Old Testament Studies

LXX Translations Part I: NETS

In a previous post I announced a new ‘series’ in which I will outline the various principles and procedures involved in the current modern language translations of the Septuagint. Apologies that it has taken me so much time to get back around to working on this series. In the time since I wrote the initial post, we had our second child and moved from Philadelphia to Cambridge, where I have just begun doctoral work. This left me short on time and without any of my books!

But now, back to business.

I mentioned four modern translation projects of this sort – some finished, some still in the works. The first and, for many, most relevant of these is the most recent English translation. While there are older versions (namely Thomson [here] and Brenton [also here]), NETS is your best bet, generally speaking, for a “good” English rendering. As I mentioned, NETS is also accessible freely online (copyright), although owning a hard copy is well worth the cost since you’ll be referring to it so often. You can also purchase it for Accordance as well as Olive Tree.

Of course, just what constitutes a “good” translation is exactly the topic of this series. With that, I will dive into the approach of the scholars who produced NETS.

The New English Translation of the Septuagint

Each of the modern language translations of the LXX operate on the basis of assumptions about the nature of the LXX itself. What makes NETS unique among them is its understanding of the LXX as a subservient text to the Hebrew scriptures that came before it. Indeed, proponents of the NETS approach understand the Greek and Hebrew scriptures to have coexisted with equal importance, so to speak, after the Greek version was produced. This is not merely to say that both Hebrew and Greek texts existed, but that the Hebrew continued to serve as a religious text, rather than being supplanted by a new translation. The reason, in the perspective of the NETS group, is that the LXX was intended to serve as a pedagogical tool for Jewish students of the Hebrew text, which was always read alongside the Greek so that the two texts were best understood in conversation with one another.

The basic framework that NETS uses is called the Interlinear Paradigm. The genius behind this model is Albert Pietersma, who presents a conceptual school setting in which Greek and Hebrew texts were read in interlinear fashion. Pietersma states that the dependent status of the Greek version entails that “for the vast majority of Septuagint books this linguistic relationship can best be conceptualized as a Greek inter-linear translation of a Hebrew original within a Hebrew-Greek diglot” (“To the Reader of NETS,” xiv). “Conceptualized” is a key word, as he quickly clarifies that the term “interlinear” or “diglot” is merely a visual aid of sorts to help conceptualize the linguistic relationship. He is not proposing (or denying) there were actual interlinear Greek/Hebrew texts circulating among Jewish students.

Not like the NIV

Not how NETS envisions the LXX

In short, NETS take the approach, unique among its peers, that the intention of the LXX was to bring its reader to the Hebrew text, rather than bringing the Hebrew text to the reader. In other words, the point of translating the Hebrew scriptures was not to help Greek-speaking Jews comprehend a text that had become arcane and difficult to them in the Hellenistic era by producing a comprehensible translation (much like, say, the NIV is intended to help the ‘average Joe’ read the bible with ease). Rather, it was to help Greek-speaking Jews retain religious (and scholarly?) access to ‘the original,’ the Hebrew scriptures themselves (much like, well, an interlinear Greek New Testament). That was the intention of the LXX as produced.

Pietersma suggests this model has explanatory power. Most significantly, it accounts for the characteristic of “literalism” in most LXX books’ translation – that is, in many or even most cases (depending on the book) the Greek words match roughly one-to-one with the Hebrew words (MT). This is what is called the “constitutive character” of the LXX, and one often sees the word “isomorphism” or “isomorphic” in the relevant literature to describe this translational pattern. Importantly, interlinearity is meant to account for the many places where the Greek phrasing of the LXX is difficult to understand as Greek, or without reference to the Hebrew. If the Greek is awkward, so the logic goes, this is best explained by the assumption that the translator was attempting to mimic the Hebrew text as closely as possible, without regard (or with little regard) to the style or literary acceptability of his text in the Greek cultural environment.

Production and Reception

To bring this whistle-stop tour full circle, this methodological approach has practical implications upon the English version. NETS scholars will go on to say that the Jewish community eventually read the LXX independently, as a “received” text, despite its difficulty to understand. In similar fashion, the approach taken by the NETS team was to clarify the Greek text by referring to the Hebrew text, rather than attempting to puzzle it out as a (hypothetically) intelligible text qua Greek text when they themselves were translating the LXX.

Some of the NETS team

Put another way, in view of their understanding of how the Greek translation functioned, NETS translators aim to have their English translation (of the LXX translation) function the same way that they imagine the LXX translation functioned. Namely, so that users “should be able to utilize it [NETS] … in a comparative study of the Hebrew and Greek texts, albeit in English translation” (ibid, xv). This is meant to be the case both quantitatively (i.e. word-count) and qualitatively (i.e. style and tone).

So hopefully you can see how one’s understanding – or assumption – of what the LXX is, how it was meant originally to function as a text, has a profound influence upon how a modern translation is produced. It is necessary to have some assumption like this, although as we’ll see in future posts, there are at least three other possible assumptions for Septuagint origins, and these are distinct enough from that of NETS to amount to a fairly different product.

If you want to dive in further, I recommend listening to this excellent interview by T. Michael Law, which features top Interlinear Paradigm proponent Benjamin G. Wright explaining the methodology in detail (my apologies for the gaudy musical introduction).

Next time I will deal with La Bible D’Alexandrie, the ongoing French translation project, so stay tuned!

(A very brief) Bibliography

A. Pietersma, “To the Reader of NETS,” in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (pdf available here).

J. Joosten, “Reflections on the ‘Interlinear Paradigm’ in Septuagintal Studies,” in Scripture in Transition (Leiden: Brill, 2008) (pdf available here)

More freely available here

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..

Wagner, the “Sealed Book” and LXX Translation

Wagner and the Sealed Book

In this post I want to preempt a book review I am working on of J. Ross Wagner. Reading the Sealed Book: Reading Old Greek Isaiah and the Problem of Septuagint Hermeneutics. FAT 88. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck / Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 295. ISBN 978-3-16-152557-5. €99.00 (hardcover). There is so much to talk about in this book, a review of it is almost impossible without vastly understating its contents. What I wish to focus on here, however, is his introductory material where Wagner discusses common approaches to LXX interpretation, or hermeneutics. While this may sound arcane, it is actually quite relevant for the LXX novice, since each of the (now four) major modern translations of the Septuagint take a different approach to their work based on their answer to the question: “How should we translate this translation?”

If you are interested in LXX studies, you need to know about this debate, since it is foundational to almost everything else in the discipline. What I will do here is highlight some of Wagner’s introductory material and interject my own “translation” of the technical details for a less familiar audience. This will pair nicely, I hope, with the series I’m working through right now on the major contemporary LXX translation projects (see this initial post).

Production & Reception

Wagner defines “LXX hermeneutics” as both “how to characterize the translators own interpretation of his source [text]” and “how a modern reader is to interpret the translated text” (2n8). This definition encapsulates the two central issues at almost every point in LXX studies, namely production and reception. The first – production – deals with the hypothetical Jew who sat down one day (or week or month) to actually translate (i.e. produce) a book of Hebrew scripture into Koine Greek; what was he looking at in his source text, what did he understand as he read, what did he mean by the words he wrote?

The second issue – reception – deals with what anyone else did with the translation he produced, whether that be read it, interpret it, apply it, translate it (again), and so forth, regardless of whether this agrees with the translator’s intentions. In other words, good LXX scholarship differentiates between what the translator read and understood and meant in his translation on Day 1 from what some later reader of the translation reads or understands (rightly or wrongly) on Day ‘n’. The first is difficult to prove, and the second is difficult to defend, unless that reader is you.

Two Questions in Translation

Two questions need answering in the face of the difficulty. First, we must ask to what degree “the textual-linguistic character of the LXX/OG translations conforms to target-language models” (3). In other words, how did the translator’s work stack up against original Greek literary compositions in his own day? To what degree were they similar or different, and how?

How would the LXX have compared to Greek works in the Library of Alexandria?

With this first question, we are on one level dealing with the perceived competency of the LXX translator(s) for their task, regardless of their intent. This question is primarily descriptive in terms of the qualities of the Greek itself. Part of what makes answering this question so difficult is that there are plenty of places where the Greek of the LXX is basically incomprehensible as Greek, yet because we know the Hebrew text “behind” that translation we can make sense of it as a translation of Hebrew. On the other hand, there are plenty of instances where the LXX translation is fabulous Greek as Greek (meaning in terms of stylistic flair and tone), yet it departs from the Hebrew (at least as we have it in the Masoretic Text).

At this point we have bumped into the second question that needs answering (they are related, but distinct), namely the intended relationship between Greek and Hebrew texts. In other words, was the Greek translation meant to stand on its own two feet? Or was it meant to be read always with the Hebrew original in hand (or at least in mind)?

On one side some scholars say the Greek text exists to serve its Hebrew “parent” text, and to represent it as accurately as possible for the Greek-speaking audience who (possibly) no longer knew Hebrew. Other scholars, however, view the LXX as an independent text, distinct from its Hebrew “parent” and aiming to interpret it for the Greek-speaking audience. Does the Greek translation of a given book of the Hebrew OT “mirror” the Hebrew (e.g., in word count, word order syntax, tone, etc.)? Is it the Hebrew text in “Greek clothing”? Or is it crafted to represent the Hebrew and pay more attention to easy Greek reading and style? Clearly translator competency comes into play meaningfully in these answers.

Yet another way to ask the second question is whether 1) the translation aims to preserve the textual form of the Hebrew at the expense of being good Greek (text-centered approach), or 2) the translation aims to preserve the textual meaning of the Hebrew with less concern for textual “shape” (reader-centered approach). The former views the Hebrew text as central, the latter the Greek reader as central. The former understands the LXX to be a means of preserving the Hebrew, while the latter understands it to be a means of conveying the Hebrew.

Modern LXX Translations

As we will see in the following posts in the Contemporary LXX Translation Project series, these are the main contours that will differentiate the various projects. Stay tuned for further refining and clarification! I will probably post my full review of Wagner eventually as well.