Greek

LXX Translations Part IV: Septuaginta Deutsch

The time has finally rolled around for my last installment of the series I have been working on for quite a while now covering the major modern translations of the Septuagint. While there are other translations in progress (e.g., Japanese and I believe also modern Hebrew), there are four translations currently dominating scholarly discussion. These are the translations into English (NETS), French (BdA – Part I and Part II), Spanish (LBG), and German. So far we have discussed three out of the four with a view to understanding the differing methodologies involved in each project. At last, we have come to the German translation, known as the Septuaginta Deutsch, or LXX.D.

The Modern German Project

The Septuaginta Deutsch is published in three volumes by the German Bible Society (which, by the way, has a wonderful selection of online biblical texts freely available, including BHS, NA28, and Rahlfs-Hanhart). It is billed as the first complete German translation of the Septuagint, and was completed in 2009 after nine years of labor by eighty-seven scholars. The LXX.D is edited by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kraus (Koblenz) and Prof. Dr. Martin Karrer (Wuppertal), along with nine further co-editors. Like NETS, LXX.D is based upon the Göttingen Septuagint where available, otherwise defaulting to Rahlfs.

The actual translation comprises two volumes, where there is also an apparatus detailing significant divergences from the Masoretic text, Greek variants, and alternative translation possibilities (into German). A third volume provides a commentary of the scholars who translated the Greek into German discussing their work. There is also an entire series of secondary literature volumes, referred to as LXX.E (here), compiling essays by scholars who were involved with the production of LXX.D. As if that were not enough secondary literature, there is also Das Septuaginta-Handbuch (LXX.H) forthcoming, which will furnish the scholarly world with a companion text parallel to the recent T&T Clark volume. With no fewer than eight volumes planned, however, the first of which is available this month, it is safe to say that the German handbook will go into somewhat more depth, more like a dictionary.

Suffice it to say that the Germans have produced a lot of literature to get your head around. Unfortunately, unlike NETS or LBG, the LXX.D is quite expensive and best left to library acquisitions managers unless you are full-time into Septuagint scholarship.

The LXX.D Approach to Translation

As Martin Karrer notes, since there was no precedent to a German translation of the LXX, the scholars involved were free to come up with their own principles (Karrer, 2008, 106). Consequently, Karrer points out the following characteristics of the German approach that guided their work.

1. Priority of the Greek Text

LXX.D understands itself first of all as a translation of a translation, thus gives priority to its own source text, i.e. the Septuagint itself. The translators “handed over their work to the readers … The available Greek became a source text in its own right” (ibid., 107). Because of its influence in lexicon and syntax, the Hebrew text is taken into consideration in the German translation, yet without giving it priority. Thus, LXX.D “allows strange and peculiar trends in German style (for example the foreign parataxis ‘und… und… und’) while real mistakes in the target language are not accepted” (ibid.). In sum, while most of the attention is paid to the Greek text in LXX.D, at least some weight is given to the Hebrew text as the translation was produced.

2. Use of the Best Editions of the Greek Text

Subservient to the previous goal, LXX.D employs the best critical editions of the reconstructed Old Greek version, rather than adopting the readings of a given later manuscript tradition (as does the Brill LXX commentary series). The obvious option here is the Göttingen Septuagint, although it is unfinished and therefore Rahlfs-Hanhart must fill in the gaps. Wherever the two differ, Rahlfs is rendered in a footnote, occasionally with commentary. Notably, LXX.D has declined to use Rahlfs’ in the Historical Books and instead adopts Fernández Marcos’ reconstructed Antiochene text. The rationale here is the highly complex textual history of the Historical Books due and the developments since Rahlfs put together his edition.

3. Translation + Research

In good German fashion, the LXX.D had strict protocols for work flow to produce “scientific reliability” in their translation (ibid., 109). Other features of the translation process included a team of researchers from multiple disciplines outside biblical studies, the addition of inner-Septuagintal cross references and general introductions to each book, and two full-blown conferences to discuss issues.

4. Translation Technique

Karrer summarizes the LXX.D approach to representing translation technique by pointing to the use of a concordance for translation equivalents between Greek and German for consistency, particularly where there are points of intertextuality within the Septuagint. Secondly, for readability LXX.D used a “system of reduced transcription” for transliterated words in Greek, normalizing the most common proper nouns (ibid., 112). Also, LXX.D has refrained from capitulating in its translation to contemporary cultural issues such as social justice or gender concerns, because of its devotion to the Greek rendering. That is not to say, however, that the exegetical realizations of Hellenistic culture within the Greek text are not conveyed into German.

5. Intended Readers

LXX.D is aimed primarily at researchers and graduate students and aimed at religious neutrality, while presuming readers to be biblically well-educated (ibid., 114). This certainly comprises German-speaking Eastern Orthodox Christians, although there are often textual differences with liturgical materials employed in (often differing) Orthodox rites.

The Spectrum of Modern Translations (Part II)

Both NETS and BdA existed prior to LXX.D, and thus the latter was developed with the benefit of preexisting methodological reflection upon translation translation, so to speak. However, there are a few key differences. LXX.D, unlike NETS, does not use an existing translation of the Hebrew OT as a base text that is changed wherever the Septuagint diverges from it (ibid., 117). In part this is because NETS takes the Hebrew text as its point of departure in important ways that legitimate such a decision. LXX.D is not interested in interlinearity. LXX.D is also less interested in reception history than BdA, although it is not completely disregarded in producing the German version in difficult texts.

In my post on LBG I included a spectrum of the modern translations surveyed thus far. Having reviewed the German project, we can now update that spectrum to look like this, with the horizontal axis signifying the degree to which the Septuagint is conceived of as independent from the Hebrew text. NETS understands the LXX as the least independent from (i.e., most dependent upon) its source text in terms of form and meaning:

NETS     –>     LXX.D     –>    LBG     –>     BdA

It is arguable that the middle two could swap places, but in my reading of LBG I see more discussion of the legitimacy of the Greek Septuagint as an independent text than LXX.D. As far as I can tell, LBG will consult the Hebrew text to clarify where “necessary,” while LXX.D consults the Hebrew text as long as it does not have priority. Thus the differences, I think, is in degree.

Wrapping Up

This series has been a long time in the making, and no doubt much more could be said.  Accordingly, for those interested, I presented a bulked-up version of this series in paper format at the ETS National conference in Atlanta, GA, which I hope to publish eventually. While the paper won’t be “more” in length than this blog series, it will include more comprehensive notes to secondary literature that will hopefully be a guide through these important issues in the discipline.

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Karrer, Martin. “Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D). Characteristics of the German Translation Project.” Pages 105-18 in Translating a Translation. Edited by H. Ausloos, J. Cook, F. García Martínez, B. Lemmelijn and M. Vervenne. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 213. Leuven: Peeters, 2008.

 

New Article on Old Testament Textual Criticism in ZAW

Today I wanted to focus on something that I mentioned back in my Spring Update post quite a while back. (If you’ve published in academic journals then you know how long it can take for these things to finally surface in print.) I am pleased to have had an article accepted in Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, or simply ZAW for those less inclined to pronounce long German phrases. The journal is published quarterly, and my piece will be in the upcoming September issue (127/3). According to their website, ZAW “has been the leading international and interconfessional periodical in the field of research in the Old Testament and Early Judaism for over one hundred years.” Needless to say, it is an honor to have my own work included in this journal.

The Main Points of Argument

My article is entitled “Text-Critical Question Begging in Nahum 1,2-8: Re-evaluating the Evidence and Arguments.” In it, I examine the text of Nahum 1, where many scholars have drawn attention to what is almost an acrostic (in the Hebrew text). There are a few letters missing, namely daleth, zayin, and yod lines, and so it is fairly common in critical commentaries for scholars to suggest various ways of emending the Hebrew text in order to “restore” the acrostic to its supposed proto-form. While this may sound somewhat reasonable, this near acrostic is also, admittedly, a partial acrostic. This means that it only spans part of the alphabet (just the first half) even in its theoretical “original” form. In my view, that makes the whole assumption that it is, in fact, supposed to be an acrostic, much more speculative and therefore suspect.

So what I do is examine each of the three places where there is a “wrong” letter and where emendations are usually proposed. I summarize common arguments for altering the Hebrew text in a way that “restores” the acrostic. For the most part these must build on versional information (mainly the Septuagint, but also Latin and the Peshitta), since there are no proper variants in the extant Hebrew manuscript tradition. Then, I examine the text of the acrostic in the Old Greek version of Nahum (Zeigler’s text) to evaluate the translation technique that characterizes that unit of the book (1:2-8). I show that the divergences in the Greek version from the Hebrew MT are better accounted for as features resulting from the process of translation rather than a different Vorlage, namely one that contained the theoretical “acrostic.” Finally, I martial the results of other scholars’ studies conducted in the LXX-Twelve Prophets, which is thought to have been translated by a single individual, to demonstrate how their characterization of the translation technique of the entire Twelve further corroborates the translational and textual trends present in LXX-Nahum 1:2-8 (and therefore my argument against a different Hebrew Vorlage).

Why Bother?

I don’t see any acrostic on that scroll, do you?

In the end, the “payoff” of my paper is to seriously challenge what has become a tradition of messing with the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible unnecessarily. While it is certainly true that the MT does occasionally need emending (based as it is upon a 10th century codex), making the decision to actually alter the Hebrew text is one that must be preceded by much careful investigation, constantly reevaluated in light of further textual evidence. One of the reasons for my interest in Septuagint studies stems from my concern for the Hebrew text of Scripture. When examined from a text-critical standpoint, scholars of the Hebrew Bible must reckon with the Septuagint. Yet so often this does not happen, or does not happen very convincingly because of the technical nature of many aspects of Septuagint scholarship. (Hence, in part, this blog!)

When it comes to the so-called “acrostic” of Nahum 1:2-8, I find it much more interesting and exegetically rewarding to reckon with the possible reasons that the text is, in fact, nearly an acrostic … but not quite. I believe Tremper Longman’s view is fairly satisfactory here as he takes a literary critical approach: in the context, the judgement and wrath of the Lord brings upheaval upon all of creation to such a massive extent that even the very text involved in describing it is jarred and disrupted.* To me this approach to the text of Nahum 1 rightly expects much of the literary capabilities of biblical authors, and of the competence and meticulousness of later scribes.

Unfortunately, I can’t distribute the article itself in PDF form. But you can find it shortly in the forthcoming ZAW.

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*Tremper Longman, “Nahum,” in The Minor Prophets: An Exegetical and Expository Commentary, ed. Thomas E. McComiskey (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009): 765–830.

A Review of Comfort’s “A Commentary on the Manuscripts and Text of the New Testament”

While it may seem a little bit out of my usual strike zone on this blog, I was interested in having a look at the newest edition of Philip Comfort’s A Commentary on the Manuscripts and Text of the New Testament (Kregel Academic, 2015), pp. 448, hardback. My work and research interests are grounded in all things Old Testament, however much of my daily grind involves a fair bit of heavy-duty textual-criticism in the Greek versions of the Bible. Doing research in the Septuagint version of Judges requires that I dive into the manuscript evidence for that Greek translation, and one of the side-effects of doing so is that I am interested in New Testament textual-criticism as well.

This handy volume is billed as “an up-to-date commentary on all the significant manuscripts and textual variants of the New Testament,” and it certainly lives up to its description. It’s cleverly shaped just like your NA27 (or if you’re cutting-edge and nit-picky, your NA28), and so it sits nicely next to your Greek New Testament and, of course, your Rahlfs-Hanhart Septuaginta.

The essential purpose of this book is to provide a passage-by-passage guide to textual reliability, the variants, and specific translation issues that arise in the New Testament. Additionally, Comfort has commented upon the qualities of the manuscripts that make up the textual evidence for the New Testament in order to help the scholar and exegete evaluate significant textual issues. When you come across a variant in the NT text, deciding between readings must be based upon a number of factors. As the famous NT scholars Westcott and Hort stated, knowledge of the documents where the variants are found must precede decisions about the textual variants themselves. These external factors that influence text-critical decisions include the tendencies of the scribe of a particular manuscript (including scribal reception), textual purity (i.e., number of variants compared to other witnesses and/or the supposed autograph), approximate date, region of discovery, and so on. In turn, the internal factors for text-criticism rely upon the so-called “Canons” of the discipline, such as proclivi scriptoni praestat ardua (“the more difficult reading is preferred”). These are briefly but helpfully explained by Comfort on pp. 29-31.

If you have ever undertaken serious NT textual criticism – or even had to write a graduate paper that wades through this area of scholarship – then you already know how useful a tool like this book will be for doing much of this spadework for you and getting huge amounts of data into concise and centralized format.

What’s in the Book

Comfort spends the first two chapters of the book dealing with various textual issues in the NT, and providing his annotated list of NT manuscripts. In chapters 3-9, he then walks through the NT books in chunks as follows:

  • Ch. 3 – Synoptic Gospels
  • Ch. 4 – Gospel of John
  • Ch. 5 – Acts
  • Ch. 6 – Pauline Epistles
  • Ch. 7 – Hebrews
  • Ch. 8 – General Epistles
  • Ch. 9 – Revelation

I was quite pleased and surprised to find that Comfort has also included some interesting and useful material on the Nomina Sacra, and their relevance to textual-criticism (see pp. 31-41, Appendix II). Best of all is that this material is directed towards NT text-criticism and also aspects of the Greek Old Testament where the divine names are also a prominent textual issue.

Reflections

Not specializing in New Testament textual criticism per se, I do not have much negative feedback. However, from that perspective I must say that I found myself wishing there was a Glossary of Terms in this volume. No doubt, Old Testament and New Testament textual criticism operate on similar principles in some ways, but in other ways these tasks are quite different. I think the average reader would likely benefit from a clarification of terms used throughout a book like this. Nevertheless, this book is a must-have for students of New Testament, and considering the fair price it is a worthwhile investment.

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Thanks to Kregel Publications for the complimentary review copy, which has not influenced my opinions.