Summary:
A name for the Greek translation of the Old Testament, traditionally the version made in the second and third centuries BC, but sometimes applied to later texts. 'Septuagint' is often shortened to Lxx (Latin for seventy).Use Of The Term:
As this profile will outline, the text eventually known as the Septuagint went through several versions, all of which are now referred to by the same term. Generally speaking, works relating to Christianity are talking about the fully expanded Septuagint, works relating to Judaism are referring to either the original Old Testament or even just the Torah and works about the Septuagint mean the whole text over its whole history. If you are studying, you must check the context to be sure.The Legend:
According to Legend, when Ptolemy II of Egypt wanted a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures he asked the chief priest of Jerusalem for aid. Seventy-two translators were duly sent to Egypt, six from every tribe, where they worked independently for seventy-two days on seventy-two versions. When the scholars had finished and their versions compared, they were all identical and the Greek version was as divine as the Hebrew; some branches of the legend feature seventy or seventy-five scholars.'Septuagint':
A Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures was certainly made – indeed, the Greek is now the earliest complete version of Jewish lore extant – but the origins were very different (see below). However, the legend left a mark. The translators became cult figures in the ancient world and were recalled by an early Latin name for the Greek: 'Septuagint', Latin for seventy. As the text became primarily of Christian importance, and the Christians became primarily Latin speaking, the name stuck.The Reality: From Hebrew to Greek:
The holy books of the Jewish canon were written in Hebrew and Aramaic but, by the middle of the third century BC, large parts of the Jewish community spoke only Greek, prompting someone – now unknown – to translate the Torah (sometimes called the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament) into Greek. Over the next century the remaining Old Testament was also translated, as were a number of 'apocryphal' books now considered uncanonical, but often accepted by contemporaries.There was no single translator or initiative, but many different scholars working to their own, often unique, criteria over many years. This first collection was thus very uneven in style and quality, ranging from elegant reinterpretations to basic word for word translations. In addition, new scriptures written in Greek, albeit they not universally recognised, often accompanied the translations, forming a larger 'bible' than in the Hebrew.There was opposition to the new Greek texts, but the sheer necessity of their production – and some very authoritative words by Rabbis such as Simon ben Gamaliel, who said Greek was the only language the Torah could be accurately converted to – led to many regarding the Greek as being as divinly inspired as the Hebrew, a belief reinforced by the legend: the Greek translation is perfect and as valid as the Hebrew/Aramaic original.An Exchange Of Religions:
By 0 BC/AD, as Jewish scholars worried about the scribal errors and deviations affecting the Greek Old Testament, a new religion began to pay it especial attention: the Greek speaking Christians. They found evidence in the scriptures for their new Messiah and began to regard the formerly Jewish work as an Old Testament to their New. Christian scholars now debated the meanings of the Greek and tried to purify the work of scribal error too, sometimes to the chagrin of disagreeing Jews.Judaism didn't recognize Jesus as the son of God, and was thus at opposition with any interpretation of the Septuagint which said so, causing large disagreements over meaning and doubts that the text was valid. Coupled to this was a decline in the number of Greek speaking Jews and, over the first few centuries of the Common Era, the Septuagint became less and less important to Judaism whilst becoming absolutely central to Christianity.By its Christian adoption, the Septuagint had been reordered to contain four sections (law, history, poetry, prophets) as opposed to the Jewish three and expanded from the Hebrew old testament with over ten new books. For many theologians, the Septuagint wasn't just a translation of half their bible, it was the word itself and only two traditions – the Latin, via Jerome's Vulgate, and the Syriac – went back to the Hebrew for clarification when writing later bibles.
Importance
The Septuagint's importance to its original Jewish creators came and went within a few centuries, but what's so fascinating – even to atheists – is the document's acceptance and reinterpretation by a new group, the Christians, who regarded it as reverently as the Jews, a process enabled by the Hebrew having been turned into Greek. Even two millennia later the Septuagint retains an immense importance, and not just in the Greek branch of Christianity which still uses it. The Hebrew scriptures may have evolved across the centuries and the Septuagint, despite being a translation, may be the earliest complete and thus the most 'correct' version; this subject is highly controversial.
