Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 14/05/2004 23:28, unikom AT paco.net wrote:

> ...
> If your point is that the authors of the Septuagint produced the original
> wrong Greek translation, I won't argue with this, although of course I
> have great doubts that the LXX was produced by Jews, because glaring
> errors reveal non-native Hebrew speaker. I'm not accusing modern
> Christians of mistranslation, you see; the issue is simply what reading is
> correct.
>  

This argument doesn't add up. There were many Jews in the last centuries 
BCE who were not native speakers of Hebrew, and so non-native speaker of 
Hebrew does not imply not Jew. (Indeed some people argue that there were 
no native speakers of Hebrew after the Exile.) It seems most likely to 
me that the LXX was translated, according to tradition, by Alexandrian 
Jews, who had become Greek-speaking and who were already losing their 
understanding of Hebrew. This is sufficient to explain the glaring 
translation errors. If you are suggesting that it was translated by 
Christians, that hardly makes sense because the LXX is well attested at 
Qumran, but there are at most a very few fragments there of any other 
Christian text. Now if you want to argue that the received text of the 
LXX has been edited by Christians, you may be on safer ground although I 
don't think that can be proved.



--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/