In Septuagint studies a common caution against appealing to wildly speculative translator exegesis to account for divergences between MT and LXX is the recognition that the translators were working with a text they recognized as authoritative and unique, and so would have been reluctant to deviate much from the Vorlage. This been confirmed to some degree in a few LXX books where research (particularly of the Finnish school) confirms a high degree of fidelity to the Vorlage combined with dynamic equivalency. In these books, many seeming divergences actually fall within the semantic scope of the Hebrew, if they’re not mistakes or derived from a distinct Vorlage.[1] I think caution is in order, though, and I’ll explain why.

E. Y. Kutcher points to an interesting observation regarding texts found at Masada and their relationship to the standardized manuscripts:

It is interesting to realize that the text of Ben Sira underwent many changes resulting from the “corrections” of medieval (and earlier) scribes. . . . But Psalms fared differently. Except for a few cases of defective spellings, that are also common in our mss of the Bible, there is practically no difference between the text discovered as Masada and out Masoretic text. How are we to account for this difference between the transmission of Psalms and of Ben Sira? The answer is simply that Psalms represented a sacred text and therefore the scribes made every effort to copy it faithfully, while Ben Sira was not canonized, and so it was treated less carefully. This is a clear proof of how particular the scribes were not to change anything when copying a Biblical text.[2]

The texts from Masada clearly come from a later date than the translation of the Septuagint, though (the majority of it, anyway), and the Dead Sea Scrolls show a greater degree of variety in the earliest texts. It seems that an ideology developed between the translation of the Septuagint and the standardization of the MT that saw the text itself as intimately associated with the authority of the message it conveyed. That is, while early translators used dynamic equivalents to convey the sense of the Hebrew without necessarily conveying the original word order, syntax, or lexical qualities, as time went on, the word order, syntax, and lexical qualities became equally as important. What the text was saying was not all that had meaning. How the text said it began to have meaning as well.

This belief became increasingly important over the next few centuries. The second century CE Aquila adhered slavishly to the word order and syntax of the Hebrew in his translation into Greek. His text may be thought of as the original interlinear Bible. Later Jewish scholars would institute strict standards of transcription in order to ensure no part of the text was corrupted, such as counting the numbers of letters in a book. Glaring errors were left in the books with annotations in the margins. The text then took on an entirely new persona. Today it is even viewed as inerrant by many.

I would suggest that retrojecting modern concepts of canonicity and inerrancy into our investigations of the translation of the Septuagint is a bit presentistic. Those concepts have their roots in that time period, but in its infancy I think the idea of reverencing the text of the Bible was quite distinct.

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[1] Anneli Aejmelaeus and Bénédicte Lemmelijn have also argued, convincingly in my opinion, that harmonizations are more likely the work of scribes rather than translators, given the far more broad scope of focus in transcription compared to translation.

[2] E. Y. Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 92.

Linda and James over at A Blog of Biblical Proportions have compiled a helpful list of the Top 50 Biblical History Blogs, and I am honored to see I’m a part of the list. Thanks for the great resource!

This CNN article discusses President Obama’s comments about Niebuhr as his favorite philosopher. I think it’s an interesting article and it’s nice to bring a little more attention to 20th century theologians (and I also like Niebuhr). I think many of Obama’s speeches manifest the meditation and self-awareness of an experienced leader, and I like that about him. However, I don’t think Obama is a Niebuhr scholar (I could be wrong), and I think trying to tie the following comments about Niebuhr’s philosophy to Obama’s policy-making is a tad idealistic:

“He thought that sometimes getting your hands dirty with self-interested folks is the only way to make progress,” Crouter says. “If you don’t believe the Kingdom of God is just around the corner, the best you can sometimes do is take baby steps toward justice.”

To put it another more hyperbolic way, Obama is like Niebuhr in that he’s an idealist who is driven by pure altruism but is kept from saving the planet only by all the other self-interested people in the US government (those self-interested people primarily being Republicans, it seems, based on his “buzz saw” comments).

A CNN article here discusses a man who was denied citizenship in France because his French wife wears a burqa. The article makes it sound like he’s forcing her to do it, but that’s never stated clearly. The Immigration Minister’s justification for this action and the impending law is interesting:

Foreigners may become French citizens if they marry French nationals and meet certain criteria, including integrating well in French society and having “good morality,” Besson said. It is on the criteria of morality that the man’s citizenship request was denied, Besson said.

“This individual imposes the full veil upon his wife, does not allow her the freedom to go and come as she pleases, and bans her from going out with her face unveiled, and rejects the principles of secularism and equality between man and woman,” Besson said he told President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Apparently a Moroccan woman trying to naturalize in 2008 was denied citizenship for wearing a burqa as well. In that case the government seems to blame the woman for not respecting France’s principles of equality. Her French husband, who requested she wear the burqa, hasn’t faced any kind of sanction, but when the new law comes into effect perhaps that will change.

These “principles of secularism” seem to me to be the primary motivator in this campaign, since a similar 2004 law bans simple head scarves in public schools as well as crucifixes, Sikh turbans, and kippas. None of these are related to the inequality of the sexes.

57% of French citizens support these laws, though, and it’s their prerogative. I guess I just find it disheartening to see religious expression legislated against like this.

I just returned from this week’s David Patterson seminar, and it was probably the most interesting one I’ve attended yet. Albert Baumgarten spoke about his biography of Elias Bickerman. It was a fascinating look into Bickerman’s intellectual life. Baumgarten explains that he approaches Bickerman in terms opposite to those Bickerman would have used to describe himself. He calls him a Jewish historian, for instance, despite the fact that Bickerman spoke of himself primarily as a Classicist. Interestingly enough, Baumgarten ordered that, upon his death, all his personal papers be burnt without being read. He wanted to be remembered exclusively for his scholarship. Despite this handicap, Baumgarten displays profound insight into Bickerman’s life and scholarship, and I look forward to the book.

You can download many of the Loeb Classical Library publications for free here.

I’ve about exhausted my resources here at Oxford and cannot seem to locate a book entitled  L’Ecrit et l’Esprit. Etudes d’histoire du texte et de théologie biblique offertes en hommage à Adrian Schenker. It’s edited by D. Böhler, I. Himbaza, and P. Hugo and it’s part of the Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis series. I’m really only looking for an article entitled “Voir Dieu. LXX d’Exode contre TM et LXX du Pentateuque,” by Innocent Himbaza on pp. 100-11. Worldcat.org says it’s only at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, and I can’t quite get interlibrary loan here to work for me (I don’t even know if they’ll do it for a German library). I appreciate whatever help can be offered.

In biblical exegesis it’s quite easy to get sucked into what is called the hermeneutic circle. I was recently provided with an absolutely beautiful illustration of this concept when a friend took issue with my opposition to the idea of a univocal view of the Bible:

You found a couple of puzzle pieces in a thousand-piece puzzle that are difficult to fit into the picture shown on the outside cover of the box, and so on that basis announce that the original puzzle was that represented by the two unusual pieces while the 998 pieces represent a radical alteration of the original picture.

Here is where this runs into problems. The Bible has no theological composition on its cover. It has no cover. It is a collection of texts written, edited, and redacted by a number of different people for a number of different reasons that were gather together for equally disparate reasons and eventually combined in a single publication. Since we didn’t produce the puzzle (fragments of text) from a single, original composition, we can’t have been responsible for any picture on the cover.

The above statements asserts there’s a picture on the cover, though. Where, then, did it come from? There’s only one possible answer. It must come from putting the pieces together. We run into problems, though, since my friend tells us above that we must make sure we put the pieces together in a way that matches the picture on the cover. If we deviate because the pieces don’t fit it’s because we’re doing something wrong. Therein lies the paradox. The picture on the cover cannot depend on the picture produced by the pieces if the pieces must be made to produce a picture that matches the cover. To insist that such is the case is to be stuck in the hermeneutic circle.

In Uruguay and Argentina a barbecue is called an asado, and they take it quite seriously. Here’s a participant in a Uruguayan communal asado that you probably wouldn’t find at a Texas barbeque:

In 2004 Azzan Yadin published an article in Vetus Testamentum arguing that the depiction of Goliath’s armor points not to genuine Philistine battle armor, but to the armor of sixth century Greece.  Azzan states:

The present article suggests that the battle between David and Goliath—or, more accurately, the final redaction of this battle—is a response to burgeoning Greek national identity, and maintains a literary dialogue with the Greek epic tradition.

I agree with Yadin’s dating for the final redaction of Samuel, but I believe Goliath’s armor should be interpreted as reflecting Neo-Assyrian battle armor (not Homeric). Irrespective, I want to explain here why I take issue with the evidence that is presented for rejecting the Philistine provenance of Goliath’s armor. Here is what is the article says:

The head gear is unlike the distinctive feathered helmets of the Egyptian reliefs at Medinet Habu; Goliath’s chain mail (שריון קשקשים) is Mesopotamian-Syrian; and the great shield, requiring a shield bearer, is unlike the small round shields of the Philistines portrayed in Egyptian reliefs.

The second point accords with my own conclusions about Goliath’s armor, but the other two are based exclusively on the Medinet Habu reliefs. The first concerns the fact that the reliefs identify the Philistines, Denyen, and Tjekel as wearing “feathered helmets.” I don’t think these helmets have feathers in them at all. I prefer the conclusion that they represent leather straps. The Medinet Habu temple dates to the mid 12th century BCE (Iron Age 1A). The story of Goliath purports to relate events from over 100 years later. I think it’s a bit reaching to assert the Philistine origin of Goliath’s helmet can be rejected based on Egyptian bas reliefs from over 100 years earlier.

The originally monochrome pottery of the Philistines takes on Egyptian and Canaanite flavor after only a few decades of interaction, and is vastly different by the end of the 11th century. Ashdod and Ekron are the only cities where pottery from the original phase of Philistine settlement are found. Other aspects of Philistine culture, like architecture, art, burial customs, and cult objects, all show variegation and local influence. The three temples from Tell Qasile  all have different styles. Even the anthropomorphoid coffins have been shown to be borrowed from LBA Egyptian practices. According to Mazar (Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000 – 586 BCE, 328), “isolated from the source of their culture, the Philistines were inspired by the indigenous population and were assimilated into it.”

I don’t think the continuity of battle armor can be presumed to the degree that the reliefs from Medinet Habu can be appealed to to reject Goliath’s armor as non-Philistine. The close parallels to Neo-Assyrian scaled armor, shield bearers, and the like I think present a better context than Homeric epic, but that’s a discussion for another day.