ARTICLE IX. THE GREEK VERSION OF THE PENTATEUCH. De Pentateuchi Versione Alexandrina Libri tres. us. Scripsit Henr. Guil. Jos. Thierschius, Phil. Dr., Theol. Lic. Erlangen, 1841. By Prof. H. B. Hackett, Newton Theol. Institution. HABES, lector, opusculum de ea re elaboratum, quam pauci hodie curant, plurimi ne curandum quidem a quopiam judicant. So says the author in laying his work even before the critical public of his own country. We trust, however, that of the few who take an interest in such labors, some are to be found also among The production here noticed relates to an important circle of study, and one that affords room for a much more extended inves. tigation than it has yet received. There are various aspects and phenomena of the Hellenistic Greek as contained in the Septua gint, which remain still to be examined. Some of the obscurity which rests upon certain portions of Hebrew syntax, is destined to be cleared up, if ever, by light that shall be derived from this source. A just treatment of the New Testament idiom depends still more, both lexically and grammatically, upon a full acquaintance with the usage of the Septuagint Greek. An advance in this direction may be regarded as one of the most urgent wants, for which provision needs to be made, at the present time, in this branch of biblical study. In the work of Thiersch now before us, we have a favorable specimen of what is required, in order to supply this deficiency. In the last edition of his Grammar of the New Testament, Winer pronounces it beyond comparison the best treatise on the linguistic element of the Seventy, which has as yet appeared. It is confined to an examination of the five books of Moses. It consists of three parts; the first of which treats of the principles which the Seventy have observed in their translation of the Pentateuch; the second, of the Greek dialect in which they have written; and the third, of the Hebraisms which are to be found in their version. In his prefatory remarks, the author speaks of the occasion 1 The author is at present Professor in the theological Faculty of the Univer sity at Marburg, and is a son of the well known Greek grammarian of the same name. 1847.] Principles on which it is made. 189 which led him to undertake this labor. It was in consequence of suspicions with which he found his mind assailed, in reference to the purity of the generally received Hebrew text. He had observed that the Seventy frequently depart from it in their transla tion, and often in such a manner as to give an essentially different sense. He was anxious, therefore, to ascertain the ground of such deviation, and especially whether it was of such a nature as to warrant the belief that it could have originated from competent Ms. authority. For the purpose of obtaining satisfaction on this point, he devoted himself for two years together to the careful study of the Hebrew and Greek Pentateuch. The book under consideration is made up almost entirely of the results of this examination. All unsifted, traditionary material has been excluded; and, for a German performance, much less than the ordinary space has been allotted to the history of preceding opinions and labors. In the first division of the treatise, it is shown that the Alexandrian translators proceeded evidently in making their version on principles which allowed them an almost arbitrary latitude, and that in the exercise of this they can reasonably be supposed to have made the changes which appear in their version, without seeking the origin of them in a different Hebrew text. Whatever may be true of other books of the Old Testament, it is clear that those who put the Pentateuch into Greek, could not have de signed to furnish an exact copy of the original. They have departed from it sometimes for the sake of what perspicuity seemed to them to require. They have asserted everywhere the right of making what they translate intelligible to their readers, according to their own ideas of the meaning to be conveyed. They have not only adhered to this law in justifiable cases, but in some passages which they found it difficult to understand, have yentured boldly upon a single view of the sense, instead of leaving the language so as to suggest the possibility of other expositions or conjectures. Expressions and ideas which they regarded as wanting in proper reverence for the Deity, they took the liberty to alter without scruple; and narrations of any kind which they thought would not be entirely honorary to them in the eyes of other nations, they softened and put in a milder light. Instances also occur, in which they have substituted their own sentiments for those of the sacred writers, and especially in which they have obtruded upon the text various peculiar dogmas of the Alexandrian philosophy. The changes of a rhetorical character, which they have admitted, are innumera ble. They vary the form and phraseology of the Hebrew almost at pleasure, for the purpose of securing a more elegant Greek diction; they avoid the bolder figures of the oriental style and, though they seek to retain as far as possible the graces which belong to the poetic language of the Hebrews, they express for the most part entirely in the Greek way those idiomatic phrases of daily life, which are so important to a just conception of the character and genius of a foreign people. The requisite examples for supporting these positions, are presented in the proper connec tion. The conclusion under this head naturally is, that changes should not be hastily made in the Hebrew text on the authority of the Septuagint. There is no occasion for emending it or hav. ing our confidence in it disturbed, on account of the manner in which the Greek version differs from it. The rules which the authors of it followed in the performance of their labor, account sufficiently for most of this diversity, and evince the necessity of the utmost caution in the adoption of new readings, recommended merely by their agreement with the Greek translation. The author's own language is: Hac dissertatione videmur demonstrasse, eam esse versionis Pentateuchi Alexandrinae indolem, ut ad explicandum quidem textum Masorethicum non parum conferat, ad mutandum vero nisi magna cum temeritate adhiberi nequeat. In the second division of the treatise, the author considers the characteristics of the Greek dialect employed by the Seventy. The inquiry here relates to the Greek basis of this dialect, as distinguished from its Hebrew coloring. With the exception of some additional examples, and a proposed modification of some minor statements, the author adopts the views already sanctioned by such men as Salmasius, Sturtz, Buttmann, Winer, and others. The Greek which the translators of the Septuagint employed, was that current at Alexandria among those for whom they wrote, without any of that striving for Attic purity, which is apparent, even in some of the later Greek authors. In addition to its other properties which are well known, this form of the Greek language was distinguished for occasional Alexandrianisms, i. e. terms having a signification peculiar to northen Africa, as well as some examples of words graecised from the old Egyptian. Of the orthography which prevailed in the Alexandrian dialect, that is, the manner of representing the pronunciation of particular words, where the Greek language furnished different signs for the same sound, the insertion or omission of the breathings, the elision or insertion of letters for the sake of euphony, etc., a much 1847.] Its relation to classic Greek. 191 more exact account is given than is contained in the older work of Sturtz. The recent discovery of so many ancient inscriptions, of papyrus rolls and other similar documents, has illustrated the usage in these respects in a manner unknown to the earlier writers. The grammatical idioms which are mentioned, are, for the most part, the same that others have noticed. The dual number, as in modern Greek, has entirely vanished. The optative is used with much less frequency and with less precision, than in the earlier Greek. Irregularities occur in the contraction both of nouns and verbs. Some verbs which are intransitive in regular Greek, have acquired here an active sense. One instance at least of the ecbatic use of ira must be admitted, viz. Gen. 22: 14. The negatives ou and μn are employed almost without exception in accordance with the strictest Attic usage. In reference to syntactical arrangement and construction, the style of the Pentateuch presents comparatively little which is anomalous. The third and last part of the book presents to us its most valuable contents. The Alexandrian translators were Jews by birth; and the manner in which they employed the Greek language, must have been influenced by this circumstance. It is the object of our author to consider here the nature and extent of this influence, so far as it is developed in the Pentateuch. The Hebraisms which occur in the New Testament have been distinguished by critics as perfect and imperfect-the former being those which are peculiar to the Hebrew, the latter those which are common to it with the Greek. Mr. Thiersch applies this distinction to the style of the Septuagint, and, as might be expected, finds there exemplifications of it in both ways. The instances however of pure or perfect Hebraism are those naturally which receive most attention; and the results here are not only of general interest to the philologist, but capable of being applied to the study of the New Testament Greek. Some of the statements which are presented in connection with this branch of the subject, are the following. The general coincidence in the laws which regulate the use of the article in Greek and Hebrew, left no occasion for any great departure from the proper Greek idiom in the manner in which the Seventy have employed this part of speech. One exception however must be made to this remark, in a case which does not appear to have been duly noticed. It is a well known principle in Hebrew, that the article is not prefixed to substantives which are made definite by a following genitive or by a suffix pronoun. In imitation of this, the article is sometimes omitted under the game circumstances in the Pentateuch, where the genuine Greek construction would have required it. It is not improbable, that this peculiarity of the Hebrew has occasioned the singular omission of the article in Acts 2: 36, though Winer has pro posed there a different explanation. Again, the influence of the Hebrew may be traced in the use of the personal pro nouns, which is the more important to be remarked, inasmuch as the style of the New Testament has been affected in a similar manner. In strict Greek usage, the pronouns of the first and second persons are not accustomed to be expressed, unless they mark a special emphasis; and the same is true in Hebrew, with one extensive exception. The Hebrew language has a great fondness for the participle; and since the participle has no means like the proper verb, of indicating its relation to its subject by a change of termination, it became necessary to connect with it the pronoun, especially when it was of the first or second person, for the sake of distinctness. In translating such constructions, the Seventy have not always kept in view this object of the pronoun, but have sometimes expressed it in instances where the Greek would have dispensed with it.2 Even the still more idiomatic use of the relative in connection with a personal pronoun so as to form a single relative expression, has been retained in some passages. This construction, so entirely foreign to the pure Greek idiom, is not unknown to the New Testament.3 The Hebraizing tendency of the Seventy appears further in the manner in which they employ the noun in all its various cases. Thus the nominative absolute, at the commencement of a proposition, though by no means unused in Greek, occurs in the Pentateuch both with a frequency and a boldness of position, which can be explained only as an effect of that similar license practised in the Hebrew, with which the translators were so fa miliar. There is another species of independent nominative The examples of this adduced are Deut. 16: 15, ¿àv dè evλoyhoŋ σe kúpios ἐν πᾶσι γενήμασί σου καὶ ἐν παντὶ ἔργῳ σου ; ib. 23. 25, ἐν πάσαις βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς; Lev. 23. 31, ἐν πάσαις κατοικίαις ὑμῶν; ib. 25: 24, κατὰ πᾶσαν γῆν κατασχέ σεως ὑμῶν. 4 Thus Gen. 30: 1, δός μοι τέκνα, εἰ δὲ μὴ τελευτήσω ἐγὼ for mus πης. So also Ex 2: 14. 13: 15, etc. In the Pentateuch, see Gen. 28: 13. Deut. 9: 28, etc. In the New Testament, see Acts 15: 17 in a citation from Amos, Rev. 7: 2. 12: 14, etc. 4 An example of this is Ex. 32: 1—ὁ γὰρ Μωϋσῆς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ὃς ἐξήγα γεν ἡμᾶς ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου-οὐκ οἴδαμεν, τί γέγονεν αὐτῷ. |