Mary Suydam wrote:
>the only extant copies of the Septuagint are all from the Christian era
A crucial point. While it is quite likely that the current arrangement of
the LXX/Old Greek may be Jewish in origin, our main evidence comes from
Christian codices, who, for instance, may have innovated to some degree.
What were the reasons why any given community would prefer Malachi
to end their scriptures, as opposed to Ezra-Nehemiah? Part of the answer
would seem to be as much related to different "Judaisms" with different
interests. It is good to recall how thin the line could be between Jew
and Christian, at least in some communities. Many concepts that are often
being understood as Christian derive from those branches of Judaism
that were particularly interested in apocalyptic notions.
We have then any number of scenarios of how the LXX/OG as it stands
came about.
1) Wholly Jewish in arrangement (perhaps even in codex
form, although that is a debate) and adopted by Jewish-Christians
and Gentile Christians as such
2) Wholly Christian in arrangement (or at most influenced by a few
Jewish conventions such as the Pentateuch, which was among the earliest
established).
3) Based largely on a Jewish arrangment but with modifications to
fit the needs of the community it was intended for.
My personal sympathies fluctuate somewhere between 2) and 3).
These problems will come up whenever one is dealing with Jewish
traditions that are extant only in Christian hands and are a basic
methodological issue for all who work the Pseudepigrapha.
I'll also quote Bob Kraft's comments on IOUDAIOS-L on Dec 7 1998:
"I would say that there is no "LXX/OG" collection as such until it"
suddenly emerges in the large scale codices of the 4th and 5th centuries.
Christians had a lot to do with that. Whether anyone "collected" in the
same sense prior to that, when individual scrolls and mini-codices were
the medium, is questionable."
> Because of this, Jewish scholarship relies on the Masoretic Text.
Some of us Jewish scholars are hoping to change this. :-)
The Dead Sea scrolls are indeed a great help.
Addendum on Joe Pope's post-- It is true that the Aquila translation
replaced the LXX/OG as the Jewishly endorsed translation. That may
indeed point to discomfort with the collection due to Jewish-Christian
tension, as well as any number of other factors, such as faithfulness
to the Hebrew. This still does not answer the question of whether
the current arrangement that we find in the codices is the one that
was abandoned.
Naomi Jacobs
Brandeis University
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