Author: William A. Ross

Assistant Professor of Old Testament, Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte, NC)

To the Old Country

Over the past few months I have been keeping a fairly regular pace to my blog posts, usually adding one every two weeks (or “fortnight”) on Mondays. In that spirit, I wanted to post something today, on schedule. Seeing, however, that tonight I am boarding a plane with my wife and two children – plus three suitcases, three carry-ons, a stroller, a car seat, &c., &c. – bound for England on a one-way ticket, I thought a more personal entry might be appropriate (and manageable).

Some of you may have happened upon my more personal “family” blog already, here. We’ve already begun chronicling some of the biggest preparatory hurtles we’ve dealt with the past few months. Main features have been items like, say, having a second child, selling our car, finding a home in Cambridge, and obtaining visas. It has been a very full summer, and I have only barely been thinking much about things academic (!).

We decided to get over to England about as early as the authorities would allow. Considering that we have an 8-week-old with us, plus a highly energetic two-year-old, it seemed best to squeeze in as much adjustment time as possible. So after we arrive I will have about four weeks until Michaelmas term begins, and my work gets under way.

We are very excited, and of course I am quite enthusiastic about my upcoming research at Cambridge. I will hopefully keep this site filled with interesting things along the way. With that in mind, my next posts will be a two-part series entitled “How to Attend Biblical Studies Conferences – A Guide for Students,” so watch for it in a few weeks.

Tally ho!

Review of J. Ross Wagner

Der Prophet Jesaja

In a previous post I briefly discussed J. Ross Wagner’s book Reading the Sealed Book: Old Greek Isaiah and the Problem of Septuagint Hermeneutics, FAT 88 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck / Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013). This I did partly because I was in the midst of reading the book itself for the present review and found portions of it so helpful, but also because I had also recently announced a series on the blog overviewing major contemporary translations of the Septuagint.

As I mentioned, the “issue” of LXX hermeneutics – determining how the Greek translator understood and rendered his text, and how later readers understood and applied that text – is central to one’s “approach” to translating the LXX into a modern language. This will hopefully become more clear as I review the major projects.

Wagner falls closest to the approach of NETS, although he makes certain caveats that distinguish his own perspective on key issues. In my estimation, some of these caveats are what create problems, at least in his stated methodology. Nevertheless, his actual treatment of the text at hand (Isaiah 1) is detailed and well executed. He has certainly advanced the state of the conversation on Greek Isaiah.

The Review

With that said, I post my review of Wagner here in full..

Wagner, the “Sealed Book” and LXX Translation

Wagner and the Sealed Book

In this post I want to preempt a book review I am working on of J. Ross Wagner. Reading the Sealed Book: Reading Old Greek Isaiah and the Problem of Septuagint Hermeneutics. FAT 88. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck / Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 295. ISBN 978-3-16-152557-5. €99.00 (hardcover). There is so much to talk about in this book, a review of it is almost impossible without vastly understating its contents. What I wish to focus on here, however, is his introductory material where Wagner discusses common approaches to LXX interpretation, or hermeneutics. While this may sound arcane, it is actually quite relevant for the LXX novice, since each of the (now four) major modern translations of the Septuagint take a different approach to their work based on their answer to the question: “How should we translate this translation?”

If you are interested in LXX studies, you need to know about this debate, since it is foundational to almost everything else in the discipline. What I will do here is highlight some of Wagner’s introductory material and interject my own “translation” of the technical details for a less familiar audience. This will pair nicely, I hope, with the series I’m working through right now on the major contemporary LXX translation projects (see this initial post).

Production & Reception

Wagner defines “LXX hermeneutics” as both “how to characterize the translators own interpretation of his source [text]” and “how a modern reader is to interpret the translated text” (2n8). This definition encapsulates the two central issues at almost every point in LXX studies, namely production and reception. The first – production – deals with the hypothetical Jew who sat down one day (or week or month) to actually translate (i.e. produce) a book of Hebrew scripture into Koine Greek; what was he looking at in his source text, what did he understand as he read, what did he mean by the words he wrote?

The second issue – reception – deals with what anyone else did with the translation he produced, whether that be read it, interpret it, apply it, translate it (again), and so forth, regardless of whether this agrees with the translator’s intentions. In other words, good LXX scholarship differentiates between what the translator read and understood and meant in his translation on Day 1 from what some later reader of the translation reads or understands (rightly or wrongly) on Day ‘n’. The first is difficult to prove, and the second is difficult to defend, unless that reader is you.

Two Questions in Translation

Two questions need answering in the face of the difficulty. First, we must ask to what degree “the textual-linguistic character of the LXX/OG translations conforms to target-language models” (3). In other words, how did the translator’s work stack up against original Greek literary compositions in his own day? To what degree were they similar or different, and how?

How would the LXX have compared to Greek works in the Library of Alexandria?

With this first question, we are on one level dealing with the perceived competency of the LXX translator(s) for their task, regardless of their intent. This question is primarily descriptive in terms of the qualities of the Greek itself. Part of what makes answering this question so difficult is that there are plenty of places where the Greek of the LXX is basically incomprehensible as Greek, yet because we know the Hebrew text “behind” that translation we can make sense of it as a translation of Hebrew. On the other hand, there are plenty of instances where the LXX translation is fabulous Greek as Greek (meaning in terms of stylistic flair and tone), yet it departs from the Hebrew (at least as we have it in the Masoretic Text).

At this point we have bumped into the second question that needs answering (they are related, but distinct), namely the intended relationship between Greek and Hebrew texts. In other words, was the Greek translation meant to stand on its own two feet? Or was it meant to be read always with the Hebrew original in hand (or at least in mind)?

On one side some scholars say the Greek text exists to serve its Hebrew “parent” text, and to represent it as accurately as possible for the Greek-speaking audience who (possibly) no longer knew Hebrew. Other scholars, however, view the LXX as an independent text, distinct from its Hebrew “parent” and aiming to interpret it for the Greek-speaking audience. Does the Greek translation of a given book of the Hebrew OT “mirror” the Hebrew (e.g., in word count, word order syntax, tone, etc.)? Is it the Hebrew text in “Greek clothing”? Or is it crafted to represent the Hebrew and pay more attention to easy Greek reading and style? Clearly translator competency comes into play meaningfully in these answers.

Yet another way to ask the second question is whether 1) the translation aims to preserve the textual form of the Hebrew at the expense of being good Greek (text-centered approach), or 2) the translation aims to preserve the textual meaning of the Hebrew with less concern for textual “shape” (reader-centered approach). The former views the Hebrew text as central, the latter the Greek reader as central. The former understands the LXX to be a means of preserving the Hebrew, while the latter understands it to be a means of conveying the Hebrew.

Modern LXX Translations

As we will see in the following posts in the Contemporary LXX Translation Project series, these are the main contours that will differentiate the various projects. Stay tuned for further refining and clarification! I will probably post my full review of Wagner eventually as well.