A friend of mine asked this question the other day:

Are “Faith” and “Reason” mutually exclusive?

I replied:

—–

Not at all.

However, our understanding of what “reason” means determines the relationship between it and faith.

I think most people in “our” culture consider Rationalism and Logic to be synonymous, and so both are seen as interchangeable tools in the process of “reasoning”.

However, when we have children we quickly discover that the two processes are at odds with each other.

For the parent’s rules and guidance are primarily logical:

* “If you do this then that will be the result”

* “If you don’t do this then you will get a different result”

(and perhaps most compelling)

* “Because I said so!”

Children, on the other hand, quickly learn to respond to parental logic with rationalism (do you really need an example ;^)

The sage parent must decide at what point and to what extent they will loosen their logical boundaries so that their child can develop into a person who is something other than a robot.

The underlying logic of Orthodox Christian faith is expressed as a reality which is both presumed:

* “In the beginning was The Word and The Word was with God and The Word was God” The Gospel according to The Apostle St John The Theologian 1:1 (NKJV))

and mystical:

“Come now, and let us reason together,” says The Lord, “although your sins are like crimson, I shall make them white like snow, and although they are as scarlet, I shall make them white like wool…” Isaiah 1:18 (LXX-St Athanasius Academy Septuagint-SAAS)

The author of The Book of Hebrews put it this way:

“…And faith is of things hoped for a confidence, of matters not seen a conviction…” Hebrews 11:1 (Young’s Literal Translation)

Robert Pirsig in “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values” says virtually the same thing regarding a presumption of that which he called “Quality”, something he believed under-girded the pre-sophist Greek paradigm.

Now, rationalism CAN (and, I think, SHOULD) function within a logical paradigm, in order for faith to mature.

However, rationalism without a logical foundation becomes the enemy of the faith-based process, and true, honest reasoning is tainted.

Whew! What a mouthful that title is. I got all the titles from the Wiki page on “Apocrypha”, which links helpfully to “Biblical Apocrypha” and “Deuterocanonical Books”. What you will get out of reading those three articles at its most basic is that one person’s apocrypha, etc. is another person’s holy writ. There is no totally agreed upon selection of Old Testament apocrypha, our subject in this post.

Some brief definitions:
Apocrypha:That hidden away. Originally things were hidden because they were too esoteric for the average joe.  Later the idea became that these things were hidden because they were false, or at least questionable.

Deuterocanonical: of the second canon. The first canon are the universally received books of the Hebrew Tanakh or Protestant Bible. The division was cooked up during the sixteenth century during the debates on Old Testament canon revolving around the Council of Trent.

Anagigoskomena: things read. This fits the classic idea that these books not found in the Hebrew Tanakh are to be read as instruction, devotion, and example, but not to establish doctrine. This is a distinction practiced by some Roman Catholic authorities before the Council of Trent, the Anglican Church, and at least part of the Orthodox church.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, the Jewish reaction to these eighteen books is interesting. Most of them were never considered part of Jewish scripture, but over the centuries many rabbis have been very interested in some of them (Sirach/Ecclesiasticus in particular). Much of the material might have entered Jewish consciousness more through oral sources as the actual documents, for the details in the various Maccabees and Judith (who somehow along the way got associated with Hanukkah) stories in Jewish literature don’t necessarily match those in the actual books.

Those of you whose religious tradition accepts the importance of these books will have to bear with me now as I make a very short case for Protestant/Evangelical study of them, all of which most people have probably heard before. Nevertheless, in short, the reasons are three:

1. Tradition: Protestantism didn’t spring from nowhere. These books and the debate about them are part of the history and foundation of the various Protestant denominations. Studying them makes one more aware of his roots and his extra-denominational Christian fellows’ viewpoint.

2. History and historical background: 1 Maccabees in particular is a main source of the history of the intertestamental period, and even the mangled history in some of the books point to actual events. Likewise even those apocryphal books which are regarded as historical fiction still serve as background to the thought and culture of the bible, as a number of the books were plainly popular in the Second Temple period, based on discovered remains of copies.

3. Theology:  Religious cultural background, in short. What people were thinking and writing in the times that lead to our New Testament. These books are a distinct Jewish part of that thought process from roughly 300 BC to 100 AD. There’s plenty more books, including a mountain of Greco-Roman ones and what are termed apocrypha and pseudepigraphia to form that background of thought, but these apocrypha are the most familiar in style and content of the lot.

There, having laid out all that background, I can now get to the real point of this post: What’s an easy way to study the “Apocrypha” in the internet age?

1. Try the resources listed on one of my most popular blog posts, about electronic apocrypha and pseudepigraphia, unsurprisingly. Add to that a trip to e-Sword Users where you can get “A Catholic Commentary on Scripture” and “Haydock Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859″ for esword 8.x and 9.x.

2. Buy a bunch of books. Lock up your wallet and credit cards, this gets expensive fast:

a. Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Editions of the Bible:

1. NRSV with Apocrypha: The standard bearer, with the most complete selection of apocrypha in its day.

2. ESV with Apocrypha: A reader’s edition of the popular conservative formal translation with the addition of the same apocrypha as the NRSV.

3. New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS): Recent translation of the Greek OT, which includes the standard apocrypha, thus doubly useful for apocryphal study and examining the OT translation the apostles used.

4. The Apocrypha translated by Edgar Goodspeed: One of the first twentieth century modern english translations of most of the apocrypha, and one of the more easy to read.

5. New Living Translation Bible, Catholic Reference Bible: Out of print but still often available used or in bookstore backstock, this is probably the easiest to read translation of the various apocryphal books (together with Today’s English Version, aka the 6.  Good News Translation, Catholic Edition (GNT)), but not officially approved by the Roman catholic hierarchy. My leather-like edition has cross-references, a small concordance, and a useful verse finder for topics in the front.

7. The Parallel Apocrypha: Out of print, pricey but still available used and lurking in bookstore corners. This is your one stop multiple translation source, including Greek, KJV, Douay, Knox, TEV, NRSV, NAB and NJB. It also has very interesting and useful essays about the apocrypha and various churches’ views on them preceding the actual apocrypha that I used to craft the introductory part of this blog.

“Okay”, you say, “but what if I want to do more than read these books? What if I want to actually study them a bit?”

That’s where study bibles come in, along with a couple of one volume bible commentaries:

8.  New Interpreter’s Study Bible (NRSVA): fast becoming the new scholarly standard. Available in several bindings.

9. Harper Collins Study Bible(NRSVA): The gold standard of the Nineties, revised in 2006. Several bindings available.

10. New Oxford Annotated Bible: Multiple editions, including a forthcoming fourth edition any second now. Not only in NRSVA but also an older 11. RSVA version.

12. New Jerusalem Bible: A Roman Catholic translation, noted for its literary style and in this edition, loads of short but very pointed and useful study notes.

13.  Harper Collins Bible Commentary: Another standard updated. Based on the NRSVA’s fuller canon.

14. Oxford Bible Commentary: Large in size as well as scope, this is Oxford’s answer to the Harper Collins and the next competitor:

15. Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible: One of the latest of these scholarly one volume heavyweights, Eerdmans’ claim to uniqueness is that it also adds commentary on 1 Enoch to the apocrypha.

16. New Jerome Commentary: An increasingly dated Roman Catholic standard work that includes much material about specific Roman catholic thought about the bible, along with the more standard scholarly commentary.

“Yes”, you add,”but what if I want to actually study these apocrypha in depth? What then?”

Well, first you cry. See the price for one paperback commentary set here for why. The Anchor Bible commentary series is no better alternate, financially.

However, there is a less than optional alternate. Yes, e-books from the internet for free! They’re outdated,  and they use the KJV or the Revised Version for base text (some original translations are in there, but they’re still bible English, if you know what I mean). But they do really dig into the text and they are free (can’t say that too often).

So without further ado, here are the e-books I found on the Apocrypha for your amusement and edification. (At last! The real reason for this already over-long post!!)

17. The Story of the Apocrypha: Edgar Goodspeed, American translator of the Apocrypha, gives a brief overview of the Apocrypha including previous translations and summaries of each book’s contents. Almost new by archive standards.(1939)

18. Readings from the Apocrypha: A “greatest hits” selection from the various apocryphal books in the KJV translation.(1922)

19. An Introduction to the Books of the Apocrypha: Now we start the serious scholarly tomes. Relatively new for archive books (1935)

20 and 21. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphia of the Old Testament edited by R.H. Charles: vol 1: Apocrypha; vol 2: Pseudepigraphia. The same volumes as on my other blog post, but added here individually. A standard work still, I believe.(1913)

22. Lange’s Commentary on Holy Scriptures vol. 15: The Apocrypha: 1873, but it’s huge, with small print, and free.

23.  Holy Bible(KJV) with Revision and Commentary-Apocrypha: vol. 1 and vol. 2: Addition to the Speaker’s Commentary (1888)

24. 1 Maccabees: Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1897)

25. The Apocrypha: Greek and English in Parallel Columns: For the hardcore researchers and Greek students wanting something less familiar than the New Testament to work with.(1871)

26. The Apocryphal Books of the Old and New Testament: A bonus; this is a brief layman-friendly summary of the apocrypha of both testaments.(1908)

And finally, if you want to read the bible through in a year with the apocrypha included, you can find several useful reading plans for this here, courtesy of Kevin Edgecomb and Esteban Vazquez. You can use the NRSVA or the ESVA for the whole bible, or the NETS for the OT alone.

Introduction

As I was reading through II Maccabees again, I was struck by the references to God as creator and the Jewish mother’s exact confession of God as Creator in chapter 7.  Regardless of whether chapter 7 was originally in Jason’s history (2:19-23) or an interpolation of the epitomator, the view she confesses is still from the second century BC at latest (see NETS, 503, for details).

Texts Pertaining to Creation

7:23 τοιγαροῦν ὁ τοῦ κόσμου κτίστης ὁ πλάσας ἀνθρώπου γένεσιν καὶ πάντων ἐξευρὼν γένεσιν καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὴν ζωὴν ὑμῖν πάλιν ἀποδίδωσιν μετ᾽ ἐλέους, ὡς νῦν ὑπερορᾶτε ἑαυτοὺς διὰ τοὺς αὐτοῦ νόμους.

Therefore indeed the Creator of the world, the one who formed the beginning of humanity and invented the beginning of all things will give both spirit and life to you again with mercy, as/because now you watch yourselves on account his laws.

7:28 ἀξιῶ σε, τέκνον, ἀναβλέψαντα εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτοῖς πάντα ἰδόντα γνῶναι ὅτι οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων ἐποίησεν αὐτὰ ὁ θεός, καὶ τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένος οὕτω γίνεται.

I ask that you, child, after looking into heaven and earth and seeing all things in them, know that God did not make them from existing matter/things, and the race of men came about in the same way.

Some observations that stand out: 1) God invented the beginning of all things, which has to include all matter.  2) This view of creation is the ground for believing that God will raise the dead and supply them again with spirit and life.  Thus the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo functions as the ground for the life in the new creation.  3) 7:28 expresses negatively what was already expressed positively in 7:23: God did not make them (the heavens and the earth) from existing things.

Conclusion

Although these texts are late compared to the rest of the OT, these texts depend on the doctrine of creation contained therein.  The Jews were certainly reading the text that we have, and concluding from it that God created all things and he did not create them from existing matter.  Their interpretation is not inspired, but it certainly enjoys a long tradition, and it is also the conclusion of the Author to the Hebrews in 11:3: Πίστει νοοῦμεν κατηρτίσθαι τοὺς αἰῶνας ῥήματι θεοῦ, εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων τὸ βλεπόμενον γεγονέναι and the Gospel of John 1:3: πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν and other place in the NT.

So I come to the LXX of Joshua 10:19 and see:

ὑμεῖς δὲ μὴ ἑστήκατε καταδιώκοντες ὀπίσω τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὑμῶν.

I initially understood ἑστήκατε as a perfect indicative, which is exactly what it looks like. But then I saw that the NETS translates the word as an imperative, which actually makes significantly more sense in context. So then I began looking for information about perfect imperatives. I know, now, that on the rare occasion that they do occur they tend to be formed as periphrastics. But I also already knew there is a non-periphrastic in Ephesians 5:5: ἴστε. So, my question is this: when imperatives are formed via inflection, do they look like indicatives like we have with other periphrastics?

I’ve dug through Robertson as well as Moulton & Howard, but to no avail.

Thoughts? Comments?

UPDATE: It is an imperative: μὴ, which I should have noticed myself. The B-Greek list is awesome, both for real questions as well as for when my brain isn’t functioning.

At LXX Studies we will more than likely never be the first to break a story to the public, but hopefully we will be able to offer sound reflection on some of the more newsworthy items from the perspective of the Ancient Versions.

This past week, there was some hype due to an announcement that Ellen Van Wolde has made an argument that concludes something to the tune of “the traditional view that God is creator is untenable now.”  As I understand it, a major part of Van Wolde’s argument concerns the translation of the Hebrew word ברא in Genesis 1:1.  Of course the traditional translation of this word is “to create,” but Van Wolde has suggested that the word in this context should be translated “to separate,” so that the text is not teaching the original creation of the heavens and the earth, but only the separation of the heavens from the earth (see Chris for an apt critique of Van Wolde’s analysis of the Hebrew usage).

What Van Wolde means by the “traditional view” is not clear, but one may safely assume that she has in mind the traditional exegesis of Genesis 1:1 which supports the traditional Jewish and Christian view of creation that God created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo.  I simply want to list the evidence of the Ancient Versions in order to present the traditional exegesis of this verse.

LXX: ᾿Εν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν.  The text can be translated: In the beginning God created/made the heavens and the earth (see LSJ s.v. αρχη for anarthrous examples with prepositions, where the sense is still clearly definite probably because the lexical item naturally assumes only one beginning).  The LXX, then, uses a verb which does not mean “to separate,” but means “to make” or “to create” ( for the latter meaning see s.v. ποιεω A.2 LSJ).  For a thorough listing of translation equivalents for bara’ in the LXX and for what equivalents one would expect to see if the translators wanted to communicate the sense “to separate” see here.  This translation comes from the 3rd century BC (c. 280 BC) and some might wonder if the translators intended to convey that God only formed the heavens and the earth from existing matter by their use of ποιεω.  Although this is possible, only about 120 years later, we see clearly that the Jews are praying to the LORD God as ο παντων κτιστης (“the creator of all”) among other appellations in 2 Maccabees 1:24.  The Jews clearly have an understanding that God created all things in this period of their history and this theology must come from texts such as Genesis 1:1.

Aquila: ἐν κεφαλαιω εκτισεν θεος συν τον ουρανον και συν την γην.  Aquila employs the very specific verb κτιζω “to create” in order to render the Hebrew text.  Note that Aquila is not using the συν preposition in the normal sense “with” so that someone might be tempted to translate the text: God created with the heavens and with the earth or something like this.  Rather, Aquila uses συν characteristically to translate the Hebrew marker of the direct object את.

Symmachus: Not extant

Theodotion: Not extant

Vulgate: In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.  Jerome uses creo to communicate the idea of creation, not separation.

Peshitta: ܒܪܫܝܬ ܒܪܐ ܐܠܗܐ܂ ܝܬ ܫܡܝܐ ܘܝܬ ܐܪܥܐ܂  P uses a cognate (bra’) to translate the Hebrew text in this verse.  According to the CAL in the G stem this verb may mean “to create” or “to get well.”  The former is clearly the meaning in this context given that the verb is transitive in this context.

Targum: בֲקַדמִין בְרָא יוי יָת שְמַיָא וְיָת אַרעָא׃  The Aramaic Targum uses the same cognate (bra’) as P, which has the same range of meaning in this dialect according to the CAL.

The Ancient Versions speak with one clear voice that God did indeed create the heavens and the earth, not simply the “stuff” in the heavens and the earth, and they certainly did not understand the text to mean God separated the heavens and the earth.

Therefore any argument to the contrary will have to be established firmly on the basis of the analysis of the Hebrew text of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible as a whole, which is Van Wolde’s project apparently.  However, see John Hobbins’ initial critique of Van Wolde’s analysis of the Hebrew Bible here.

HT: Charles

Basically here are resources for compare and contrast.:

Parallel Bibles:

1. Essential Evangelical Parallel Bible: Two formal translations (NKJV, ESV), a middle translation (NLT 2) and a paraphrase (Message) in one big volume.

2. Today’s Parallel Bible: Two formal translations (KJV, NASB), two dynamic (NIV, NLT)

3. Evangelical Parallel New Testament: Out of print,  but the motherlode of recent translations: NKJV, ESV, HCSB, NIV, TNIV, NLT, NCV, Message

New Testament Textual Criticism:

1. NET Bible: The footnotes cover differences in translation in detail. Problem is the notes range from layman friendly to rather scholarly.

2. New Testament Text and Translation Commentary: Philip Comfort’s one stop eight hundred page discussion of why English translations of the NT often differ.

Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Editions:

1. NRSV with Apocrypha: The standard bearer, with the most complete selection of apocrypha in its day.

2. ESV with Apocrypha: A reader’s edition of the popular conservative formal translation with the same apocrypha as the NRSV.

3. New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS): Recent translation of the Greek OT, which includes most of the standard apocrypha, thus doubly useful for apocryphal study and examining the OT translation the apostles used.

While browsing, I came across this wonderful explanation for the above question, Hope it will be of some use to somebody… Seriously, I knew that catholic bible had more books, But i didn’t know the reason… Now I know…

The New Testament canon of the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are the same with 27 Books.

The difference in the Old Testaments actually goes back to the time before and during Christ’s life. At this time, there was no official Jewish canon of scripture.

The Jews in Egypt translated their choices of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the second century before Christ. This translation of 46 books, called the Septuagint, had wide use in the Roman world because most Jews lived far from Palestine in Greek cities. Many of these Jews spoke only Greek.

The early Christian Church was born into this world. The Church, with its bilingual Jews and more and more Greek-speaking Gentiles, used the books of the Septuagint as its Bible. Remember the early Christians were just writing the documents what would become the New Testament.

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, with increasing persecution from the Romans and competition from the fledgling Christian Church, the Jewish leaders came together and declared its official canon of Scripture, eliminating seven books from the Septuagint.

The books removed were Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach, and Baruch. Parts of existing books were also removed including Psalm 151 (from Psalms), parts of the Book of Esther, Susanna (from Daniel as chapter 13), and Bel and the Dragon (from Daniel as chapter 14).

The Christian Church filled with the Holy Spirit did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint. 46 + 27 = 73 Books total.

1500 years later, Protestants decided to keep the Catholic New Testament but change its Old Testament from the Catholic canon to the Jewish canon.

The books that were removed supported such things as

• Prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12; 2 Maccabees 12:39-45)
• Purgatory (Wisdom 3:1-7)
• Intercession of saints in heaven (2 Maccabees 15:14)
• Intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12-15)

The books they dropped are sometimes called the Apocrypha.

Source: Yahoo Answers

I am really looking forward to a seminar that will be taking place within throwing distance of my little cottage on the grounds of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. The seminar is entitled Greek Scripture and the Rabbis, and it will run from January to June, 2010. The public will be able to attend weekly seminars. Here’s the blurb:

Up to the present, views of Scripture in Judaism from antiquity to the rise of Islam have been shaped by the fact that rabbinic literature is written in Hebrew and Aramaic, even though many Jews in the eastern Mediterranean and their religious leaders knew only Greek. Even the recent Cambridge History of Judaism (2006) failed to include a chapter on the role of Greek language and literature. The project will be an investigation of Jewish Greek versions of the Bible among Jewish communities of the first to sixth centuries CE, both from rabbinic sources and from internal indicators in what remains of the translations themselves.

So far they are expecting the following participants: Emanuel Tov, Philip Alexander, Tessa Rajak, Shifra Sznol, Bas Romeny, Michael Graves, and Willem Smelik. I’m looking forward to it. If anyone is in the area it should be a rockin’ good time.

So I sat down to finish up the last two posts reviewing lexical entries in Muraoka’s new lexicon today. They have been sitting around in my Windows Live Writer half written for a few weeks now.

But much to my dismay, they were gone when I opened it up this afternoon. At some point, it seems that I accidentally deleted them.

Sigh.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to take the time to redo them again. So if you were looking forward to the rest of that review, well, don’t keep your hopes up.

Sorry.

I hope this is a simple post to a very complex issue…

The announcement has been made that the NIV (New International Version) is going to be revised. As anticipated, a number of people have already started screaming.

Let’s remember a few things.

• Translations have been around for a long, long time. Has anyone heard of the Septuagint? If not, it was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that was written around 3 B.C.
• In the 1500s, Luther, Tyndale and others worked to translate the Bible into languages people could read.
• Wycliffe Bible Translators has been striving to translate the Bible into languages of people around the world since 1942.

I could continue with more and more examples, but I hope that provides a snippet of the “big picture” of translation history.

What’s the point? Don’t get upset until you see the finished product.

There is a benefit to changing words like “alien” to “foreigner.” In 2009, people in North America hear the word “alien” and think Star Trek or Star Wars. We imagine Sigourney Weaver battling ugly creatures. Foreigner is more accurate in today’s vernacular.

The original language must be respected. The translators must fervently seek to keep the meaning and words true. Nothing less is acceptable. Don’t try to please people. Glorify God through your ministry.

The READER has responsibility as well. He / she must likewise use discernment and wisdom while reading.

But – the bottom-line? Let’s stop getting so worked up before anything happens! And, if you are that worried, stock up! I’ll make sure you get a good deal through the Resource Center.

Yours in Christ,
Marty

In this post, I comment on the nature of the translation of the Syriac Peshitta (S) in Qoheleth, which is an important consideration when trying to determine whether S is dependent on the Septuagint (G).

The Former Thesis

At an earlier time in research, scholars considered S to be a daughter version of the Septuagint (for this view see G.W. Anderson, “Canonical and Non-Canonical,” in Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans, vol. 1, (Cambridge, 1970), 158-9.), which means they considered S to be a direct translation of G.  What ailed this thesis was that it did not conform to the evidence of S itself. One is not able to read past Genesis 1:1 (ܒܪܫܝܬ ܒܪܐ ܐܠܗܐ. ܝܬ ܫܡܝܐ ܘܝܬ ܐܪܥܐ) without seeing the essential Semitic character of S and its faithful translation of the underlying Hebrew text (M or proto-M).  But however faithful S was to M, scholars still have noted that in some places S seems to be dependent on G, and the challenge was to explain this phenomenon leading to a new thesis.

The New Thesis

The new thesis seems to be generally accepted and the comments of Sebastian Brock speak for most Peshitta scholars today:

The translators all worked basically from the Hebrew text, and this Hebrew text was essentially the same as the consonantal Hebrew text of our printed Hebrew Bibles…In some books the translators seem to have consulted or made use of other translations: thus at various places in the Pentateuch (Genesis, Deuteronomy), there are some remarkable links between the Peshitta and the Jewish Aramaic Targums and for some of the Prophets and Wisdom books the translators probably consulted the Septuagint on occasion, in order to seek help over difficult passages in Hebrew (Sebastian Brock, The Bible in the Syriac Tradition, (Piscataway, NJ: Georgias Press, 2006), 23.  See also the conclusions of Weitzman, “Peshitta, Septuagint and Targum,” 57.).

Rightly Brock describes S as a translation of M, which occasionally consulted G.  I would describe the dependence of S on G as sporadic and unsystematic, and I would qualify Brock’s comment regarding S using G in the difficult Hebrew passages since S does at times attempt independent solutions to difficulties in the Hebrew text.  We have space for a couple of examples from Qoheleth.

Examples of Independence of S from G in Qoheleth

A sound example is S’s use of ܡܪܝܐ (master, lord) for אֱלֹהִים (God) many times throughout the translation which demonstrates that S is an independent translation of M, since G uses θεός not κύριος in these instances[1]. The reason for this word choice is not overt (perhaps it comes from the liturgical context from which S arose), but it clearly communicates that God is Master or Lord throughout the Syriac version of Qoheleth.

Another example comes from Ecclesiastes 3:18c, where M reads לְבָרָם הָאֱלֹהִים (in order that God might test/create them).  In 18c G and S are confronted with a difficulty in the Hebrew text, and each solves the problem differently.  In M בָרָם represents the lectio difficilior, and may be read as a Qal infinitive construct + 3mp from either ברא “to create” since 3rd aleph verbs often share the same orthography of third heh verbs,[2] or the same Hebrew form may be from the geminate root ברר meaning “to test.”  G translates the consonantal text with διακρινεῖ αὐτοὺς, clearly reading the latter root.  S translates the same consonantal text with ܒܪܐ ܐܢܘܢ, reading the third aleph root instead.  This example demonstrates that S is not slavishly dependent on G, but rather sometimes attempts independent renderings of difficult or ambiguous passages in M.

Conclusion

There are more examples of S’s rendering of difficulties in the Hebrew text, which indicate that S is dependent on M and is not slavishly dependent on G, which we will not take up here.  However, the evidence also indicates that S did use G sporadically and independently which we will discuss in the next post.

[2] GKC §74k.  For this orthographical possibility in Mishnaic Hebrew see Moses Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), §199 and 204.  Thus the Syriac translator has attempted to read the text appropriately.

I realize I have not been posting frequently, but I can say that I have been making progress in preparation for comprehensive exams, and I have been bringing long standing projects to a close.  One of those projects is my work on the relationship of the Peshitta of Qoheleth to the Septuagint of Ecclesiastes for Peter Gentry’s critical edition of Ecclesiastes in the Goettingen Septuaginta series.  This project began as a seminar paper for Dr. Gentry’s Introduction to the Septuagint seminar at Southern Seminary last Fall and has turned into a contribution to his forthcoming edition.  I hope in the future to publish the entire article, but it will take some time to clean it up for publication.

In the mean time, I would like to comment on some of the salient points of the work in the next few posts.

In this post I will attempt to date the sources.  In the second post I want to say something about the nature of the Peshitta as a translation of the Hebrew Bible (proto MT). In a third post, I want to work through the nature of the dependency of the Peshitta on the LXX.

Dating the Peshitta of Qoheleth (S)

In a project like this one, dating the sources is very important.  My work relied on Michael Weitzman’s Introduction, in which he dates S between 150-200 AD.  The Pentateuch was translated c. 150, while Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah were translated c. 200.  Thus I place Qoheleth somewhere in the middle.  There are reasons for this dating.  First, external evidence indicates that the Syriac Fathers are quoting S Qoheleth as early as the third century.  Second, internal evidence indicates that the Syriac Fathers (e.g. Ephrem) have already misunderstood some of the archaic linguistic features of  the Syriac language, which appear in the Peshitta of Qoheleth.  For example see St. Ephrem’s comments on ܝܬ (yat) in Genesis 1:1.  He interprets the word according to his contemporary understanding of the meaning of the word as “essence or material” instead of the old marker of the accusative or the direct object.  This evidence shows that by the fourth century the older meaning of the word had been lost, which indicates that S was translated when S translators understood the older meaning of this word.  These two strands of evidence substantiate Weitzman’s dating of the Peshitta.

Dating of the Old Greek of Ecclesiastes (G)

The dating of G has spawned an interesting discussion, but I believe there are still very good reasons to date the original translation to the first century BC or the early part of the first century AD.  The earliest manuscripts of G, B (4th) and 998 (c. 300), show revision of the original translation, thus the second century date for the original translation will have to explain how the revision in these manuscripts would happen so soon.  Also, if I have dated S correctly and it depends on G in places, then S (c. 175) shows the antiquity of G because S has already depended on early inner Greek corruptions.  Thus if S has already borrowed elements of G which are erroneous as early as 175 AD, then G must be dated earlier than 175, and I would argue much earlier if S has access to corruptions, which have seeped into the entire Greek mss. tradition.  Thus the evidence of the textual tradition itself seems to demonstrate the antiquity of G Ecclesiastes.

Conclusion

This dating scheme means that S had access to G when translating the Hebrew text, and  S translators sometimes consulted G while translating M and the next two posts will attempt to comment on this phenomenon.

The Prophet Moses

As is well known historically,  somewhere about 200 years before the time of Christ the Jews translated their Scriptures into the Greek language.  This translation was called the Septuagint  (normally abbreviated as LXX).     It was a well respected document throughout the ancient world including among the Jews themselves, especially among those who commonly used Greek as their language of communication.   In fact the Scriptures were translated into Greek to make them more accessible to the rest of the world which used Greek as the universal language of the educated people.  Many Jewish scholars themselves relied on the Septuagint in their own writings. 

About 100 years or so after the time of Christ, the Jewish rabbis began reconsidering the acceptability of the Septuagint for use by Jews.  This seems in part to have occurred because of the Christian reliance on the Septuagint for their own claims about Jesus being the Messiah and fulfilling Old Testament prophecies.

After the Protestant Reformation, Protestant scholars in an effort to discredit the Roman Catholic Church abandoned reliance on the Septuagint and began using only Jewish versions of their Scriptures for translating the scriptures into modern languages.  The Masoretic Text which became the official version of the Jewish Scriptures was finalized between the 7th-10th Centuries AD, and thus is not an older text than the Septuagint but a more recent text.  The Masoretic text does correspond closely to Hebrew/Aramaic texts from the 2nd Century AD but differs at points from the Septuagint, sometimes significantly.

Modern biblical scholars do consult the Septuagint even when they rely on the Masoretic Text because the Septuagint is more ancient than the Masoretic Text and because the Septuagint was translated from a more ancient Hebrew/Aramaic text and so allows us to know how Jewish scholars 200 years before Christ were interpreting and understanding their own scriptures.  The Septuagint was not translated by Christians as Christianity did not exist at that time, so the Christians had no influence over the translation into Greek of the Jewish scriptures.  It did happen however that the Christians found the Septuagint to be both a solid basis for Christian thinking and rather useful in polemics against the Jews of later Centuries.

Since the time of the Reformation some Protestant biblical readers have distrusted the Septuagint and don’t accept it as a legitimate bible for Christians to read.   Some feel it is too “Roman Catholic.”   Others think it an unreliable translation or interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures, even though it was done by the Jews themselves and honored

Old Testament Patriarchs

by the Jews at the time of Christ.  Additionally, many scholars feel that the New Testament authors were very reliant on the Septuagint as demonstrated by their frequently using the Septuagint when quoting the Old Testament.

As I was reading Robert Charles Hill’s translation of  ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM’S COMMENTARY ON THE PSALMS Vol. 2   (pp 343-344), I came across two footnotes of his that actually lend credence to the importance of the Septuagint (LXX) for our knowledge of the Old Testament.   Both of these footnotes were in regard to Psalm 145.

“…though our (Masoretic) Hebrew text has one verse (13) missing, which the LXX supplies, an inclusion confirmed by the Hebrew manuscripts discovered at the Dead Sea.”

“This is the verse occurring in the LXX and a Hebrew ms found at Qumran; it is not in the Masoretic Hebrew text of this alphabetic psalm at the point where we would expect a verse beginning with the letter nun….”

 I have read various arguments about the reliability of the Septuagint version of the Jewish scriptures and arguments for why Protestant Scholars prefer the Masoretic Text when doing translation of the Old Testament.   But the Septuagint which is used officially by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox has shown itself to be a good window into the ancient Jewish (Pre-Masoretic) Scriptures.    Some have argued that translators in the ancient world were more likely to eliminate parts of texts (accidentally or purposefully) than to add to them.  At least in the two instances Hill mentions regarding the Psalms, the Septuagint may be relying on a more ancient text of the Hebrew Scriptures than the Masoretic Text does and thus gives us a better glimpse into the sacred writings of ancient Israel.   The Septuagint preserved something the Masoretic text lost.

THE ORTHODOX STUDY BIBLE  itself bases its translation of the Old Testament scriptures on the Septuagint unlike Protestant versions of the Bible.   The OSB thus follows the ancient Christian and traditionally historic version of the Scriptures which was commonly relied on by the first Christians themselves.   This is not to say that common English versions of the bible are wrong, they simply follow Protestant principles in their translations of the Old Testament and thus have a less complete version of the Old Covenant scriptures.

We distinguish between these holy books and the apocryphal ones, which are the third and fourth books of Esdras; the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Jesus Sirach, Baruch; what was added to the Story of Esther; the Song of the Three Children in the Furnace; the Story of Susannah; the Story of Bell and the Dragon; the Prayer of Manasseh; and the two books of Maccabees.

The church may certainly read these books and learn from them as far as they agree with the canonical books. But they do not have such power and virtue that one could confirm from their testimony any point of faith or of the Christian religion. Much less can they detract from the authority of the other holy books. (BC, Article VI)

If you’re familiar with Bibles at all, you will notice that they come in all shapes and sizes. There are study Bibles, compact Bibles, reference Bibles, large print Bibles, and Bibles for men, women, children, and teens. In the vast majority of cases, all of these Bibles contain the same 66 books (39 in the OT and 27 in the NT). However, in some editions of the King James Version, as well as the ‘Catholic’ Bibles (New American Bible, or New Jerusalem Bible), there are some ‘extra’ books. These additional books are called the Apocrypha.

Why do the Catholic Bibles and some editions of the King James Version include the Apocrypha while most Protestant Bibles exclude them? For the answer to that, we need to briefly investigate the history of the Apocrypha. The word ‘Apocrypha’ is a Greek word that essentially means “hidden.” As a title, it refers to a collection of OT books written during the inter-testamental period between the book of Malachi (the last unanimously accepted OT book) and the book of Matthew (the first NT book). The debate over the Apocrypha centers on whether or not the books that make up the Apocrypha were considered canonical — i.e., of divine origin and containing divine authority — by both the Jews and the early Christian church.

Beginning with the Jews, what did the Jews think of the Apocrypha? There is no hard evidence that the Jews ever considered the Apocrypha as canonical. If anything, when considering the canon Scripture, the list of books that are considered canonical generally starts out smaller and then grows as additional books are considered. We find this is true of the OT. The Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) only contains 24 books. The Jews categorized their Scriptures according to the designations of Law (Torah), Prophets (Nevi’im) and Writings (Ketuvim). These distinctions correspond to the three periods of Jewish history: 1) From Creation to the Promised Land; 2) from the Promised Land to the Babylonian Exile; and 3) from the Babylonian Exile to the repopulation of the land. The Law consists of the five books of the Pentateuch (Genesis – Deuteronomy). The Prophets contains a narrative section covering the period of the entry into the Promised Land to the Babylonian exile, and an oracular section. The narrative section is comprised of four books – Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings (Samuel and Kings being compressed into one book each) – and the oracular section contains the prophetic writings (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah and the twelve Minor Prophets combined in the Book of the Twelve). Finally we have the Writings, which are also broken down into two parts – the lyrical/wisdom books (Psalms/Ruth, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Lamentation) and the narrative books (Daniel, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles).

This makes up the approved list of Jewish writings that were considered inspired from God. The Apocrypha is not mentioned in this list. In fact, there are five books (Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezekiel and Proverbs) on this list that were disputed until approximately 130 BC. Coincidentally, it is also right around this time that three major Jewish sects developed – the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. Each of these sects were in ‘competition‘ for control over the temple and the Sanhedrin. As such, it would be very unlikely that there would have been any alterations to the Hebrew canon at this time (additions or subtractions) by any one of these groups as the other two groups would have certainly objected. Finally, it was widely accepted that revelation had closed with the passing of the last prophets (Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi).

What about the early Christian church? It should first be stated that neither Jesus, nor the apostles ever quote from the Apocrypha. There are some who believe that this claim is not true, but after investigating some of these claims myself, the most one can say is that Jesus and the apostles may have alluded to some teachings of the Apocrypha, but that is vastly different that citing the Apocrypha as an authoritative source. Whenever Jesus or the apostles cited from Scripture, they always used some variation of the phrase, “As it is written,” or “Scripture says;” and the citation was always from a recognized portion of the Hebrew OT. Furthermore, both Paul and Jude cite other pagan writings in their works, neither of which is an endorsement of any divine authority in these writings.

An argument used in favor of the Apocrypha is the fact that it is included in the Septuagint (LXX), which is the Greek translation of the OT, and that the OT citations in the NT are primarily drawn from the LXX. Therefore, the LXX (including the Apocrypha) would have been the Scriptures of choice for Jesus and the apostles. I don’t find this argument compelling. Assuming one accepts the premise that Jesus would have quoted from the LXX, the best this does is imply a somewhat tacit acceptance of the Apocrypha. But since Jesus never actually cites any Apocryphal works, this greatly reduces the strength of this argument. Jesus and the apostles were Jews who lived in Palestine, whereas the LXX was primarily used by Jews of the Diaspora (outside of Palestine) where Greek was the dominant language. As Palestinian Jews, Jesus and the apostles would have certainly used the Hebrew Bible, which did not include the Apocrypha (as mentioned earlier). As to the fact that the NT writers cite the LXX in their writings, the thing to keep in mind here is that the LXX would have been the Bible of choice for anybody outside of Palestine. Since the apostles ministered mainly to people outside of Palestine, using the LXX makes sense in order to appeal to both Hellenistic Jews and Gentiles. Again, keep in mind that no NT writer cites the Apocrypha.

Let’s move on to the post-apostolic church. The history of the Apocrypha in the post-apostolic church era is one of ebb and flow. As Christianity began to break away from its Jewish roots (due to the fact of it being a largely Gentile following), the church began relying more and more on the LXX as the official OT canon. However during this period several scholars — notably Origen, Epiphanius and Jerome — cultivated the study of the Hebrew language and Jewish studies. One of these scholars is very influential in this debate; namely Jerome. Jerome was the church scholar who translated the Bible into Latin. His translation, the Latin Vulgate, included the Apocrypha, but Jerome separated these books from the rest of the Bible with the annotation that these books were not considered to be of divine origin. So what we see in the history of the church prior to the Reformation is varied acceptance of the Apocrypha. On the one hand you have Jerome and a few other scholars who did not think these books as part of the canon, and on the other hand you have Augustine who accepted the Apocrypha as canonical. Augustine’s influence on the church is undeniable, which is why the majority of church scholars accepted the canonicity of the Apocrypha; though there was no official declaration of such.

The Protestant Reformation changed all of that. The Protestant Reformers followed Jerome’s lead and used only those books that the Jews considered canonical. Many of the issues the Protestant Reformers found objectionable were supported from the text of the Apocrypha (e.g., the doctrines of purgatory, indulgences, and works-righteousness as contributing to justification). In response to the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) convened the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563). In the fourth session of the Council of Trent (1546), the RCC officially recognized the canonicity of the Apocrypha. Now, one can speculate that the RCC move to canonize the Apocrypha was more in response to the Protestant Reformers rejection of those books than the fact that those books were worthy of being included in the official canon. As stated earlier, it is in these books that one finds many RCC dogmas that the Reformers rejected. Rather than abandon these traditional doctrines, the RCC elevated the Apocrypha to the status of divinely inspired Scripture; thereby protecting these teachings.

That concludes my ‘brief’ history of the Apocrypha. Being a Protestant in the Reformed tradition, I side with the Reformers over the issue of the Apocrypha. That by no means settles the debate because this is a debate that has raged for centuries; it would be a matter of hubris on my part to think that this article can settle the debate. However, since this blog deals with promoting the ideals of the Protestant Reformation, I want to provide the Protestant teaching on this issue. The key word on this topic is the word “distinguish,” as found in the first line of the Belgic Confession, Article VI: “We distinguish between these holy books and the apocryphal ones.” The Apocrypha must be distinguished from the canonical books for the reasons cited above:

1. Not part of the Hebrew canon
2. Not cited by Jesus and the apostles
3. Not universally accepted in the post-apostolic church
4. Canonized by the RCC more in reaction to the Reformation rather than due to any divine authorship.

Does that mean we should completely reject the Apocrypha? Does it have any value whatsoever? The next line of the Confession addresses this concern. The church may certainly read these books and learn from them as far as they agree with the canonical books. As with any book of human origin, it has value insofar as it agrees with the Bible, and by that I mean books that purport to teach doctrine or ethics. The written works of authors such as Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, etc. are all worth reading. As the Bible says, “but test everything; hold fast what is good.” The books of Maccabees contain a lot of historical data from the inter-testamental period that helps fill in the gaps between the OT and NT. That doesn’t make it canonical, just valuable.

Finally, as the Confession concludes: But they do not have such power and virtue that one could confirm from their testimony any point of faith or of the Christian religion. Much less can they detract from the authority of the other holy books. The Apocrypha should not be used to establish or confirm any point of doctrine. This makes sense if one believes that they are not of divine origin. As such, they cannot be authoritative in the life and practice of the church. Moreover, the Apocrypha cannot be used to counteract or contradict any Biblical doctrine. Again, there is Scripture and then there is everything else. Sola Scriptura teaches that Scripture is the final and only authority in matters of faith and practice (or doctrine and ethics).

I understand the volatile nature of this debate. It has separated Protestants and Catholics for centuries. On one hand, it seems like a trivial debate. After all, whether you believe there are 66 books of the Bible or 73 books of the Bible (some of the Apocryphal writings are included as parts of other canonical books), this shouldn’t be a cause for such division, right? Both parties accept the same NT books, and it’s from there that we derive the heart of our doctrine; who cares about a few extra OT books? On the other hand, this issue goes to the heart of authority, does it not? If we accept the premise above — that the RCC moved to canonize these books as a reaction to the Reformation — then we have come to the point where doctrine decides what is Scripture, not the reverse. I don’t want to overstep my bounds, but this is the logical conclusion of this debate.

I want to resist the urge to trivialize the differences between Catholics and Protestants. There were real reasons for the separation. The Protestant Reformation was a reaction to doctrinal errors and abuses the Reformers saw in the RCC. The RCC response was essentially to address the abuses, but affirm the doctrinal differences in the Council of Trent. These differences cannot be glossed over. But we also don’t need to go the the extreme of anathematizing the other party and burning them at the stake. We should engage in open and charitable discussions while not compromising that which we believe.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!

King James Only Believers And The LXX

In their desire to repudiate the modern versions of the Scriptures, certain KJVO believers have taken it upon themselves to deny the existence of the Septuagint (LXX).¹ The reason for their doing so is given in their own words:

“Then why are scholars so quick to accept the existence of this LXX in the face of such irrefutable arguments against it? The answer is sad and simple.

Hebrew is an extremely difficult language to learn. It takes years of study to attain a passing knowledge of it. And many more to be well enough versed to use it as a vehicle of study. By comparison a working knowledge of Greek is easily attainable. Thus, IF THERE WAS an official translation of the Old Testament into Greek, Bible critics could triple the field of influence overnight without a painstaking study of biblical Hebrew. Unfortunately, the acceptance of the existence of the Septuagint on such thin evidence is based solely on pride and voracity.”²

“Codex B, the LXX, is a revision of the Greek texts extant during Origin’s time. He used the versions of the Ebonite’s’ Aquilla (c. 128), Symmachus (c. 180-192 A.D.), and Theodotin (c. 161-181) for the Hexapla reconstruction, along with three other anonymous translations that have become known as the Quinta, the Sexta, and Septima. From this point on in this paper the OT Greek text, usually misnamed LXX or Septuagint, will be called the Greek Text of Origen, GTO. A Greek text of the minor prophets found in the Judean desert caves dates to around the time of “the second Jewish revolt in the years 132-135″ A.D. by the personal letters of Bar Kokhba. They cannot be claimed with any certainty as part of a B.C. Septuagint. As a matter of fact, they contain translational features found in other A.D. texts such as those of Aquila and of the Quinta.”³

In other words, these KJVO believers reject the existence of the LXX because it will support Codex B, the Vaticanus Manuscript, which includes the LXX. The existence of the LXX would mean that Codex B is much older than KJVO and TRO (Textus Receptus Only) believers declare it to be. It would also mean that New Testament quotations of the LXX lend support to Codex B. That would then destroy the idea that the Byzantine family of texts is the best and purest family of texts.

We must answer the question, then, concerning the existence of the LXX. We shall do that with two proofs:

1. The Dead Sea Scrolls. Qumran has yielded to us copies of the LXX in Greek.⁴

2. The words of Irenaus: “Since, therefore, the Scriptures have been interpreted with such fidelity, and by the grace of God, and since from these God has prepared and formed again our faith towards His Son, and has preserved to us the unadulterated Scriptures in Egypt, where the house of Jacob flourished, fleeing from the famine in Canaan; where also our Lord was preserved when He fled from the persecution set on foot by Herod; and [since] this interpretation of these Scriptures was made prior to our Lord’s descent [to earth], and came into being before the Christians appeared – for our Lord was born about the forty-first year of the reign of Augustus; but Ptolemy was much earlier, under whom the Scriptures were interpreted; – [since these things are so, I say,] truly these men are proved to be impudent and presumptuous, who would now show a desire to make different translations, when we refute them out of these Scriptures, and shut them up to a belief in the advent of the Son of God. But our faith is steadfast, unfeigned, and the only true one, having clear proof from these Scriptures, which were interpreted in the way I have related; and the preaching of the Church is without interpolation. For the apostles, since they are of more ancient date than all these [heretics], agree with this aforesaid translation; and the translation harmonizes with the tradition of the apostles. For Peter, and John, and Matthew, and Paul, and the rest successively, as well as their followers, did set forth all prophetical [announcements], just as the interpretation of the elders contains them.”

Irenaeus, Against Heresies chp 21, Schaff, P. (2000). The Ante-Nicene Fathers (electronic ed.). Garland, TX: Galaxie Software.

Note what Irenaeus is saying. He is telling us that the LXX existed in his day, which was many years before Origen. In other words, the story of Origen writing/manufacturing the LXX is simply a fabrication itself.

The question that we must now ask ourselves is this: which group is actually being more faithful to the original text? Is it the KJVO/TRO believers, or is it those who are using Codex B in their translation efforts? Suddenly, the textual issue shines more clearly. In fact, it becomes quite obvious that texts which are supported by Codex B are indeed texts that should be considered most valid. After all, Codex B and the LXX are of the same family: the Alexandrian family. Suddenly, we find that the Alexandrian texts are indeed reliable. After all, the apostles considered them to be such, and used them. My reply to the KJVO believers, then is, “If the Alexandrian texts were good enough for Paul, they’re good enough for me.”

We may indeed have great confidence in many of the modern versions which we have today! They are truly based upon older, more reliable manuscripts.

¹ http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1763356/posts Accessed 08/02/2009

http://www.pbministries.org/Theology/miscellaneous/what_is_the_lxx.htm Accessed 08/02/2009

² http://www.pbministries.org/Theology/miscellaneous/what_is_the_lxx.htm Accessed 08/02/2009

³ http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1763356/posts Accessed 08/02/2009

⁴ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/deadsea.html Accessed 08/02/2009

]]> http://evepheso.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/muraokas-greek-english-lexicon-of-the-septuagint/ Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:54:46 +0000 Mike Aubrey http://evepheso.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/muraokas-greek-english-lexicon-of-the-septuagint/

My copy of Muraoka’s Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (2009) arrived in the mail from Eisenbrauns and I’ve taken some time to post a few pictures of this very beautifully bound book. Next week, when I get back from camping, I’ll post some more detail thoughts on the contents themselves – including comparisons with LEH. I have some of the same concerns that John has, but I think that I might be slightly more positive, though I’m not sure. Its possible simply that John’s criticisms distracted me from his praise. That does happen on occasion with book reviews.

On to the pictures:

If you’ve visited Amazon, you’ve seen this cover already, I’m sure. The curve of the picture is barrel distortion, not any problem with this beautiful book itself – stupid camera.

But here is the hardback itself without the Dust jacket. Its a very nice hardback, perfectly bound.

And it lies flat very nicely too.

So there’s the book, comments on content are forthcoming.

I started working on the Kaige text of 2 Samuel/Reigns today. I’ll write about anything that pops out at me.

Eisenbrauns has Muraoka’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint in stock now!

Currently, it says that there are 4 in stock – though I’m not entirely sure how accurate that is 3 in stock. There should be at least one less than that as of about five minutes ago. So you might want to hurry.

This complete lexicon supercedes its two earlier editions (1993; 2002).

Peeters Publishers, 2009

List Price: $138.00
Your Price: $128.34
You save: $9.66

Description

- The entire Septuagint, including the apocrypha, is covered. – For the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Judges the so-called Antiochene edition is fully covered in addition to the data as found in the standard edition by Rahlfs. – Also fully covered are the two versions of Tobit, Esther, and Daniel. – Based on the critically established Göttingen edition where it is available. If not, Rahlfs’s edition is used. – For close to 60% of a total of 9,550 headwords all the passages occurring in the LXX are either quoted or mentioned. – A fully fledged lexicon, not a glossary merely listing translation equivalents in English. – Senses defined. – Important lexicographical data such as synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, distinction between literal and figurative, combinations with prepositions, noun cases, syntagmatic information such as what kind of direct or indirect objects a given verb takes, what kind of nouns a given adjective is used with, and much more information abundantly presented and illustrated with quotes, mostly translated. – High-frequency lexemes such as prepositions and conjunctions fully analysed. – Data on contemporary Koine and Jewish Greek including the New Testament taken into account. – Morphological information provided: various tenses of verbs, genitive forms of nouns etc. – Substantive references to the current scientific literature.

Product Details

In contrast to my formal philosophical studies, I’m focusing most of my private study in the area of biblical studies at the moment.  In particular, I am studying textual criticism, the formation of the canon, and its implications on our theological doctrine of scripture.  (I’m still a theology student at heart, so don’t pop-quiz me on any of this textual scholarship stuff

Anyway, in my canonical studies, obviously one issue that has come up is the apocryphal books—or as is perhaps preferred, the deuterocanon.  This includes such books as Maccabees, Sirach, etc.  The Catholic and Orthodox churches still use these, and the Protestants have chopped ‘em out.

I can still remember back when I was even a teenager being pretty annoyed by this development.  Why, I asked, did some Christians (the Reformers) think it was actually okay to just chop large swaths of the Bible out that had been used for 1,500 years?! And moreover, the New Testament authors (and early church) even preferred the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint, “LXX”), which included all of these books.  What was the deal?!

I’ve stumbled across an interesting article published in the Orthodox Study Bible, titled “Who Decides? Unraveling the Mystery of the Old Testament Canon.”  It’s an interesting read, but here are some selected highlights:

The LXX is based on a very different text of the Old Testament from the Masoretic text, on which modern English translations are based. For instance, in many places the wording is quite different, and the content of the books also differs—generally the LXX text is longer, but there are also interesting additions to the Masoretic text that are not found in the LXX. [...]

[The Standardization of a Jewish vs. Christian Old Testament]

Judaism was quite fluid at the time of Christ. There were seven distinct sects of the Jews in the early first century, according to Eusebius. The different sects accepted the authority of different collections of books (e.g., the Sadducees and Samaritans accepted only the five books of the Prophet Moses, the Torah), and there were often significant differences in the composition of the books they accepted in common. Sometimes the same sect might even make use of multiple text bases, or as scholars call them, text traditions. For example, the Dead Sea scrolls, containing the sacred texts of the Essene sect of Judaism, show evidence of the Masoretic, Samaritan, and LXX text bases.

However, with the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, an intense standardization process began. Only the Pharisee and the Samaritan sects of Judaism survived this process. The collection of Old Testament books into what eventually became the Masoretic text was begun by the Pharisees at the Council of Jamnia, somewhere between AD 80 and 100, but was not completed until the sixth century. During this period, The Wisdom of Sirach, which was eventually excluded from the Masoretic text, was sometimes included in the Jewish canon, while Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, all of which eventually found a place in that text, were sometimes excluded.

The Pharisees wanted a standardized Hebrew text of the Old Testament partly because of the large number of Christian Jews. The older LXX version of the Old Testament contained many messianic passages that the Christians could use to convince Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. In fact, the early Christians charged that the Pharisees had deliberately truncated the canon to avoid messianic prophecy pointing toward Jesus Christ (see Justin Martyr, Trypho 71–73).

For instance, Isaiah 7:14 in the LXX says, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son”—this clearly refers to the Virgin Birth of the Messiah. On the other hand, the Pharisees’ version of Isaiah found in the Masoretic text only mentions a “young woman.” Moreover, many of the wisdom texts from the Deuterocanonical books, particularly Sirach, were commonly used by the Church as catechetical reading for converts. It is not surprising that the Pharisees would want to exclude these “Church texts” from their official Hebrew version of the Old Testament.

Since the Jews had never set an exact limit on the number of books in the Old Testament, it was not inconsistent with their own faith for the Pharisees to limit the books they wanted to include in their revised Hebrew canon. Like the early Church, the Jews of Christ’s time were not united around a particular set of texts (beyond the Torah, that is). They were organized around a liturgical life in the temple and synagogue. For this liturgical life, they came to use texts in the services. However, the liturgical life preceded the production of the texts and formed their context. Historically, as the Jewish faith developed in the synagogues and in temple worship during the postexilic period (the four to five hundred years preceding the coming of Messiah), texts came to be used in worship (e.g., the Psalms) and teaching. As mentioned above, the exact collection of texts varied depending on the sect.

However, with the loss of their center in Jerusalem and of unified temple worship (after AD 70), preserving the Jewish faith required greater standardization. The Jews could no longer afford divisions if they were to survive as a people. Thus, they needed a collection of unproblematic texts to use in their now dispersed population and synagogue-only worship. They needed to eliminate the use within their communities of texts useful to those whom they considered heretics (e.g., Christians, Gnostics, and Hellenizers). Particularly, they did not want to use in their services texts that the Christians could use to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the Messiah promised by the Prophets of the Old Testament. The canon, or list of accepted texts, that the Jews produced as their standard is significantly shorter than the LXX and came to be known as the Masoretic text.

Interesting.  Skipping a down a bit, the article later moves on to the very question of the Protestant Reformers:

[The Truncating of the Protestant Canon]

Most Bibles that are available in North America today are published by Protestants; consequently, the Old Testaments in these Bibles are translations based on the Jewish Masoretic text and omit the Deutero-canonical books. The historical reasons for this appear almost accidental, and most English-speaking Christians are unaware of them.

The Protestant Reformers’ emphasis on original languages (coming out of their Renaissance heritage [Humanism]) led most of the Reformers to insist on using the Old Testament canon available to them in Hebrew, which had become standard among the Jews (the Masoretic text). During the late Middle Ages, the Germans and Englishmen who began to translate the Bible into “the language of the people” were ignorant of the importance of the LXX (or in some cases even completely ignorant of its existence). They assumed that the Hebrew Masoretic text used by the European Jews of their day was more authentic than the Latin Vulgate, which in their mind was tainted by its association with the Latin Church based in Rome.

Although modern English translations of the Old Testament take into consideration the LXX and other text traditions, they have continued to rely principally on the Masoretic tradition. This has led to the sometimes embarrassing situation of an English Bible in which the New Testament quotations of the Old Testament are very different from the supposed “original” found in the Old Testament translation included in the same Bible.

[...] Until the mid-nineteenth century, most Protestants accepted the Deuterocanonical books as inspired in at least some limited sense. For example, the original version of the King James Bible, the most popular version of the Bible in English, included most of the Deuterocanonical books. And for many years in England, it was even illegal to publish a Bible without these books.

They continued to be included in almost all Protestant versions of the Bible until the missionary movement of the first part of the nineteenth century. In order to save on shipping costs, missionary Bible societies began publishing partial Bibles (New Testaments, Gospels, etc.). Converts and religious movements that were born out of this missionary movement came to believe that the thirty-nine books in the truncated, missionary-society–produced Old Testaments were the only “true” books of the Old Testament.

Isn’t that interesting?  Be sure and check out the article [LINK], and post your thoughts/comments here.

(Codex Sinaiticus found at http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/img/Codex_Sinaiticus_open_full.jpg)

Codex Sinaiticus, have you heard of it?  I think I read about it recently in a news flash.  It is a 1600 year old Bible (400 AD)–the oldest copy of the New Testament is included, in Greek (of course, it’s all Greek to me .  Preserved in a Mount Sinai monastery for centuries (yeah, the Mount Sinai of Moses fame) it started to be unveiled in the middle 1800’s.  Its handwritten text is stunning and ancient…AND it is available for all eyes to see on the internet.  Seriously, check it out: http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/

The website has an English translation option as well as a Greek, Russian and German one.  Not all text has been translated yet. :’(  It includes a couple of New Testament books not in today’s Bibles and most (if not all) of the apocryphal books found in the Catholic Bible.  For those of us who love to study God’s Word, it makes our hearts sing!

In poking around a bit, this shining nugget caught my eye and spoke to depths:

…grace to you and peace from him who is, and who was, and who comes, and from the seven spirits that are before his throne,  and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth.  To him that loves us and that washed us from our sins in his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and strength through the ages: amen. (Revelation 1:4b-6)

Amen!

(Contemplative update: prayed today, on my face mostly)