Greek

Septuagint Day: An Interview with Karen Jobes

It’s hard to believe that it’s already upon us, but if you were not aware, today is the ninth annual International Septuagint Day. If you are interested, you can find out a bit more about what that means in my post from last year. In brief, in November of 2006 the IOSCS approved the institution of this grand day. Here is an excerpt from the General Business Meeting minutes:

A motion to establish February 8 annually as International Septuagint Day to promote the discipline on our various campuses and communities was moved by Karen Jobes, seconded by James Aitkin and carried. And there was much rejoicing.

Okay, I added that last part. But …

An Interview with Karen Jobes

In the spirit of “promoting the discipline” on Septuagint Day, I decided to interview one of the top American septuagintalists, Dr. Karen Jobes. Karen is the Gerald F. Hawthorne Professor of New Testament Greek & Exegesis at Wheaton College in Illinois, and was kind enough to entertain my questions.

1) Can you describe how you first became involved in LXX studies, and what drew you to it?

I was first introduced to the LXX at Westminster Theological Seminary where Dr. Moisés Silva taught a course that was rumored to be the most difficult course offered by the seminary. Being a woman who enjoys a challenge, I couldn’t resist. I was particularly drawn to the opportunity to work with both Hebrew and Greek. I discovered that Septuagint Studies is beautifully complex.

2) How have you participated in the discipline over the course of your teaching and writing career?

Perhaps the most significant contribution I’ve made to the discipline is the book I co-authored with Dr. Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Baker Academic, 2000), which has become one of the standard textbooks in English for LXX studies. That book actually grew out of the course I took with Dr. Silva, because as a beginning student I saw a need for an introductory book. My course notes became the initial outline for the book.

I have also participated in the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) in various roles. I have been a member since 1990. My first paper on LXX was presented at the IXth Congress of the IOSCS in July 1995 in Cambridge, England. I served a term as the Secretary 2006–2008, on the Program Steering Committee since 2009, on the Editorial Advisory board of the SBLSCS since 2012, and a member-at-large on the Executive Committee since 2012. I was awarded the IOSCS prize for an outstanding paper in 1995. (I believe that award has since morphed into the John W. Wevers prize.)

My publications have focused on methodologies in LXX studies, (e.g., “Quantitative Methods for Exploring the Relationship between Books of the Septuagint.” Pages 73–95 in The Bible as Book: The Transmission of the Greek Text. Edited by O. O’Connor. London: The British Library, 2003), and on the LXX as literary and theological background for NT exegesis (e.g., “The Minor Prophets in James, Peter, and Jude” pp. 135–153 in The Minor Prophets in the New Testament. Edited by Maarten J.J. Menken and Steve Moyise. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2009. And “The Septuagint Textual Tradition in 1 Peter.” Pages 311–333 in Septuagint Research: Issues and Challenges in the Study of the Greek Jewish Scriptures. Edited by Wolfgang Kraus and R. Glenn Wooden. Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Studies 53. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2006.)

I am also pleased that since coming to Wheaton I have had the privilege of teaching a graduate level course in Exegesis of the Septuagint and an undergraduate Greek reading course in Septuagint. I’m proud of my former students Myrto Theocharous, Seth Ehorn, and Jeremiah Coogan who went on to further graduate work in Septuagint Studies.

3) How have you integrated LXX studies into your work as a professor of New Testament?

All of my NT courses have an emphasis on the importance of the LXX for proper NT exegesis, and the complexities of handling the Greek versions.

4) How has the field changed since you’ve been involved?

It seems to me the field has blossomed, judging from the number of texts and reference works that have become available in the last twenty-five years and from a growing interest among students to learn about the LXX. When I began, there was no recent LXX lexicon, and now we have two (Lust et al and Muraoka), as well as Taylor’s Analytical Lexicon of the Septuagint. There was no recent English translation, and now we have NETS [on which see this post] as well as several other translations in modern languages. There were no commentaries focused on the LXX, and now we have two (the Brill series and the IOSCS series). There is also now the Wevers Institute of Septuagint Studies at Trinity Western University [on which see this post] that holds great promise for the future of the discipline.

5) What issues do you focus on in your graduate course in LXX studies?

My course, Exegesis of the Septuagint, has to meet curricular requirements for the MA in Biblical Exegesis, and so we focus on exegeting the LXX text and the complexities of interpreting a translated text. Of course, we also look at the Hebrew and discuss how the translator has exegeted and contextualized the biblical text for his audience.

6) For the benefit of graduate students who are potentially interested in LXX studies in doctoral work, what in your opinion are underworked areas and topics in need of further research?

There is fresh ground in the books of the LXX that have received little scholarly attention. Although it probably not prudent to speak of “a Septuagint theology” there are interesting questions toward better understanding how the translators contextualized their source text for their audience. And the question of how the Greek versions developed and are related to one another is an extremely difficult question that needs some new energy and perhaps new methodologies.

7) In 2000 you published Invitation to the Septuagint (Baker) with Moisés Silva, which has a revised edition forthcoming later this year. What prompted the revision, and can you describe what changes you have made?

There have been many developments and new scholars entering the field in the fifteen years since Invitation first appeared. We have revised every chapter, including new theories (e.g., the interlinear theory) and incorporating the work of younger scholars. We have updated the bibliographies and added some hopefully helpful appendices, e.g., an English translation of the abbreviations used in the Göttingen apparatus.

8) What other projects in Septuagint are you working on?

I have just sent off the manuscript of Exploring the Septuagint: A Guided Reader to Kregel. This was a collaborative effort with nine students. The guide contains about 625 verses of Greek from nine books of the LXX, providing syntactical notes, vocabulary help, etc to aid students who have at least three semesters of Greek to start reading the LXX. Given the structure of academic departments in Bible and theology, the LXX can be a topic of benign neglect, so just getting students to read it provides them an introduction to the field.

9) Finally, what is the future of Septuagint studies?

The future of LXX studies is really the young people, like yourself, who are entering the field. Because the LXX is caught between the division of academic departments into Old Testament/Jewish Scriptures and New Testament, it has a somewhat liminal position in the academy. No one, or very few, are able to devote their full time to the LXX, and that hampers the field. I don’t see that changing, but it would be a nice dream to see chairs funded in LXX studies. We also need more doctoral programs in North America that allow students to focus their dissertations on LXX.

I hope you enjoyed and benefited from the interview with Dr. Jobes as much as I did. Hopefully in the future I will be able to conduct similar interviews with other scholars in the discipline.

New Resource for Septuagint Vocabulary

Just a brief post here to mention the publication of an excellent new resource for the Septuagint studies community. Just last month Eisenbrauns published No Stone Unturned: Greek Inscriptions and Septuagint Vocabulary (CSHB 5).

Of course, I am somewhat biased in this particular instance, as the author is my supervisor, Jim Aitken. (And no, he is not paying me to do this post). But if you are interested in LXX studies and have not seen this book, you will want to pick it up. At just $26 (here), it’s a great bargain.

Septuagint Vocabulary

I have posted a few times in the past on various matters in LXX studies that have overlapped with the issue of vocabulary. Most notably is the first two posts in my series discussing the approach of modern language translations of the Septuagint (here and here). As I mentioned, there is ongoing discussion among Septuagintalists regarding just how a LXX word is to be defined. Part of the reason that folks differ on that issue is due to differing views on what the LXX actually is (or was meant to be at first), and to what extent that influences word meaning.

Inscriptions & Lexicography

The purpose of Aitken’s new volume, however, it to draw more attention form all parties to inscriptions as a primary resource. In the discipline of Greek lexicography, there are many rooms. Some of these are very heavily trafficked. Word usage and development is extremely well documented for sources like Classical works, the New Testament and related literature (Philo, Josephus, the Fathers). Other rooms, however, are quite dark and forgotten. That is certainly the case with inscriptions, which offer a range of vocabulary and registers from a variety of regions and over may centuries.

That is why inscriptions are so important, and why it is so unfortunate that they have largely been overlooked in the lexicographical enterprise (Another reason being the relatively recent discovery of many of them). Of course, there are major difficulties in dealing with inscriptions, and those wishing to incorporate data from them into their research (such as myself) will have do much of the work de novo. Inscriptions are published in specialized and scattered volumes (with obscure commentary, often in German or Italian), are rarely translated, and employ difficult and fragmentary Greek.

Fortunately, the wonderful opportunities that these challenging primary sources offer are now somewhat more accessible with Aitken’s new book. It helpfully (and briefly!) describes recent discussions in LXX vocabulary and Greek lexicography in general, explains in detail why inscriptions are important, and then describes how to do the work of using them. Grab a copy!

The “Annoying Little Words” & Exegesis – An Interpretive Lexicon

This is the second post out of two (see the first here) describing my recent, co-authored publication An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek (here). In the first I described the “interpretive” and “lexicon” aspects of the book. Here I want to focus on what I think is the best feature of it, and why it’s an exegetical golden goose. Let me preface much of this by saying that our “Introduction” in the Lexicon covers more detailed material that will also be helpful.

This post is a bit technical and won’t have many pictures, so strap on your thinking cap.

The Significance of the “Annoying Little Words”

I began to talk about function words in the first post. These are the words that students usually think of as quite annoying. For the most part, that is correct, since these words rarely have a neat definition that can be slapped on the back of a flashcard. The reason is that their whole raison d’être is to connect larger ideas (typically clauses but also paragraphs and other larger units of text). This basically means that the annoying little words are “multivalent” or “polysemous”. That is to say, they often take one of two or more possible meanings, depending on their context. And of course, since they are “function” words after all, the meaning they take in context will greatly affect what they do. Okay, so that was abstract. Let’s get textual. Look at the fancy graphic above that I made. It shows a ‘cloud’ of the most frequently used words in the book of Romans. Notice how the obvious candidates like χάρις (‘grace’) or δικαιοσύνη (‘righteousness’) or νόμος (‘law’) are not immediately visible. The most prominent words are … you guessed it, the annoying little words. You get a gigantic καί and a δέ, a γάρ, a few definite article forms, and a few prepositions (διά, εἰς, ἐν). In fact, the one and only content word that is fairly visible is the genitive form of θεός (‘of God’).

My point is that you can only get to the “big ideas” of a book like Romans – or any text – by first going through the little words. They are absolutely indispensable to communication, slippery as they are to pin down to a single definition. Fortunately, we use function words automatically in our everyday speech and never give it a second thought. Unfortunately, this can make it all too easy to overlook their incredible importance in the task of interpretation.

Discourse Analysis

An English Example

To do some of the heavy lifting of dealing with function words in interpretation, some undertake a process that many call ‘discourse analysis,’ although it goes by other names as well (e.g. ‘text linguistics’). What this process aims to do is discern the larger structures and connectedness of a text. Remember that function words are sometimes called “connecting” words. They connect two (or more) larger chunks of text. As a result, if you want to determine the connection between Thought ‘A’ and Thought ‘B’ then you need to understand the function words that relate them.

Take the previous sentence for instance. It is made up of two main clauses:

1) you want to determine …

and

2) you need to understand …

Somehow, the two actions – 1. determining and 2. understanding – are related logically in that sentence. And the way they are related is by the two function words if and then. The first clause (wanting to determine) is conditional upon the second clause (needing to understand). This may seem obvious, but the point is that the words ‘if’ and ‘then’ manifest the conditional relationship between these two clauses, and therefore help the reader or listener ‘exegete’ this bit of communication.

But there is another important part of that sentence: The very first part, “As a result …” What we have here is a phrase – a syntactical construction – that serves as a road sign to the logic of the larger text. Linguists sometimes call this a ‘discourse marker’ (among other things). What the ‘as a result‘ phrase does is link that sentence to the one that precedes it logically. In essence, the idea is “A is such, therefore B is such.” The ‘B’ aspect is a result of the A aspect.

Getting Greeky

Let’s have a look at Romans 11:23:

“And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again” (NASB).

κἀκεῖνοι δέ, ἐὰν μὴ ἐπιμένωσιν τῇ ἀπιστίᾳ, ἐγκεντρισθήσονται· δυνατὸς γάρ ἐστιν ὁ θεὸς πάλιν ἐγκεντρίσαι αὐτούς.

I have boldfaced the (main) function words in the sentence. Note that the first one, ‘and’ is a conjunction that ties this sentence to the one that precedes as a coordinate idea. Then there is a(n implicit) conditional clause with the ‘if’ statement, so that the notion is ‘if they do not continue in their unbelief, then they will be grafted in.’ Finally, the rationale that grounds this statement is provided in the next clause and introduced by the word for: “for God is able …”

The Logical Main Point

All of this may seem pedantic. But there is a payoff. Language has what scholars call ‘semantic structure.’ That is to say, there is an ‘architecture,’ to so speak, of any communication (written or otherwise) that makes it understandable. As with a building, a well-constructed piece of writing or speech has a solid frame. Instead of steel beams, however, language uses what we might call semantic logic. It is important to realize that the presence of function words like ‘because’ or ‘therefore’ does not produce logical structure, but manifests it. In other words, the connecting words are there because language has semantic structure, not the other way around.

Here’s proof. In the Rom. 11:23 example above I mentioned that there was an implicit conditional clause. That is because the “second half” of a conditional – the word then – does not actually appear in the text. It is implied. And yet as readers or hearers the conditional sense is understood nevertheless. This applies to other logical relationships as well. For example, I can say “I’m not going outside. It’s cold” and you understand perfectly that the second statement is the reason for the first, and could be connected by the word because for the same effect. The logical structure is there whether or not the words are there to point to them. (Also note that one could not put a ‘therefore’ between those two clauses without producing nonsense; only some logical relationships are possible in a given context).

The Interpretive of the Lexicon (Again)

Bringing this all the way back around to the Interpretive Lexicon, as I alluded to in my first post, we use a system of letters and symbols to key the reader into the logical relationship – the discourse-level function – of the word being discussed. Again, these words are often multivalent and can be taken in several ways depending on context. That is where our lexicon comes in, to help the reader swiftly narrow down the possible logical relationships of a word (or phrase) in Greek, and therefore to better (and more quickly) understand the text.

To conclude, here is the set of our relationships included in the Lexicon. We also include an extended section carefully defining each one and providing an example. We have also aligned our own logical relationships with those used at John Piper’s online site BibleArc.com in order to maximize their compatibility. It is our great hope that it can be used to help pastors, students, and scholars as well as each one reads and interprets the Greek scriptures.