LXX

North American Graduate Programs in Septuagint

Finding a LXX Intro course can be this difficult…

Occasionally someone will ask me what the best way is to get an introduction to Septuagint studies. Most of the time my response is something like “Here are five books to read.” The reason is that there are very few institutions where LXX features in the curriculum in any meaningful way. As a result, there are very few places to go to take an actual course in LXX studies, much less an introductory course. Another reason is the small number of scholars specifically trained in LXX to offer courses in the first place!

In this post, then, I will review the few exceptions to this rule in North America. Think of it as a Resource Review of graduate programs. Hopefully this will help those interested save some time scouring the internet at random (which is what I did).

Septuagint Studies in the States

There are two programs to mention, which feature prominently because of the people at the helm of each. If you are reading this and know of others I have overlooked, please let me know or post to the comments.

1) Peter Gentry – Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

 

southern_baptist_theological_seminary_logoFirstly, there is a community of Septuagint scholarship at SBTS under the leadership of Dr. Peter Gentry. Gentry was the last student to study under John W. Wevers at the former bastion of LXX studies in North America, the University of Toronto. When both Pietersma and Wevers were at that institution, they produced a number of now senior scholars in LXX studies, and Gentry is among them. (Some others will feature below.)

Gentry’s interests are wide-ranging and extend well beyond the Septuagint. He is involved in the Göttingen Septuagint Series (Ecclesiasties, Proverbs), and takes particular interest in Hexapla studies. If you thought the Septuagint was obscure, the Hexapla is even more so. It is a terribly interesting, and terribly complex, aspect of LXX history, and for that reason the discipline benefits greatly from competent scholars like Gentry. 

He and others are currently involved in the Hexapla Project of the IOSCS, and for that reason many of his doctoral students also work in all things hexaplaric. Gentry also teaches graduate level courses in LXX, such as his Septuagint Seminar. So although SBTS does not offer a full graduate degree in LXX studies per se, it is certainly an option for focusing in a ThM or PhD.

2) Karen Jobes – Wheaton College Graduate School

photoSecondly, there is Dr. Karen Jobes at Wheaton College Graduate School. Jobes is a product of my own institution in days gone by, Westminster Theological Seminary, where she completed her doctorate under Moisés Silva. She keeps a website here.

Her primary professional interests focus upon New Testament, particularly the General Epistles. In conversation with her, she once told me that Septuagint was her “night job.” Considering she’s so productive in her NT day job, it’s remarkable how active she also is in LXX studies. Her and Silva’s Invitation to the Septuagint is always one of those five books I recommend for introduction to the discipline. Rumor has it there is a revision of this volume underway.

Like SBTS, there is no full-fledged LXX degree at Wheaton. However, Jobes offers a course on Greek Exegesis in the Septuagint. So Wheaton is another option for tailoring your focus on LXX studies in either an MA or a PhD program.

[Update: Dr. Jobes has now retired from teaching as of 2016]

3) Other Scholars of Note

There are other North American scholars who are doing excellent work in Septuagint as well. Some of them include J. Ross Wagner at Duke Divinity School, Benjamin G. Wright at Lehigh University, and W. Edward Glenny at University of Northwestern. I did not feature these scholars as prominently since they do not offer actual courses in Septuagint, as far as I know. Wagner, however, takes doctoral students focusing in LXX studies.

Canada, Eh?

1) [Update: PhD Program in Septuagint at McMaster Divinity College]

As of early 2017, McMaster Divinity college is launching a full-fledged PhD program in Septuagint. You can read about that here.

2) The J. W. W. Institute for Septuagint Studies

There is one other excellent place to mention, namely The John William Wevers Institute for Septuagint Studies. The Institute is located under the auspices of Trinity Western University in Vancouver, B.C. In the post-Wevers-Pietersma era at the University of Toronto, this is the single most LXX-concentrated faculty that I can think of, with four highly qualified scholars. Better still, both Wevers and Pietersma have donated their extensive personal libraries (and a large endowment) to further LXX studies at TWU. 

The Institute’s scholars include Drs. Robert Hiebert (director), Larry Perkins, Dirk Büchner, and Peter Flint. You’ll also have valuable access to Cameron Boyd-Taylor, currently a research assistant at the Institute. Hiebert, incidentally, is also the joint-editor-in-chief of the SBL Commentary on the Septuagint. Each of these professors’ research interests can be viewed on their respective faculty pages. The unique aspect of the Institute is that it is the only place in North America where a full-fledged Septuagint degree is offered, as both a Master of Theological Studies and the shorter Master of Theology. [Update: Dr. Flint passed away in late 2016]

Furthermore, the Institute for Septuagint Studies typically offers a week-long Septuagint seminar in May or June each year. I participated in the first such seminar in May 2013 (read about it here) and again in 2016. This is a wonderful opportunity to study LXX in taught format under some excellent scholars. I hope for others’ sake they continue with this seminar in the future. Speaking of which, there have been efforts, unsuccessful so far, to offer a PhD through TWU as well, which could be a great opportunity if it ever comes to fruition.

Part of what I especially like about the Institute is that it is literally surrounded by seminaries. TWU is part of the ACTS coalition of seminaries in Canada, and hosts a number of them in one building where the Institute is also located. Where the Septuagint is, the Church (rightly) is also.

Stay tuned for further Resource Reviews as they come…

 

 

Upcoming Presentations at ETS & SBL ’14 – San Diego

Balboa Park, San Diego. Museum of Man pictured right.

One of the things I have been trying to do over the past year and a half or so is to attend and participate in more biblical studies conferences. Some of this I have written about previously (here). It’s a lot of fun, if occasionally overwhelming and often expensive. But it’s also worthwhile. I’m working on a post right now for aspiring doctoral students of biblical studies that will be a kind of “how-to” (and a “why”) for the conference scene, which can be tremendously beneficial to the student. So look for that in a few weeks.

SBL National Conference

The upcoming annual Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) conference will be held from November 22nd-25th in San Diego, CA. The location will be a welcome change compared to the prior two years’ frigid locales, Baltimore and Chicago, respectively. Information about the meeting, including registration, transportation, and housing are on the annual meeting page.

Rumor has it the book exhibit will be on the beach.

I am excited to have the opportunity to participate by presenting a paper this year. I will read it at the IOSCS program unit (here), which usually meets at least twice during the conference. My paper will be an extension of the research I presented at the 2013 IOSOT Congress in Munich, which dealt with Septuagint lexicography in the double-text of LXX-Judges.

In the congress paper I took a brief foray into verifying research done almost fifty years ago now by John A. L. Lee in LXX lexicography. Lee’s work was decisive in demonstrating that LXX Greek is in fact simply the vernacular Koine of its time, not a special “Jewish Greek” that some scholars had posited (for more on the language of LXX, see this post). Lee also dipped into historical linguistics using documentary evidence to establish a terminus ante quem for the translation of the Greek Pentateuch. His dissertation is in print (and quite affordable, here). An abstract of my previous congress paper and its appendix are available here.

My SBL presentation will focus again on LXX lexicography and the Greek texts of Judges. This time I will be considering the translational renderings of the prevalent battle language throughout the book. Words like לחם and  מלחמה are translated in interestingly divergent ways in the A text as opposed to the B text. The question I will be asking then is simply, “Hmm… why?” I don’t have a clear answer yet! But I have my suspicions. Lee’s methodology of lexical inquiry in documentary evidence will be a primary avenue of inquiry for this paper (using papyri.info, which I have reviewed in part here). Hopefully come November I will have something cogent to offer in terms of an answer.

A full abstract is available here.

ETS National Conference

I will also participate in the ETS conference, also held in San Diego just prior to SBL, presenting a paper in the Psalms & Hebrew Poetry section. I have not been as active in ETS as I have in SBL in the past few years, so I’m looking forward to being a part of this conference. Although it’s a smaller event by far, it is still a great way to see what is happening academically within the purview of evangelicalism. 

My paper is a product of a longer study I did a few years ago in Nahum 1 (here and here). I presented a paper at a regional ETS a year ago that was less extensive (and sparsely attended!), so I’m looking forward to presenting this more in-depth analysis. 

The basic issue at hand is the question of the presence (or absence) of an acrostic in chapter 1. Especially in vv. 2-8 there is what appears as a partial, or “broken,” acrostic spanning the first half of the alep-bet. Ever since F. Delitsch mentioned it in his Psalms commentary there have been innumerable attempts to reconstruct it to either a full acrostic (older commentators mostly), or a complete half-acrostic (most current approaches). Although some are content to take the text as is, either as a coincidence or literary device, the majority opinion still leans towards textual emendation, to the extent that even BHS lays out the verses as an acrostic. 

My paper considers the warrant for emending the Hebrew text on the basis of a translation analysis of the Greek version, which is ordinarily the primary witness to which those who would emend the text appeal. Without giving too much away, my paper is entitled “There is No Spoon: Text-Critical Question Begging in the ‘Acrostic’ of Nahum 1 .” An abstract is available here.

A User’s Guide to Papyri.info (Part II) – Text

I’ve said it before, but I repeat. Papyri.info is an amazing resource. In preparation to provide a Resource Review for it, I ended up writing a primer post (here). Now, I should say up front that Papyri.info is useful for a very specific niche within LXX research, and that is lexicography. So if you are not interested in lexicography, you can probably skip this review. Otherwise, read on.

To reiterate a point from my primer post, there is debate still going on as to whether the meaning of the Greek words in the LXX are to be determined primarily by reference to their Hebrew counterpart in the source text, or primarily by reference to their contemporary Hellenistic usage.

Eleazar Killing a War Elephant in the Maccabean War (1 Macc. 6:42-47), by B. Picart Broen, 1728

Generally speaking, the debate is not a neat either/or matter, but rather one of primacy. There are many good reasons to take the Hebrew parent text as primary in a number of cases. These tend to be words that have become a terminus technicus. Still, although a Greek word may come to mean something more or different than it did prior to its use in the LXX (e.g. διαθήκη, εἰρήνη), this is not particularly unique. Lexicographers have recognized for some time that word meaning is not static. What this amounts to, then, is that the new uses of Koine words in the LXX is not necessarily due to its status as a translated text. It may rather be attributable to the new socio-political-(religious) context(s).

So, as promised, I shall punt on this issue (for now), and press on.

Background to Papyri.info

As discussed on the homepage, this LXX resource consists of the papyrological navigator and the papyrological editor. Since I have no business dealing with the latter, I won’t (most likely, neither should you). The former, however, “supports searching, browsing, and aggregation of ancient papyrological documents and related materials.” The wonderful thing about papyri.info is that it is a one-stop resource for material that quite recently was scattered hither and yon. As the homepage says, the site collates material from the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS), Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri (DDbDP), Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens (HGV), Bibliographie Papyrologique (BP). 

Most of this information was accessible by CD-Rom prior to the mid-2000s, but now it’s all free and constantly updated. To force you to appreciate how wonderful this is, consider this quote:

“Not just hours or weeks, but months were spent searching for [Greek] words in the indexes of documentary volumes and confirming occurrences. Every text had to be laboriously copied by hand in the library, then recopied into the manuscript when written, before finally being handed over for typing… Photocopying was only just beginning to be possible” (J. A. L. Lee, “A Lexical Study Thirty Years On,” 515).

 So count yourself lucky to be a part of the age of xerox, email, and open-source internet. The “how-to” I’ve written up below walks through some material laid out on the papyri.info site already, and some of my own additions as well.

Using Papyri.info

Considering that this is a freely accessible website, the functionality of papyri.info/search is remarkable. The first thing you’ll notice is the main search window:

search

I will usually tick the “Convert from betacode as you type” button so that your keystrokes enter Greek directly. Otherwise, you have to cut-and-paste unicode Greek font from somewhere else. A good guide to betacode typing can be found here (also pdf). The other toggle buttons are self-evident: if capitalization is relevant to your search (e.g. proper nouns), you may want to un-tick “Ignore Capitalization,” and the same for diacritics/accents.

The most simple type of search is a “string” search, meaning “string” of characters. Simply entering καί into the search bar, for example, will turn up 31,604 hits. Note how the site conveniently highlights your word(s) when you click on a particular text. Moreover, you can link to that text and have the highlighting remain (see p.worp 16, below). But back to the search on καί. It is important to know that included in the massive search result number is any word in which the characters κ-α-ί occur in sequence, such as καῖσαρ or καιρός. This is where the ‘#’ code is crucial, as it breaks off a string from surrounding characters. If you wanted only καί, then, you would enter #καί#, which would return 28,138 hits.  

Further, you can search for phrases using quotes. So if you were looking for instances of μὴ φοβοῦ, you’d enter “‘μὴ φοβοῦ'” and get just a single hit (p.worp 16). You’ll notice that in p.worp 16 there is a translation of the papyrus provided. This is a major boon when it happens, although in my experience that is rarely. Of course, in this case, the translation is into Italian, but it is helpful nevertheless.

You’ll also notice the group of buttons below the search bar. buttonsThese buttons really amplify the capacity of the engine, so they’re worth learning to use. I will spend some time walking through the more basic button functions here, and then wait until a third (!) post to treat the more sophisticated ones… partly because I’m still figuring them out.

Firstly, the “and” “or” and “not” buttons do exactly what you would expect. When you enter any Greek word in the search window, then hit one of those three buttons, a second search window will appear below for your second criterion (or third, etc.).comboThis allows you to include, alternate, or exclude certain words.

The following two buttons, “then” and “near,” deal more with sequencing of words. For example, if we wanted to see if the prepositional phrase εἰς ἀπάντησιν occurs in any papyri, we’d type, εἰς and click the “then” button and add ἀπάντησιν. The “within ___” window will become active automatically, and we’ll enter 3, for example, and then select “words” from the drop-down to the right, although you can also search by character for more refined quests. So our sample search is “εἰς THEN ἀπάντησιν within 3 words.” We get two results:

Eureka!

Eureka!

Note that the “then” button sets up the search for terms in the order in which they were entered (εἰς followed by ἀπάντησιν), while the “near” button searches in either direction within the limits you set, whether by word or character.

This is one of innumerable possible searches just with these first few buttons. As mentioned, I will reserve comment on the following buttons for a third installment. The last few are the most powerful (and finicky), and so take space to treat well. Disclaimer: It may take me some time to produce this final post.