Lexicography

LXX Scholar Interview: Dr. Jan Joosten

joosten1Today I have the pleasure of presenting another of my LXX Scholar Interviews, this time with Dr. Jan Joosten, who is currently the Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. If you didn’t see the post previously, you can listen to his inaugural lecture here.

To repeat some of what I have said before, if you are interested in Old Testament textual studies, you will have almost certainly run into his work. If you are a graduate student interested in Old Testament and/or Septuagint studies, you should strongly consider getting in touch with Jan about supervising. Either way, I am sure that this interview detailing his “academic biography” will prove interesting and shed some light on Jan’s qualifications and activity in the discipline of Septuagint.

The Interview

1) Can you describe how you first became interested in LXX studies, and your training for the discipline?

After a licentiate in Protestant Theology in Brussels (1981) and a one-year degree at Princeton Theological Seminary (ThM 1982), I received a scholarship to study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From 1982 to 1985 I studied textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, and many other things, with Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein. Among the other seminars I took was one on the Septuagint with Emanuel Tov. But I really got into Septuagint studies only much later, in 1994, after getting my first teaching job at the Protestant Faculty of the University of Strasbourg.

As professor of biblical languages I was expected to teach a research seminar for masters students. I figured the Septuagint would be a fitting subject, since the students were supposed to have had at least one year of Hebrew and Greek. I proposed a seminar on the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 32, which was a success (I had four students). In the following years I continued to teach the course on various biblical chapters. My research on the version developed from the teaching in this seminar (my first article on the LXX: “Elaborate Similes—Hebrew and Greek. A Study in Septuagint Translation Technique” Biblica 77 [1996], 227-236, was spun out from an observation on Deut 32:11).

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

In 1997 I approached the Bible d’Alexandrie group in Paris and they proposed I should take on the volume on Hosea. With colleagues in Strasbourg, notably Eberhard Bons and Philippe Le Moigne, I began to work on the translation and annotation of this biblical book. In 2002 our work was published in the series. The Bible d’Alexandrie has made a crucial contribution
to LXX studies because it embodies the approach of the version as a text in its own right. Among biblical scholars the LXX has often been—and continues to be—studied as an ancillary text: a collection of variant readings in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, or a source of religious terms in New Testament exegesis. In Antiquity, the Septuagint was read simply as Scripture, among Hellenistic Jews first, and later among Greek-speaking Christians.

My personal contribution to the study of the LXX is for the most part tied to linguistic phenomena situated at the interface between the Hebrew source text and the Greek translation. Language is a subtle instrument, expressing not only a propositional meaning, but also, at times, revealing other details: on the culture and background of the translators, on their knowledge of Hebrew, on their approach to the source text, and much else. A sample of articles has been published in my book: Collected Studies on the Septuagint. From Language to Interpretation and Beyond (FAT 83; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2012). Some of the articles are available on academia.edu.

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

In Strasbourg I taught the seminar on the Septuagint yearly for almost twenty years, sometimes with my colleague Madeline Wieger. In 2014 I was appointed Professor of Hebrew in Oxford. I use the Septuagint in classes on textual criticism, but do not teach it as such. My close colleague, Professor Alison Salvesen does teach Septuagint regularly.

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

At some point, in the early 2000s, I thought Septuagint studies would go mainstream, causing a long overdue upheaval in biblical studies. Now I’m not so sure. The OT – NT divide is as strong as ever, it leaves little space for Septuagint studies (except as an ancillary text, see above, question 2).

5) 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?

A lot of work remains to be done on the vocabulary of the Septuagint (see the next question). Also important is research on single translation units of the Septuagint: practically each book comes with its own challenges and opportunities. Although lately a few studies on the style of the Septuagint have appeared, this is also a field that remains largely unexplored.

6) What current projects in Septuagint are you working on?

Together with Eberhard Bons I’m editing the Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint, a projected four-volume work offering for each significant word of the Septuagint an article detailing: a) its use in classical and Hellenistic Greek, b) its transformations (if any) in the Septuagint, and c) its usage in writings depending on the Septuagint. The first volume, with 150 articles, should be published in 2016. [Editor’s note: a volume of essays related to the HTLS can be found here, and see image to right.]

7) What is the future of Septuagint studies?

The near future is when all the books of the Septuagint will finally be available in a full-scale critical edition. A more distant, and perhaps utopic, future is one where the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls will be fully integrated into biblical studies.

Wrapping Up

Thanks to Dr. Joosten for his willingness to do this interview, and, of course, for his prolific and scholarly work in the field. Stay tuned to this series for further interviews with other scholars working in Septuagint. Feel free to comment below with scholars you’d like to hear from, or questions of interest.

Two Recent Book Reviews, and Some On the Way

I’ve been working on reviewing books pretty steadily over the last year or so. It’s a good discipline to keep you reading texts closely, keep up with topics of interest that are not immediately connected with my dissertation, and get my hands on some free premium volumes.

Two of my reviews were recently published in the Bulletin for Biblical Research, the journal of the Institute for Biblical Research (IBR). At the moment BBR is holding first place in my review contributions, mainly because they publish so many and there is plenty of opportunity to do it.

Here are the two that I reviewed in BBR 25.3 (2015).

The Hebrew Bible (BHS) Reader’s Edition

It’s an odd task to review a Reader’s Edition. In case you don’t know, a Reader’s Edition is simply a primary text – in this case Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia – reproduced with vocabulary helps included throughout. In this case, any word that occurs seventy times or fewer in the Hebrew Bible is given a note in the text that corresponds to a footnote, where the parsing (where appropriate) and a contextual gloss appears. This allows you to read your Hebrew as easily as you like, whenever you hit an unknown word it’s there for you to check and/or parse.

I really like this volume. It’s very well produced by Hendrickson, one of the highest quality publishers in the industry in my opinion when it comes to primary sources. The German Bible Society teamed up with Hendrickson to allow them to use the BHS 5th edition text (’97), so aside from the Masorah Parva and textual apparatus, you’re also getting a high quality scholarly source also. In terms of kethiv/qere variants, the editors of the Reader’s Edition have smoothed things out using their apparatus at the bottom of the page.

There are a few drawbacks. For the most part, this consists of the parsing system used throughout. It is based on LaSor’s system, and takes some getting used to. Ideally, you can parse everything yourself anyway so you won’t need it much!

You can read my review here.

Adams and Socio-Economics of Second Temple Judaism

A lot of my research includes reading about Judaism. That may sound surprising if you know I work in Septuagint studies. But believe it or not, the Septuagint was produced by Jews. Ta-da! Although I tend to read a great deal more about Jewish life in Ptolemaic Egypt, where most of the translation work likely occurred, I am also interested in other diaspora communities and, of course, Palestinian Judaism.

That’s why I picked up Adams’ volume Social and Economic Life in Second Temple Judea to review. I was astounded to read that there is no other volume specifically focused upon this subject-matter, something I am still somewhat inclined to doubt (although I have yet to find proof otherwise). Naturally many of the other tomes on Second Temple Judaism treat socioeconomics in passing or so some extent, but it is not the main focus.

A variety of topics are covered: family and the household, the lives of women and children, the marketplace, the state, and the ethics of wealth and poverty. There is the natural challenge of lack of sources in many parts of this study (especially women and children), so Adams makes up for it by contemporary anthropological studies. This can be problematic, as you can read in my review. More so, however, is his use of almost the entire Old Testament as “evidence” of life in the Second Temple period. If you’re not aware of higher critical assumptions, they more or less allow Adams to presume that most/all of the OT was written or finalized in the Second-Temple period, thus allowing him to use it as a primary source. I find this approach specious, but it’s a different kettle of fish for a different day.

You can read my review here.

Some Reviews in the Pipeline

I have a few reviews that will be coming out soon, and some I’m looking forward to producing. I have two reviews coming out in the Westminster Theological Journal that I will post here in time. I’m more interested in reading these three volumes, however:

LXX Translations Part II.2: BdA Continued

La Bible d’Alexandrie – Post 2 of 2

Time for part three of my series on modern language translations of the Septuagint. Thus far we have covered the NETS translation, and begun a discussion of La Bible d’Alexandrie (BdA) in an initial post, which is continued here. I am drawing out BdA’s treatment because, armed with a basic understanding of the NETS approach, we can understand both NETS and BdA better as they are set in contrast. To that end, bear in mind that the methodological contrast assumed in the quotes below is specifically directed towards NETS.

In the first post we talked about the BdA methods to translate 1) “according to the Greek,” and 2) with attention to the divergences between the Hebrew and Greek. Without further ado, let’s pick up with the third and fourth translation principles of BdA.

3. Understanding the Divergencies in the LXX Context

There are two ways to understand a divergence between the Hebrew and Greek versions of the OT. First, it might be that the LXX rendered a different Hebrew text (Vorlage) than what we now have in the Masoretic Text, thus his translation differs. Secondly, however, if that was not the case – if the LXX translator had the same (unpointed) Hebrew text as our MT – the divergence still could have diverged from the Hebrew due to a number of other factors.

This man is clearly a textual critic.

For example, divergences may be due to the translator misunderstanding the Hebrew. Or, he may have vocalised the unpointed text differently than the Masoretes eventually did. Or, it could be an exegetical “actualisation” on the part of the translator by making the Greek text more “relevant” to his audience in some way. If there are in fact actualisations in the Greek version, these divergences could be contextual or intertextual interpretations, perhaps even within the Greek version. It may also be that a divergence is caused by scribal error in Greek transmission history as well (often called “inner-Greek corruption”). Furthermore, the translator may have had many Greek words that would have worked to render his Hebrew text, but none quite synonymous with it. In sum, these and other reasons for possible “incongruities of the two biblical texts” lead BdA away from using the MT as its “phraseological and lexical foundation” as NETS tends to do (Harl 2001, 193).

As such, BdA aims to translate the Greek text “as it is.” It is worth quoting Harl directly here:

[We render the] meaning that a “divergency” receives in the LXX context and translate the new meaning acquired by the verse or by the whole pericope … We refuse to translate a text corrected according to the Hebrew, where a word judged aberrant would be replaced by a conjecture restoring the Hebrew meaning. (ibid., emphasis added).

In short, wherever the LXX says something apparently different from the Hebrew, BdA carries on with translating the Greek anyway, without trying to make it “fit” the Hebrew somehow. This is because there are so many reasons for why the Greek translation could say something different from the Hebrew (intentionally or not) even if the translator was staring at the exact same Hebrew text as what we have in the MT.  In this way, BdA does not assume at every point that the Greek is meant to represent the Hebrew, identical Vorlage or not.

 4. Consulting Ancient Readers of the LXX

Some of the NETS team

Because of their approach in steps 1-3, the editors of BdA “think it useful to consult the reception of the LXX by its ancient audience” (Ibid., 194). Recall here the NETS distinction between LXX “production” and “reception.” NETS cries foul at this point, countering by saying that it doesn’t really matter what later readers thought the LXX “was” or said, but how the translators themselves conceived of their translated text. Nevertheless, BdA consults early reception history precisely because those sources “show us the understanding the Greek speakers had of the LXX syntax and vocabulary” (Ibid.).

Furthermore, studying early Christian commentaries on the LXX alerts us to how the peculiarities of the text contributed to the growth of Christianity, which Harl characterizes as “semantic changes owing to the ‘typological’ reading of biblical books and to the exegesis guided by faith in Jesus” (Ibid.). With reference to the French translation of the LXX, then, BdA avoids using any NT sense for words that in their understanding are not part of the LXX usage (e.g. πίστις as confiance, “trust,” rather than foi, “faith”).  Nevertheless, says Harl, “[t]he Septuagint is the soil which has nurtured the Christian tradition” (Ibid., 195). In that way LXX commentaries of the Church Fathers, for instance, constitute “one among other testimonies” of early interpretation of the Hebrew Old Testament (Ibid.).

Not Done Yet: (5. Revision of the French Translation)

As a fifth step, BdA revises their initial translation of the Greek “with a view to correcting its exceeding literalism and to incorporate the results of the text analyses” (Ibid.).  While making the translation read well in French, BdA also aims to preserve the unique traits of the LXX, thus allowing unusual French word order “to let transpire the traces of the strangeness of the Hebrew text” underlying the Greek (Ibid.). This too is motivated by the reality that the Septuagint was considered holy and even divinely inspired to both Jewish and early Christian communities, and so BdA wishes to “preserve somehow its character as a religious text,” which they do by giving the French a “noble, traditional, ancient ring” (Ibid., 197).

More to Come in the Series

Having overviewed the approaches of NETS and BdA (in two parts), we are halfway through the series on modern LXX translation projects. Still to come is the Septuaginta Deutsch and La Biblia Griega.

 

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Harl, Marguerite. “La Bible d’Alexandrie I. The Translation Principles.” Pages 181-97 in X Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies. Edited by B. A. Taylor. Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Series 51. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001.