Translation Technique

LXX Translations Part II.1: BdA

La Bible d’Alexandrie – Post 1 of 2

9782204069014Quite a while back I began writing about modern Septuagint translation projects. As I explained there, my aim is to overview the methodologies of the four major modern language translations of the LXX, one of which I already discussed. These are:

1) NETS, 2) BdA, 3) LXX.D, and 4) LBG.

Today, we focus on number two, La Bible d’Alexandrie, which I will treat in two separate posts. I decided to cover BdA in a more extended format since BdA and NETS are best understood when set in contrast. With a brief intro to NETS in my former post, we are in a better position to understand it and BdA as well.

[As an aside, I’m pleased to announce that Cameron Boyd-Taylor, who was involved with the NETS project and is an advocate of the Interlinearity model, will be in the hotseat of one of my upcoming LXX Scholar Interviews.]

Textual Commentary

BdA is a French publication by Éditions du Cerf and is an ongoing project, although it has been in process for almost thirty years already. One of the reasons that it has taken so long – aside from maintaining a high standard of scholarly rigor and the dearth of qualified LXX specialists – is the inclusion of extended running commentary on the text throughout, both on the French translation and the Greek. Indeed, this is a primary difference from NETS, which only presents an English translation (although the IOSCS Septuagint Commentary Series will have a similar role in that respect, and NETS has a brief introduction to each biblical book).

Through the mechanism of the translation principles, discussed below, BdA aims in its commentary give three types of notes. Firstly, linguistic notes, dealing with text-criticism and their translation rationale. Secondly, exegetical notes, studying the divergences from the Hebrew and possible reasons for them. And thirdly, historical notes, discussing the later reception of the LXX text and its interpretation, particularly in the Apostolic Church and in early Jewish literature.

Furthermore, each volume includes a valuable introduction that discusses a given book’s composition, themes, and relationship to its source text.

Purpose and Translation Principles

Marguerite Harl states that the purpose of BdA is “to offer as exact a translation of the Greek text of the LXX as possible [in French],” which is driven by the conviction that the Septuagint has “importance and interest in its own right: it is a part of the Hellenistic Jewish literature” (Harl 2001, 181-82).

As such, BdA has four major guidelines/steps in producing its translation, the first two of which I will discuss below. I’ll treat the other two in a successive post.

1. Translation “according to the Greek”

This first principle is the most far-reaching, and is the primary foil to the NETS approach in two ways. Firstly, BdA aims for a translation that is “as literary as possible on the basis of syntactical and lexical usages of the Greek language current at the translators’ epoch” (ibid., 183). In other words, the (1) French translation of the (2) Greek translation of the (3) Hebrew text is done with reference to (2) the Greek language. This differs from NETS in that the NETS translation is done with attention primarily to (3) the Hebrew source text, at least in terms of syntax and semantics. Harl states baldly: “At this point we disregard the Hebrew source-text,” which is studied in the second stage of translation (ibid., emphasis mine).

Certainly not what the LXX translators looked like

Similarly, she states that “a text written in any language should be read and analysed only in the context of [its own] language” (ibid., 184). BdA sees the target language of a translation as a sort of window into the world of the translator and how he perceived his Hebrew source text when he translated it.

This approach contrasts distinctly with the Interlinear approach of NETS in a second important way. Whereas NETS perceives the LXX as a dependent text, intended to rely on the Hebrew source text for comprehensibility, BdA perceives the LXX as an independent text, meant from the start to be read as a free-standing text without the Hebrew as an aid to understanding. (Recall the distinction between text production and text reception, whereby the NETS group claims that the LXX only later came to be read as an independent text in the communities that received it.) From the BdA perspective, later revision and recension of “the” LXX was aimed to bring the Greek translation closer to the Hebrew source text, to make the Greek “sound” more like the Hebrew original. If that was in fact the case, they say, then it follows that the original translations were not necessarily concerned with (or perhaps successful in) representing the Hebrew in Greek, as NETS understands it.

Thus BdA assumes that the Greek of the Septuagint “makes sense” within its contemporary literary context despite its oddities, while on the other hand NETS begins with an assumption of “unintelligibility” of the Greek precisely because of its oddities (Boyd-Taylor 2011, 91). Both translation approaches identify the same characteristic of the LXX generally: it is not “typical” Greek (this depends on how one understands “typical” of course). But two of the modern translations – NETS and BdA – go very different directions as a result of that single observation. Favoring one approach over the other has to do with determining what deserves the weight of emphasis: the oddities or the conventionality of the Greek of the LXX within its linguistic context.

Connected with this alternative is the assumption of the relative competence or incompetence of the LXX translators – were their translational decisions driven by a lack of knowledge of Greek, or made deliberately (for whatever reason) from a position of language competence? BdA asumes that “they were competent and conscientious” translators who produced a text “if not easy to read, in any case, almost always of good ‘greekness'” (Harl 2001, 187).

Connection with Lexicography

This book was not available to the LXX translators

The question at hand is quite relevant to the issue of Septuagint lexicography. Should a word in the LXX be defined in terms of the meaning of the Hebrew word it represents, or in terms of its textual and linguistic context in Greek generally? Which meaning should be given preference if these options disagree, even if slightly? My research is concerned with determining the meaning of LXX words within the context of contemporary, non-literary Koine Greek. As such, I do not assume at the outset that a given Greek word is perfectly semantically aligned with the Hebrew word it translates. Instead, I take it that word meaning is determined by (1) that word’s usage in the language generally in extrabiblical Greek documents, by (2) its context in the LXX, and (3) by its use in other places within the LXX.

In other words, I tend to agree with BdA’s approach to the language of the LXX in general. Septuagint Greek is best understood with reference to Greek in general: first understand the Greek, then you can understand the Septuagint, and then you can investigate how it renders the Hebrew (and then you can approach the LXX as a text-critical witness … another topic for another day).

2. Establishing Divergencies

This is the second principle of BdA, which is really more of a second “step.” BdA does not assume that the Hebrew text from which the LXX was translated was identical with the Masoretic text in BHS. Rather, the LXX source text was a “proto-MT,” which “makes any comparison very difficult” (ibid. 190). The textual “plus” or “minus” in the Septuagint in comparison with the MT can be explained in any number of ways not necessarily related to translation technique and virtually impossible to substantiate. As Harl puts it (somewhat mind-bendingly), “A ‘plus’ of the LXX could be a word present in its Vorlage but omitted in the MT; a ‘minus’ in the LXX may be explained as an addition of the masorites” (ibid.).

Of course, it is precisely these differences between the LXX and the MT that have driven textual criticism for centuries, all the way back to Jerome himself. And the work is far from over. While “practically everywhere the Greek version attests the consonants of the MT,” the scriptio continua and unpointed text that was translated could have had several reading traditions, which may explain some of the differences (ibid.). Other times, however, as the Dead Sea Scrolls attest, there were legitimate points of difference in the Hebrew source text compared with what we have in BHS; points where the LXX and a Qumran scroll agree against the MT in a particular reading.

The payoff here for BdA is that they “do not speak a priori of the mistakes of the LXX but rather of exegetical options” (ibid., 191). In sum, the meaning of the MT is often obscure, and for that reason does not serve BdA as an arbiter of semantic divergences of the Greek text.

To be continued

This post being as long as it is, I’ll discuss the final two translation principles/steps of BdA in a second post.

________________________________

Boyd-Taylor, Cameron. Reading Between the Lines. Biblical Tools and Studies 8; Leuven: Peeters, 2011.

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.

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..