Literature

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..

Coming Soon – “An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek”

Well, one way to learn about the publication of your own material is through someone else’s blog. I can’t say it didn’t make for a nice Friday afternoon surprise to see the cover art for the first time, though.

Evidently, it’s already available for pre-order through Amazon and other booksellers.

Note that G. K. Beale is professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, and Daniel Brendsel holds a PhD from Wheaton. Lastly, I am not a doctoral student at Westminster, but will begin a doctorate elsewhere this October.

Coming Soon – “An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek”

Greek fans are sure to love this. Coming this October is An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek by G. K. Beale with William A. Ross and Daniel J. Brendsel.

“This revolutionary new aid for students of New Testament Greek functions both as a lexicon and as an interpretive handbook. It lists the vast majority of Greek prepositions, adverbs, particles, relative pronouns, conjunctions, and other connecting words that are notorious for being some of the most difficult words to translate. For each word included, page references are given for several major lexical resources where the user can quickly go to examine the nuances and parameters of the word for translation options, saving the translator considerable time.”

“This lexicon adds an interpretive element for each word by categorizing its semantic range into defined logical relationships. This interpretive feature of the book is tremendously helpful for the exegetical process, allowing for the translator to closely follow the logical flow of the text with greater efficiency. An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek is thus a remarkable resource for student, pastor, and scholar alike.”

An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek is from Zondervan. It will be a paperback with 96 pages and sell for $15.99.

Review of Ngunga on Greek Isaiah

A while back I mentioned that I was reading and reviewing Abi T. Ngunga’s recently published dissertation, Messianism in the Old Greek of Isaiah (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). Well, I was, and I did, and the review is now available in full here, soon to be published in the Westminster Theological Journal (issue tbd).

However, I thought it might be helpful to provide an even briefer overview of my review, and add some extraneous comments that did not make it into the review itself.

All in all, I for one find Ngunga’s enterprise worthwhile. Essentially, his thesis asks “Does the LXX translation of Isaiah reflect a greater sense of messianic expectation than its Hebrew source text?” As I discuss in my review, however, answering this question means you have to determine whether LXX-Isaiah was translated by just one person, otherwise any messianic “flavor” in a given text could be unique to just that text, rather than characteristic of the book as a whole. You also have to make a case that any time the Greek text differs in meaning from the Hebrew, it is not due to factors like the translation process itself, scribal error, damages to the source text that made reading (and thus translating) it difficult, or changes made over its reception history. Rather, you must prove that Greek changes are best attributed to the translator at the level of the text’s production, intentional or not.

These can be difficult issues to navigate, of course. But to make matters more complex, this kind of inquiry as a whole presumes that LXX translators would have had some kind of messianic theology. And it presumes that their theology would differ from (would have developed beyond?) the Hebrew text’s own messianism enough to prompt intentional or unintentional alterations in the Greek text’s meaning. It is here that Ngunga faces his most comprehensive challenge and, I expect, will receive the most critique in broader scholarship.

The reason is that much, even most, of the scholarly consensus does not hold that any developed messianism would have existed in pre-Qumran, Alexandrian Jewish communities. As I mention in my review, Ngunga does a good job of challenging this notion from the root, both historically and academically. The latter by tracing the origins of the scholarly assumption that Diaspora Judaism was non-messianic.

But, again, I find the enterprise worthwhile. From the reading I have done in this topic, it seems to me that question begging is not uncommon. Often, scholars will say something like “there is no literary evidence for messianic theology in the Diaspora community (except for the LXX), therefore we should not expect to find any.” So I say more comprehensive studies of LXX books like Ngunga’s are needed, and could be very useful to determine just whether or not the majority opinion holds up.