of the New Testament, in the 1840s, and rediscovered the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th century New Testament manuscript, in 1859....
    , which appeared at Leipzig between 1850 and 1887, the last two, published after the death of the author and revised by Nestle, the four editions of Henry Barclay Swete
    Henry Barclay Swete

    Henry Barclay Swete was an English Biblical scholar. He became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1890. He is known for his 1906 commentary on the Book of Revelation, and other works of exegesis....
     (Cambridge, 1887-95, 1901, 1909), etc.
  • Grabe's edition was published at Oxford, from 1707 to 1720, and reproduced, but imperfectly, the "Codex Alexandrinus" of London. For partial editions, see Fulcran Vigouroux, Dictionnaire de la Bible, 1643 sqq.
  • Alfred Rahlfs, a longtime Septuagint researcher at Göttingen, began a manual edition of the Septuagint in 1917 or 1918. The completed Septuaginta was published in 1935. It relies mainly on Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus, and presents a critical apparatus with variants from these and several other sources.
  • The Göttingen Septuagint (Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum) is a major critical version, comprising multiple volumes published from 1931 to 2006 and not yet complete. Its two critical apparatuses present variant Septuagint readings and variants from other Greek versions.
  • In 2006, a revision of Alfred Rahlfs's Septuaginta was published by the German Bible Society. This editio altera includes over a thousand changes to the text and apparatus.
  • contains a Septuagint text derived mainly from the agreement of any two of the Complutensian Polyglot, the Sixtine, and the Aldine texts.


Translations of the Septuagint


The Septuagint has been translated a few times into English, the first one (though excluding the Apocrypha) being that of Charles Thomson in 1808
Thomson's Translation

Charles Thomson's Translation is a very rare direct translation of the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament into English. The work took 19 years to complete and was originally published in 1808....
 (his translation was later Revised And Enlarged by C.A. Muses in 1954). The translation of Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton
Brenton's English Translation of the Septuagint

This version of the Old Testament was a translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton and published by Samuel Bagster & Sons, Ltd., London, in 1844....
, published in 1851, is a longtime standard. For most of the time since its publication it has been the only one readily available, and has been in print continually since. It is based primarily upon the Codex Vaticanus
Codex Vaticanus

The Codex Vaticanus, , is one of the oldest and most valuable extant Biblical manuscript of the Greek Bible. The codex is named for its place of housing in the Vatican Library....
 and contains the Greek and English texts in parallel columns. There also is a revision of the Brenton Septuagint available through Stauros Ministries, called The Apostles' Bible. The latest revision was released in January 2008.

A recent interlinear translation (2007) is The Apostolic Bible Polyglot, which includes the Greek books of the Hebrew canon along with the Greek New Testament, all numerically coded to the AB-Strong numbering system, and set in monotonic orthography. Included in the printed edition is The Lexical Concordance of The Apostolic Bible and The English-Greek Index. Online is The comprehensive Concordance of The Apostolic Bible, The Analytical Lexicon and a grammar.

A new translation into English has recently been completed for use as the Old Testament portion of the Orthodox Study Bible. This version was released in early 2008, along with extensive commentary from an Eastern Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox Church

The Eastern Orthodox Church is the second largest single Christian communion in the world with an estimated 225 million members worldwide. It is considered by its adherents to be the Four Marks of the Church established by Jesus Christ and his Apostles nearly 2000 years ago....
 perspective.

The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) has produced A New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included Under that Title
New English Translation of the Septuagint

The New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included under That Title is a modern translation of the scriptures used by Greek-speaking Christians and Jews of antiquity....
 (NETS), an academic translation based on standard critical editions of the Greek texts. It was published by Oxford Press in October 2007.

The Eastern / Greek Orthodox Bible
Eastern / Greek Orthodox Bible

The Eastern / Greek Orthodox Bible is an English language edition of the Bible published and controlled by Greek Orthodox Christians with limited copyright control and within a collaborative framework....
 (EOB) is an extensive revision and correction of Brenton’s translation which was primarily based on Codex Vaticanus
Codex Vaticanus

The Codex Vaticanus, , is one of the oldest and most valuable extant Biblical manuscript of the Greek Bible. The codex is named for its place of housing in the Vatican Library....
. Its language and syntax has been modernized and simplified. It also includes extensive introductory material and footnotes featuring significant inter-LXX and LXX/MT variants.

Defining Septuagint


Although the integrity of the Septuagint as a text distinct from the Masoretic text is supported 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 nearly complete text of the LXX, Codex Alexandrinus
Codex Alexandrinus

The Codex Alexandrinus is a 5th century manuscript of the Greek Bible,The Greek Bible in this context refers to the Bible used by Greek-speaking Christians who lived in Egypt and elsewhere during the early history of Christianity....
. Nearly complete texts of the Septuagint are also found in the Codex Vaticanus
Codex Vaticanus

The Codex Vaticanus, , is one of the oldest and most valuable extant Biblical manuscript of the Greek Bible. The codex is named for its place of housing in the Vatican Library....
 and Codex Sinaiticus
Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus ]]The story of how von Tischendorf found the manuscript, which contained most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament, has all the interest of a romance....
, which do not perfectly coincide. But the LXX is a particularly excellent text when compared to other ancient works with textual variants. It has been argued that it is unjustified to reject the existence of a Septuagint merely on the basis of variation due to editorial recension and typographical error.

The title "Septuagint" should 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. These other Greek versions were once in side-by-side columns of Origen
Origen

Origen was an Early Christianity scholar, theology, and one of the most distinguished of the early Church father of the Christian Church. According to tradition, he is held to have been an Ancient Egypt who taught in Alexandria, reviving the Catechetical School of Alexandria where Clement of Alexandria had taught....
's Hexapla
Hexapla

Hexapla is the term for an edition of the Bible in six versions. Especially it applies to the edition of the Old Testament compiled by Origen of Alexandria, which placed side by side:...
, now almost wholly lost. Of these the most important are "the three:" those by Aquila
Aquila of Sinope

Aquila of Sinope was a 2nd Century AD native of Pontus in Anatolia known for producing an exceedingly literal translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek language around 130 AD....
, Symmachus
Symmachus the Ebionite

Symmachus the Ebionite was the author of one of the Greek versions of the Old Testament. It was included by Origen in his Hexapla and Tetrapla, which compared various versions of the Old Testament side by side with the Septuagint....
, and Theodotion
Theodotion

Theodotion was a Hellenistic Jewish scholar, perhaps working in Ephesus , who translated the Hebrew Bible into Ancient Greek. Whether he was revising the Septuagint, or was working from Hebrew manuscripts that represented a parallel tradition that has not survived, is debated....
, 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


The Orthodox
Old Testament
Greek-based
name
Conventional
English name
Law
GénesisGenesis
ÉxodosExodus
LeuitikónLeviticus
ArithmoíNumbers
DeuteronómionDeuteronomy
History
Iêsous NauêJoshua
KritaíJudges
RoúthRuth
I ReignsI Samuel
II ReignsII Samuel
III ReignsI Kings
IV ReignsII Kings
I ParalipomenonI Chronicles
II ParalipomenonII Chronicles
I Esdras1 Esdras;
II EsdrasEzra-Nehemiah
Esther Esther with additions
IoudithJudith
TobitTobit or Tobias
I Maccabees1 Maccabees
II Maccabees2 Maccabees
III Maccabees3 Maccabees
Wisdom
PsalmsPsalms
Psalm 151
Psalm 151

'Psalm 151' is the name given to a short Psalms that is found in most copies of the Septuagint but not in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. The title given to this psalm in the Septuagint indicates that it is supernumerary, and no number is affixed to it: "This Psalm is ascribed to David and is outside the number....
Psalm 151
Prayer of Manasseh
Prayer of Manasseh

The Prayer of Manasseh is a short work of 15 verses of the penitential prayer of the Kingdom of Judah king Manasseh of Judah. Manasseh is recorded in the Bible as one of the most idolatrous ; however, after having been taken captive by the Assyrians, he prays for mercy and turns from his idolatrous ways....
Prayer of Manasseh
IobJob
ProverbsProverbs
EcclesiastesEcclesiastes
Song of SongsSong of Solomon
Wisdom of Solomon Wisdom
Wisdom of Jesus the son of SeirachSirach or Ecclesiasticus
Prophets
The TwelveMinor Prophets
I. OsëeHosea
II. ÄmosAmos
III. MichaiasMicah
IV. Ioel Joel
V. ObdiasObadiah
VI. IonasJonah
VII. NaoumNahum
VIII. AmbakumHabakkuk
IX. SophoniasZephaniah
X. ÄngaiosHaggai
XI. ZachariasZachariah
XII. MessengerMalachi
HesaiasIsaiah
HieremiasJeremiah
Baruch Baruch
LamentationsLamentations
Epistle of JeremiahLetter of Jeremiah
IezekiêlEzekiel
Daniêl Daniel with additions
Appendix
IV Maccabees4 Maccabees


See also

  • Alfred Rahlfs
    Alfred Rahlfs

    Alfred Rahlfs was born in Linden-Limmer, Hannover, Germany. He studied Protestant Theology, Philosophy, and Oriental Languages in University of Halle and G?ttingen, from where he received a Dr....
     — editor of a commonly distributed critical edition of LXX.
  • Documentary hypothesis
    Documentary hypothesis

    The documentary hypothesis is the proposal that the first five books of the Old Testament represent a combination of documents from originally independent sources....
     — discusses the recensional history of the Torah
    Torah

    The term "Torah" , or Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, refers to the entirety of Judaism's founding Halakha and ethical religious texts....
    /Pentateuch in Hebrew.
  • Tanakh at Qumran
    Tanakh at Qumran

    The Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible and Qumran is an archaeological site near the Dead Sea. More than two hundred portions of the Tanakh have been found near Qumran, forming part of the Dead Sea Scrolls....
     — some of the Dead Sea Scrolls are witnesses to the LXX text.
  • List of Greek fragments of the Old Testament that have the Tetragrammaton
  • Vulgate
    Vulgate

    The Vulgate is an early Fifth Century version of the Bible in Latin, and largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of Vetus Latina....


Other References

  • Kantor, Mattis, The Jewish time line encyclopedia: A yearby-year history from Creation to the present, Jason Aronson Inc., London, 1992


External links


General

  • - Comprehensive site with scholarly discussion and links to texts and translations
  • (PDF)
  • [https://wwwdbunil.unil.ch/bibil/?MIval=/bi/en/bibilhome&BiMenu=10&BiMain=21&BiTypeRech=5&WINSIZE=100&affiche=2&Submit=1&rech=vedid=2492 Free Online Bibliography (up to date) from BiBIL]


Texts and translations

  • - Greek Text of the Septuagint and NT with parsing
    Parsing

    In computer science and linguistics, parsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a sequence of lexical analysis#Token to determine their grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar....
     and concordance
    Concordance

    Concordance can mean:*Concordance — a list of words used in a body of work, with their immediate contexts.*Concordance system in politics....
    . Lacks anagignoskomena.
  • Greek text (full polytonic unicode version) and English translation side by side. Greek text as used by the Orthodox Churches.
  • (without diacritical marks)
  • (advanced research tool)
  • . Monotonic orthography.
  • - contains Septuagint texts (with diacritics) side-by-side with English translations
  • - Complete Greek text (no diacritics, needs special font
    Computer font

    A computer font is an electronic data file containing a set of glyphs, characters, or symbols such as dingbats. Although the term font first referred to a set of metal type sorts in one style and size, since the 1990s most fonts are digital, used on computers....
    ) hyperlinked to Strong's concordance. Anagignoskomena do not display.
  • as a MS Word document (Requires . Intro and book abbreviations in Latin.)
  • (no diacritics, needs special font)
  • partial version of Brenton's edition, wiki
    Wiki

    A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content , using a simplified markup language....
     text and PNG images. (difficult navigation)


The LXX and the NT

  • by John Salza
  • - Instances where the New Testament quotes the LXX against the Masoretic Hebrew
  • - Instances where the New Testament quote agrees with the Masoretic Hebrew meaning
  • - By Edward William Grinfield