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Adventures in the Septuagint
Let’s look at a few adventures in Bible exploration using the Septuagint (LXX), the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament. (For online access to the LXX, consider here or here.)
But why study the LXX? I’m glad you asked. It’s customary to say that the LXX is important because it’s the OT translation most used by the authors of the New Testament. That’s not wrong, but it can be misleading. I don’t think the NT authors took the LXX to be divinely inspired; when they draw from the OT, they draw from the Hebrew. But they’re writing in Greek, the common tongue of their era, and they don’t see any need to reinvent the wheel. So they usually opt to use the pre-existing Greek biblical vocabulary and idioms, and that means using the LXX.
So the LXX is important for understanding what the NT does with Hebrew. That’s helpful to losers like me: The Hebrew language is the largest tract in the vast fields of my ignorance, but with some Greek abilities and the LXX, I can trace more connections from the OT to the NT even without knowing any Hebrew.
The LXX is also an interesting glimpse into the Old Testament beyond what you get from modern translations alone. As the translation ancient Jews made of the sacred writings and which was studied by any number of Greek-speaking Jews in the diaspora for centuries, the LXX matters.
Of course, it has other uses. It might be good literature in its own right. In the event of an ambiguity between the Masoretic Text and the Dead Sea Scrolls on the working of the OT, the LXX is one place to look for a tie-breaker. It has sometimes been treated as equal to the original Hebrew. Etc., etc.
Anyway, let’s do this.
The Two Greatest Commandments
From Matthew 22: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Genesis 1:26: Then G-d said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
The second commandment is “like” the first one. That word is homoios. Man is made in the image of G-d, after G-d’s “likeness.” That word is homoiosis. The words are a bit different: One is a noun for “likeness” and the other is an adjective meaning “like” or “resembles.” The noun homoiosis appears to be non-symmetrical: When it says that A is like B, it does not say that B is also like A. The adjective homoios appears to be flexible; it can have a non-symmetrical meaning, denoting the likeness of A to B, or the symmetrical meaning “of equal rank.”
But there is obviously a connection in meaning here, and the words have a common root.
More to the point, it’s likely that Matthew’s use of homoios is meant to connect to the LXX homoiosis (and that Jesus used Hebrew or Aramaic words pointing to the original text in the Torah).
In other words, the command to love our neighbor is like the command to love G-d because the neighbor is made in the likeness of G-d. The love of G-d leads to the love of neighbor because the likeness of the glory of G-d extends to the neighbor (Psalm 8). The right treatment of humanity matters because honoring G-d matters.
The Image of G-d and Idolatry
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ ” (Genesis 1:26)
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them . . . .” (Exodus 20:4)
In the LXX, the word “image” in Genesis 1:26 is eikon, the root of the English “icon.” The word “image” in Exodus 20:4 is eidolon, a very different word and the root of the English “idol.” The word “likeness” in the first passage is our old friend homoiosis, and “likeness” in the second passage is its relative, homoioma.
How many lessons are here? Probably too many to cover without writing a whole book. (Do I look like I have that kind of time?) But here are a couple.
We are not to make for ourselves an image of G-d. That would be idolatry, and sin. G-d made His own image on earth, and we are to honor it. What, after all, do the Ten Commandments say? You shall have no other gods, you shall not make an idol, and you shall treat your neighbor properly. When we do so we know G-d better by knowing the image he himself gave us for knowing him: man, who is no idol, but may perhaps be understood as something like an icon.
The Assembly
John 6:12-13:
And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.
The word for “gather” here is sunago, to assemble or, literally, to gather together. This word is (obviously) the source of the word synagogeh, from which comes our English synagogue. In the LXX translation of the Torah, sunago is used rather a lot. One important case is Exodus 3:16: “Go and gather (sunago) the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, . . .” ‘ .”
Meanwhile, Exodus 35 uses synagogue to refer to the congregation or the assembly of Israel–those gathered together by G-d through Moses.
Note the number: twelve. The disciples of Jesus are gathering together a remnant of the bread, a remnant organized into twelve groups. Literally, they are synagoguing a remnant of twelve groups.
This is a symbol. Of course, John is telling us that this is what the disciples did that day. But he is also giving us a symbolic depiction of his ecclesiology–his theology of G-d’s people.
A few more notes before we can say exactly what John is saying about that. There are five loaves of barley, krithinos. Click on the word to learn that it only appears in the New Testament in this passage, but barley loaves are super-important in the last three verses of 2 Kings 4. There Elishah multiplies twenty loaves of barley, krithinos in the LXX, to feed 100 men.
One obvious point here is that John is linking Jesus to the earlier blessings under the ministry of Elishah. The same G-d is visiting his people and blessing them again, and this time someone greater than Elishah has been sent–with a bigger version of the same miracle–15 loaves fewer but 4,900 more men!
Another lesson John is after is that Jesus is drawn out of the Old Testament: The early prophets were all leading up to this. G-d’s people are the people of the Tanakh (the Old Testament), and the G-d who blessed them in the time of Elishah is still doing so.
John probably intends another layer of symbolism with the word artos, “bread.” This is a word used in the LXX version of Exodus 16 referring to manna, and again in Psalm 78:25. Jesus refers to himself later in chapter 6 as the true manna. Manna is prominent in the narrative of the Torah, also called the Pentateuch–the five books. There are five loaves, standing for the five books. The disciples of Jesus literally synagogued twelve baskets of fragments ek tohn pente arton, out of the five loaves.
G-d’s people are the people of the Torah (and the Psalms), and the G-d who organized them with a blessing of bread from heaven is doing so again, and Jesus’ followers have the responsibility of gathering up those from the Torah who are faithful to its promises.
One more layer of symbolism: the fragments, the klasmata. This URL tells us how the word is used in the LXX. Not that we have time to be thorough, but note how the fragments in Leviticus 2:6 and Leviticus 6:21 are to be handled with great care as offerings to G-d. Note the contrast with certain religious leaders in Ezekiel 13:19, who dishonor G-d among His people in return “for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread” (using the same word for fragments and bread, and almost the same word for barley).
Fragments of food as an offering to G-d are to be handled with care and reverence as part of our worship of G-d. Instead, some people are using G-d and man as a means to the end of claiming the fragments for themselves.
That’s the contrast between the requirements in the Torah and the corruption exposed by Ezekiel. But what about the apostles in John?
Well, Jesus gives them the job of caring for the fragments “that nothing may be lost.” Since the fragments go into twelve baskets representing G-d’s people, this is a symbol of their responsibility to care for G-d’s people, and to do it better than the corrupt leadership that does not love G-d’s people properly (Matthew 23, e.g.).
Summary: John is saying this: Jesus is having his disciples reorganize G-d’s people, starting with the remnant of Jewish Tanakh-believers (with Gentiles to be added later; John 10:16). G-d’s people are the people of the Tanakh, and the same G-d who organized them under Moses in the Torah and continued to bless them under Elishah in the Prophets is still blessing them and reorganizing them under Jesus.
“Now Let Us Hear the Conclusion of the Matter”
Oh, wait–were you expecting a conclusion? I don’t think I have one.
Except this: The LXX is important, especially in that it helps to clarify the New Testament’s commentary on the Old–and not only on the LXX itself, but on the Hebrew by means of the LXX.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
I freely admit that when I say “Jewish biblical exegesis” I mean Jewish, not Christian.
I truly do not see how. The NT is a different document. It spends very little energy parsing the Torah. It claims to bring a whole bunch of new information, not merely explaining or interpreting old data.
I am sure he did. Philo forms absolutely no part of Judaism (practise or theory) today. Spinoffs have always existed. I did use the modifier “Jewish” for biblical exegesis. Lots of people operated on the fringes.
For exegesis? I doubt it. For historical interest, surely.
In all of Rashi, the Rambam, the Talmud (comprising the Mishna and Talmud), various Targumim, The Rema, the Rashbam, the Ramban, Ibn Ezra… the list is hundreds of names long comprising tens or even hundreds of gigabytes of commentary if measured in plain text characters: I am not aware of a single explanation of something in the Torah that uses or leans on the Septuagint.
So those Jews were not Jews? Or do you mean something else? And if you mean something else, why not say what you mean?
You understand the New Testament very, very poorly indeed.
My, but this is unclear.
I read you charitably enough to conclude that you are using some technical sense of “Jewish biblical exegesis,” and asked you if you would explain it. In all this you almost come out and say explicitly that you are using the term in some specialized sense, but you don’t state what that sense is.
How do you define the term “Jewish biblical exegesis”?
Or was your list of Talmud, Ramban, etc. supposed to be an answer?
Wow. Auggie, we have had some misunderstandings, but this one tops them all. Let me put this as simply as I can:
I do not see Christianity as Judaism. I do not see Judaism as Christianity. They are different.
Is that really so hard to grasp?
Once this concept is made clear, then it is not so hard to see that language is a foundational differentiator. Judaism comes from the Hebrew text, primarily from the Five Books. Christianity, even inasmuch as some of its origins are found in Judaism, relies almost entirely on a Greek translation. It also focuses much more on subsequent texts, as well as the NT.
It should come as no surprise that Jewish sources, both before, during, and after Jesus, do NOT rely on Greek texts. Indeed, the “apocrypha” were texts that were barred from the Canon. Most were in Greek. No texts in the Jewish Canon were written in Greek.
In thousands of years of Jewish scholarship, there is no Jewish source I can think of who makes a claim to knowing what G-d is saying because of the way they interpret a non-Hebrew text. For us, the Five Books are ultimately the ONLY proof text. And the text is in Hebrew.
If you want to say, as you clearly do, that Christianity is Judaism, then I cannot stop you from making that claim. But please do not be surprised to discover that a Torah Jew discards the assertion out of hand.
I can grasp next to nothing which is not stated clearly. I don’t see them as the same either, but that doesn’t mean they can’t overlap.
What you probably mean is that you see them as 100% incompatible. Is that it?
My word. You seem to have missed the entire point of the opening post.
You do realize that Christianity recognizes the Torah as the Word of G-d, yes? Your concern is only with recognizing anything else as the Word of G-d?
Good grief. If I want to say it, I will say it. I haven’t, and I wish you wouldn’t speculate about what I think but have not even hinted at saying–in a conversation composed entirely of written words!
What I said was that the New Testament is written by Jews (Luke’s contributions being likely exceptions), and is biblical interpretation.
You say it is not, and I have been asking on what grounds you say that. More generally, I am asking this question you have not answered: What exactly is your technical sense of the term “Jewish biblical exegesis”?
iWe, when you say “Jewish biblical exegesis,” I think you mean the exegesis of Judaism as we know it now. Is that about right?
You’re right in that it adds plenty of new information, but quite a bit of the constituent documents provide exegesis of the Torah. It may be bad exegesis — in fact, I wouldn’t expect an Orthodox Jew to feel any other way about it! — but it provides plenty of exegesis attempting to reconcile the Torah with the life of Joshua bin Joseph.
As such, no, the exegesis of Roman Jews using the Septuigent is not relevant to modern Judaism. It can be relevant to Christians like St. Augustine to understand the links between vocabulary used by the New Testament authors and the Septuigent those authors would have been familiar with, links that are not apparent by comparing Hebrew Torah and Greek Gospels and letters.
The Septuigent is also helpful for tracing the evolution of Hebrew as a language, e.g. when one Hebrew letter was transliterated into two different Greek letters, that suggests differences in pronunciation that may have changed over time.
No. I mean using the Torah to understand what G-d wants from us. Using the text itself.
That is exactly what the writings of Paul are doing. That is something Christians do on a daily basis. That is no doubt something Philo did, and all those Greek-speaking Jews.
By “the text itself,” do you mean the Hebrew text only? But that would still cover Paul, John, Yeshua, Matthew, Philo, and a number of Christians in every generation who knew Hebrew. It would even exclude from doing “Jewish biblical exegesis” any Jew not educated in Hebrew.
Wow, is there a lot of knowledge and Biblical intelligence in this post and this thread! It is truly impressive to read Ricochet members, already respected on other subjects as well, suddenly exhibit this particular superpower.
Needless to say, for those of us raised as Catholics, this is mysterious new information. Most of us think of Biblical study as being like a computer language. Why bother, when you can just put in the disc and the system takes care of the rest? But our Protestant friends are good (whew, I almost said “damn good”) at reading the code line by line.
I hate to admit it but my now-grown son has always made fun of my Biblical ignorance. “Look”, I reply, “We don’t have to know what’s in that thing. And quit thumping it and waving it at me”.
I’m going to stick with Team iWe. Because why read it in assembly language if you can learn Hebrew and read it, in effect, in binary?
The team that says it’s better to know Hebrew? Heck yeah. I’m on that team.
This is not so. Because in translation, the text is stripped of much of its meaning, all of its context and linguistic connections and nuance. If you are not using the original text, then any work you do is on a tricky foundation.
I would not go that far! Philo did as you have done: he primarily used the Septuagint. I have no knowledge of the actual Hebrew understanding of the rest, but the Hellenized region at the time certainly often thought Greek was superior to Hebrew, and people read and wrote accordingly.
Think of it this way: the Jewish scholars of the age wrote in Hebrew or Aramaic. Not Greek.
I think you are getting there!
By the by, the Hebrew is not that inaccessible! Go here, find a biblical verse, and click on it. The translation here is not better than any other (it is worse in many respects), but you can search for root words throughout the Torah, see contexts and connections… and start to wrap your head around all the context. If you click on the links shown on the right, you’ll find huge amounts of exegesis. Some of it is readable in English. (You won’t find any that relies on a Greek, Latin or English source code).
Example: the word for copper/brass/bronze is “Nachash.” It is the same word as “Snake” – and “snake” is the first usage in the Torah. If you look at the ways in which this simple word is used throughout the text, it can open up a world of connections and understandings of the most favorite Christian story in the Torah: the Garden and the fruit. Here are the search results. using that root word.
Yeah, these online tools we have these days are wonderful resources.
So Jewish biblical exegesis is exegesis which is of Torah only, and relies mostly or entirely on Hebrew? That’s your definition of “Jewish biblical exegesis”?
By your criterion, Yeshua, Paul, Matthew, John, Peter, Jerome, and various Gentile Christians who know Hebrew do Jewish biblical exegesis. And Jews who aren’t trained in Hebrew don’t do it.
There’s this:
But let me try putting it this way:
The New Testament writers quote from the LXX not because they’re reading the Tanakh/OT in Greek, but because they’re writing the NT in Greek. Quoting the LXX is how the NT writers comment on the Hebrew text.
As a rule. I’ll grant that exceptions are likely–Luke being a likely candidate for a major exception.
I can understand how that would be important to you, just as I am sure you can understand why it would be irrelevant to me.
Don’t be sure. I often cannot understand what you’re thinking, much less why.
In this case, I can’t tell if you’re ignoring my point entirely, or if this is your way of saying “Ok, I learned something about Christianity today, but you might as well know that I don’t care.”
This is a source of ongoing frustration to me, of course. I consider myself a pretty decent communicator.
Longer form: I now understand that at least one Christian considers Torah exegesis from a secondary source (not Hebrew) to be legitimate and informative. I had not fully appreciated that before.
I also now understand that at least one Christian is shocked to discover that at least one Jew only sees value in exegesis from the original Hebrew.
And I am sure that, though the data set right now is one, that you are right that a great many other Christians think as you do. I can tell you with certainty that all of Torah Judaism, with no exceptions I am aware of, echo my perspective on the validity of exegesis from a secondary translation.
Why change the subject?
This has nothing at all to do with what I was talking about yesterday; I was talking about Torah exegesis from the Hebrew–which was indeed a central theme in the opening post.
You’ve learned nothing of the sort. I think nothing of the sort. I’ve said nothing of the sort.
Well! You really are entirely missing the point of what I said yesterday.
[I’ve edited this comment a zillion times. Heaven knows if I’ve finally got it right!]
I give you this, and I can probably give you more: You can write beautifully, and you are often both right and insightful about Torah, the coronavirus, economics, etc.
But yes–it is terribly frustrating.
I think we’d both find it less frustrating if you would focus more on the meaning of the sentences we’re trying to communicate with.
I can’t read your mind. I can only read your sentences. So I read them, and I give you mine in return. I don’t know what else I should be doing.
I wish you would focus more on the meaning of the sentences, starting by responding to what I actually say, not what you imagine me to be thinking (as in your #s 33 and 48).
Here’s a good place to start:
iWe, since yesterday I am only responding to this claim, to this one claim.
I am saying one thing, this one thing:
That claim is wrong. My explanation is in # 45.
OK… trying to understand. In #45 you wrote:
Your own OP is all about doing exegesis FROM THE GREEK. That is secondary, not primary.
Input: Greek Translation of the OT. Output: NT.
I fail to understand how that makes the NT a comment on the Hebrew OT.
Well, thanks for trying.
But you’re still not understanding.
# 45 and the OP are all about doing exegesis from the Hebrew, but writing in Greek.
What I keep trying to tell you is that I think the NT writers (with Luke being a likely exception) quote from the LXX only because the output is Greek–not because the input is Greek.
Input: Hebrew. Output: Greek. (Not unlike what you do, exegeting the Hebrew but writing in English. The obvious difference is that you don’t favor preexisting translations.)