Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>Ian, I am unable to date LXX, just as you are, because I do not rely on
>the letter of Aristeas and the dating implied there. 

I am able to restrict the date because of the DSS material. 
LXX Genesis did not have a Vorlage in Hebrew while the 
other pentateuchal books did. This means that LXX Genesis 
did come from an already developed tradition, so it did not 
exist before 63 BCE.

Dating is always an important issue (I note though that you 
did avoid the subject through caution).

>My point in quoting translations is that translations are good evidence
>for how the translators understood their Vorlage. Full stop.

This is why I brought in the DSS. There was no LXX Hebrew 
Vorlage for Genesis. All 24 fragmentary copies are 
basically MT with slight variations.

>Ian, you wrote "The simple understanding known from antiquity, ie that
>one should read br'$yt in Genesis 1:1 as "at the beginning of" with a
>following clause being related in the construct state,...". What is your
>evidence that this understanding was known from antiquity, by which I
>understand you as referring to before the time of Rashi? What securely
>dateable documents can you quote? 

Isaiah 45:18 when God said l'-thw br'h will do.

>I have several documents, including
>the Vulgate which is securely dated to the 4th century CE and LXX which
>must be older, which witness that my understanding was known from
>antiquity. (Would you like me to start researching the Church Fathers
>for their understandings and their early quotes from LXX, old Latin,
>Syriac etc etc?) 

If you don't think that the creation in LXX Gen 1:1 
was punctiliar, then was it an ingressive aorist?

>And that is all I am trying to argue at this stage of
>the discussion (having realised that it is pointless, and annoying to
>other list members, to repeat my earlier points despite you continuing
>to bring up these issues).

I have attempted to keep the issues in sight, whereas 
I do feel that you have either trivialised (Enuma Elish) 
or ignored (the 6-day literary structure) them.

>And in all of this I have made no reference to my personal views on
>creation, and certainly not to any theories of the world being returned
>to chaos after and initial creation.

I am trying to elicit such a view based on textual 
evidence so as to see how you can make such a view 
coherent.


Ian