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Title: The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English by Lancelot C. Brenton ISBN: 0-913573-44-2 Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 April, 1986 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The issue of proper translation...
Comment: It appears to me that the issue here raised was not the presence or absence of the Divine Name, per se. Rather, the issue raised was that of proper translation. Brenton, the translator, was being criticized for not including some form of the Tetragrammaton in his translation.
The job of a translator of any kind is to *translate* the words before him, and not to go beyond that. His job is not to suppose, or assume. The fact that some "early" fragmentary Greek OT translations (i.e. Aquila fragments) include the tetragrammaton (Hebrew consonants) does not then give the translator license to freely insert the name "Jehovah" throughout his entire LXX translation in each place he feels it *should* (but does not) appear.
Regarding translations of the New Testament (such as the Jehovah's Witnesses 'New World Translation', and some Hebrew translations from the fourteenth century A.D.), the same principle applies. Since no form of the Tetragrammaton appears in even a single extant Greek NT MSS, it is incorrect (or at least, conjecture) to say any New Testament translator "restored" the Divine Name to the NT. Rather, some New Testament translators have inserted the Divine Name into the New Testament text in places where they feel it *should* (but does not) appear. This is called speculation, not translation.
Rating: 4
Summary: Necassary to the student of the Bible
Comment: This book presents the Septuagint (LXX) in parallel columns of Greek and an English translation. If you cannot read Greek, then the English translation is available for you to use. If you can read Greek, then the English is available to help clarify things when the torturous LXX Greek seems overwhelming.
The New Testament authors largely used the LXX whenever they quoted the Old Testament, and it sometimes differs from our Hebrew text. It seeded the theological language of the early church and the New Testament in a more fundamental way than even the King James Bible has for the English speaking theology of today.
To fully understand the New Testament, we must familiarize ourselves with the LXX. For example, the NT authors primarily used two words for the Church, "ecclesia" and "synagoge." These words were used almost exclusively in the OT for Israel. The NT authors' usage of these words can only mean that the Church and Israel are the same in their minds. I am an evangelical, but this fact challenges fundamentally some of the dominant teachings of our churches. Without the LXX, I would not have understood much NT doctrine. This includes far more than beliefs about the Church. Work through it and discover the others for yourself.
That said, this book suffers from some fatal flaws. First, it divides the Apocryphal books from the rest of the books, and it does so with the Apocryphal portions of accepted OT books. The early Church did not look at them this way. While the Apocryphal portions of Daniel do not exist in our modern Protestant Bibles, most of the early Church read them without any indication that they were different. The division is artificial and changes the reading for us and polluting our studies in the LXX.
It also does not document well where the text came from. If you are curious what manuscripts Brenton got his information from, you won't find it in the book. The textual apparatus is short and does not list many variant readings.
With those flaws, I almost gave it three stars, but the value of the LXX in general forces it to have no less than four stars. If you are serious about learning the Bible, then you must study the LXX. It will enrich every area of study you embark on.
Rating: 5
Summary: To all those concerned about the comments of John C. Taylor:
Comment: It is unfortunate that the comments of Mr. John C. Taylor should have made the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses the crux of a scholarly Biblical discussion, a practice which is not followed by the translators of the New World Translation themselves.
Following are excerpts from the appendixes of that translation, plus two unbiased comments from scholars regarding this matter.
Hopefully, these will be sufficient to return the attention of this venue to its proper subject matter: the product of Sir Brenton's invaluable labors.
Regarding LXXP: the appendixes say, in part:
In 1944 a fragment of this papyrus was published by W. G. Waddell in JTS, Vol. 45, pp. 158-161. In 1948, in Cairo, Egypt, two Gilead-trained missionaries of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society obtained photographs of 18 fragments of this papyrus and permission to publish them. Subsequently, 12 of these fragments were published in the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, 1950, pp. 13, 14. Based on the photographs in this publication, the following three studies were produced: (1) A. Vaccari, "Papiro Fuad, Inv. 266. Analisi critica dei Frammenti pubblicati in: 'New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures.' Brooklyn (N. Y.) 1950 p. 13s.," published in Studia Patristica, Vol. I, Part I, edited by Kurt Aland and F. L. Cross, Berlin, 1957, pp. 339-342; (2) W. Baars, "Papyrus Fouad Inv. No. 266," published in the Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, Vol. XIII, Wageningen, 1959, pp. 442-446; (3) George Howard, "The Oldest Greek Text of Deuteronomy," published in the Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. XLII, Cincinnati, 1971, pp. 125-131.
Commenting on this papyrus, Paul Kahle wrote in Studia Evangelica, edited by Kurt Aland, F. L. Cross, Jean Danielou, Harald Riesenfeld and W. C. van Unnik, Berlin, 1959, p. 614: "Further pieces of the same papyrus were reproduced from a photo of the papyrus by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in the introduction to an English translation of the New Testament, Brooklyn, New York, 1950. A characteristic of the papyrus is the fact that the name of God is rendered by the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew square letters. An examination of the published fragments of the papyrus undertaken at my request by Pater Vaccari resulted in his concluding that the papyrus, which must have been written about 400 years earlier than Codex B, contains perhaps the most perfect Septuagint text of Deuteronomy that has come down to us."
A further appendix notes, in part:
Not only Matthew but all the writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures quoted verses from the Hebrew text or from the Septuagint where the divine name appears. For example, in Peter's speech in Ac 3:22 a quotation is made from De 18:15 where the Tetragrammaton appears in a papyrus fragment of the Septuagint dated to the first century B.C.E. (See App 1C §1.) As a follower of Christ, Peter used God's name, Jehovah. When Peter's speech was put on record the Tetragrammaton was here used according to the practice during the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E.
Sometime during the second or third century C.E. the scribes removed the Tetragrammaton from both the Septuagint and the Christian Greek Scriptures and replaced it with Ky'rios, "Lord" or Theos', "God."
Concerning the use of the Tetragrammaton in the Christian Greek Scriptures, George Howard of the University of Georgia wrote in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 96, 1977, p. 63: "Recent discoveries in Egypt and the Judean Desert allow us to see first hand the use of God's name in pre-Christian times. These discoveries are significant for N[ew] T[estament] studies in that they form a literary analogy with the earliest Christian documents and may explain how NT authors used the divine name. In the following pages we will set forth a theory that the divine name, [here is inserted the Hebrew characters representing the Tetragrammaton] (and possibly abbreviations of it), was originally written in the NT quotations of and allusions to the O[ld] T[estament] and that in the course of time it was replaced mainly with the surrogate ? [abbreviation for Ky'rios, "Lord"]. This removal of the Tetragram[maton], in our view, created a confusion in the minds of early Gentile Christians about the relationship between the 'Lord God' and the 'Lord Christ' which is reflected in the MS tradition of the NT text itself."
Another scholar made the following comments regarding this subject:
Wolfgang Feneberg comments in the Jesuit magazine Entschluss/Offen (April 1985): "He [Jesus] did not withhold his father's name YHWH from us, but he entrusted us with it. It is otherwise inexplicable why the first petition of the Lord's Prayer should read: 'May your name be sanctified!'" Feneberg further notes that "in pre-Christian manuscripts for Greek-speaking Jews, God's name was not paraphrased with kýrios [Lord], but was written in the tetragram form [YHWH] in Hebrew or archaic Hebrew characters. . . . We find recollections of the name in the writings of the Church Fathers; but they are not interested in it. By translating this name kýrios (Lord), the Church Fathers were more interested in attributing the grandeur of the kýrios to Jesus Christ."
Here is one scholar's comment regarding the NWT:
In 1989, Professor Benjamin Kedar of Israel said: "In my linguistic research in connection with the Hebrew Bible and translations, I often refer to the English edition of what is known as the New World Translation. In so doing, I find my feeling repeatedly confirmed that this work reflects an honest endeavor to achieve an understanding of the text that is as accurate as possible. Giving evidence of a broad command of the original language, it renders the original words into a second language understandably without deviating unnecessarily from the specific structure of the Hebrew. . . . Every statement of language allows for a certain latitude in interpreting or translating. So the linguistic solution in any given case may be open to debate. But I have never discovered in the New World Translation any biased intent to read something into the text that it does not contain."
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Title: Invitation to the Septuagint by Karen H. Jobes, Moises Silva ISBN: 0801022355 Publisher: Baker Book House Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint, The by Bernard Alwyn Taylor ISBN: 0310226457 Publisher: Zondervan Pub. Date: December, 1994 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: Grammar of Septuagint Greek: With Selected Readings, Vocabularies, and Updated Indexes by F. C. Conybeare, George Stock ISBN: 1565636651 Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew/Greek/English by Jay P., Sr. Green ISBN: 1878442821 Publisher: Sovereign Grace Trust Fund Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $84.99 |
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Title: Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (104209) by Robert Weber ISBN: 3438053039 Publisher: American Bible Society Pub. Date: June, 1990 List Price(USD): $79.99 |
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