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From One Language to Another. If we wish to understand the Septuagint, we must appreciate the difficulties involved in the work of translation. Rendering a Statement into a different language presents some Linguistic Challenges. The translator must first understand the original text, then find proper equivalents in the target language; decisions must be made as to whether figurative expressions should be translated literally. Moreover, Conceptual Factors must be taken into account. The translator is involved in re-expressing the subject matter in a different language. When the Greek text differs from the Hebrew, the variations sometimes provide access to theological and hermeneutical concepts present in the translator's Jewish Hellenistic culture.

Interpretation in the Septuagint. Interpretative features in the Greek version may be especially evident when the translators omit or add words or phrases. At times we can detect Theological Interpretation: debated topics include anthropomorphic expressions, eschatology, and messianic expectations. At other times the translator may be reflecting Influence from Exegetical Tradition that sought to clarify the text in the light of oral teaching and liturgy. Finally, there may have been Sociopolitical Considerations motivating the translator's work. All attempts to draw Interpretative inferences from the Greek texts, however, must be made with great caution, in light of the complexities and subtleties involved.

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Before concluding part 1 of this presentation, we need to give focused attention to a somewhat more technical question, namely, the character of the Septuagint as a translation document. It is commonly said that every translation is an Interpretation. Rendering a Statement from one language into another unavoidably involves the translators understanding and, therefore, Interpretation of the statement. The nature of least at a basic level, by everyone who has attempted translation between any two languages, ancient or modern.

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Several levels of Interpretation are involved in translation. The first level—inherent in the very process of reading—is simply the basic comprehension of the meaning of the text. A translator must make many decisions, most of which are not subject to conscious thought, let alone long deliberation, but which flow more or less naturally from his or her own competency in the language, familiarity with the topic, wealth of vocabulary, and personal bias. Even understanding the most basic unit of meaning, the word, is subject to Interpretation. A given word in any language has a semantic range of meaning, sometimes narrow, sometimes quite broad. The specific meaning of the word in a sentence is determined only by the context.

Every word in any language also shares a semantic field or domain with other words to which it is related in meaning. A given word may not only have two or more quite different senses, but each of these senses may also belong to a different semantic domain. Therefore, a translator must be able to identify the context of a Statement well enough to understand the sense of a given word correctly and not to confuse it with a different sense belonging to another semantic domain.

A second level of Interpretation is the task of finding adequate equivalents in the "target" language. To complicate matters. the semantic range of a given word is usually not identical to the range of its corresponding word in another language. This affords the opportunity for Interpretation, and thus for error When someone translates a word from one language into another, he or she must decide what sense the original word carries and identify an equivalent word in the target language.

The translator may tend to choose in the target language one word instead of another for various reasons, such as to make the translation sound pleasant or to avoid suggesting a social, political, or religious taboo in the target culture.

The Hebrew word tora is an example of a word with a fairly broad sense but translated by a Greek word with a narrower sense, nomos (both terms have usually been translated into English as "law"). The Hebrew word tora, however, is used to refer to the whole body of biblical Instruction, which

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certainly includes the commandments and Statutes of the Pentateuch, but also much more. The Greek word nomos, in the period the Greek translation was made, had a sense fairly close to that of the English word law. According to Charles H. Dodd, it referred to the legal statutes and codes by which good Greek Citizens lived.^ By choosing to translate the Hebrew word tora with the Greek word nomos, the translators introduced an understanding of biblical Instruction in the Hellenistic period that focused on the normative regulations of religious life. Dodd summarizes the relationship between these words as follows: "[Tora] in its widest sense means divine teaching or revelation; [nomos] in its widest sense means a principle of life or action. When divine teaching is of the nature of commandments regulating conduct, and when the principle of life is conceived as dictated by a legislative authority, then [nomos] and [törä] have approximately identical meaning. Therefore, the choice of equivalent words in translation introduces some element of Interpretation.

The translator must also decide whether literal translation of idioms, metaphors, and other figurative language makes sense in the target language and, if not, what to say instead. For instance, as discussed further below, the Greek translators seem to have consistently avoided translating the metaphor of God as a rock, substituting non-figurative language instead. Depending on how translators see their role and the purpose of the translation, the resulting document can fall anywhere between the extremes of a strictly literal rendering and a completely reworded paraphrase. Some of these choices are quite deliberate, but many are made unconsciously. The people who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek faced all of these linguistic decisions.

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The distinction between language and concept is a blurry one, but also valid and necessary. Translators, in addition to making strictly linguistic choices, must deal with a "higher" level of Interpretation, namely, deciding how the subject matter should be construed and re-expressed in the target language. This level of Interpretation is involved to some extent in every translation, regardless of the subject matter, but especially so in the process of translating the Bible.

Because the biblical texts were both ancient and sacred, the translators were concerned with relating the translation to the religious understanding, traditions, and sensibilities of their contemporary target audience. They worked not only within the linguistic context of Hellenistic Greek, but also within a social, political, and religious context that shaped their translation, probably both deliberately and unconsciously. The audience of the translation is different from the audience the author of the original work was writing for, and the concerns of the translator may well have been different from those of the original author Not surprisingly, the Septuagint is regarded as one of the earliest witnesses to the history of biblical Interpretation. The Septuagint can provide access to the theological trends and hermeneutical principles of Judaism in the Hellenistic period. It also provides clues about the social and political concerns of its day.

The astute reader will realize that the value of a Greek translation for understanding the theology and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible actually runs counter to its text-critical value in establishing the Hebrew Vorlage or parent text from which it was translated. Generally speaking, if a given reading has arisen from translation technique, whether linguistically or theologically motivated, it has not arisen from a variant Hebrew text. There are no doubt instances where a textual corruption in the Hebrew, if it made some sense, led the translator to misconstrue the meaning of the verse. But it is helpful to keep these two concepts—translation method versus variant parent text—quite distinct. Unfortunately, it is often impossible to determine with certainty which explanation is correct.

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The question of how differences between the Greek and Hebrew should be explained is important for biblical studies in general. If differences between the Greek and the Hebrew are understood primarily as resulting from a variant Vorlage, for example, then clearly there must have been (at least) one Hebrew form in circulation that differed widely from the surviving Masoretic Text we have today7 Questions of social, political, and theological bias must then be directed to the differing Hebrew texts. What accounts for the two different Hebrew readings? And which, if either, was original? The implications of how one explains the differences between the Greek and the Hebrew are far-reaching and can significantly affect a scholars approach to the documents.

One of the reasons it is so difficult to determine whether a Greek reading is due to translation technique is that no uniform method characterizes the Septuagint overall. Some books seem to be translated quite literally, others quite freely. The lack of a consistent translation technique frustrates our attempts to use the Septuagint confidently to establish the Hebrew text from which it was produced. But when we consider what the translators were up against, this lack of uniformity is hardly surprising.

The translation of the Pentateuch, however, was in many ways a pioneering work. The translators were attempting a project of unprecedented scope and had few Standards to guide them. Complicating their work was the issue that they were not translating between two related languages (e.g., Hebrew to Aramaic), but between two distinct linguistic families, Northwest Semitic to Indo-European. Moreover, they were taking thoughts that had arisen in the ancient oriental culture and trying to render them into the intellectual milieu of Greek culture.

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Under such conditions, naturally, each translators attempt produced an almost idiosyncratic translation. Once the Pentateuch was translated, it is possible that later translators would use it as a reference, checking to see how "the Seventy" handled a particular word or idiom . For example, the translation of certain words in the Septuagint of the Pentateuch appears to have encouraged stereotyping, that is, the tendency to use a Greek word consistently to represent a given Hebrew word in a variety of contexts. A common example is the routine use of Greek diatheke ("testament") to translate the Hebrew term berit ("covenant"). Ancient translators sometimes seemed unaware or unconcerned that a given Hebrew word could have more than one sense and rendered it using the same Greek word even where the context suggests a different choice.

When we compare the Greek version with the Masoretic Text, we should keep in mind that the differences may have arisen from any of several factors:

1. The Hebrew Vorlage from which it was translated was different from the Hebrew text extant today.

2. The translation process was unprecedented and therefore does not reveal a pattern. 3. The translator made a mistake. 4. The translator had an interpretative blas. 5. Some complicated combination of these circumstances affected the resulting translation.

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Careful study shows that the Greek translators made choices that introduced interpretative elements into their text. One example of an apparently deliberate lexical choice is the distinction made in the Greek Pentateuch when translating the Hebrew word mizbeah ("altar"), If the reference is to a Jewish altar, the Greek word thysiasterion is consistently used; where the text refers to a pagan altar, however, the translators chose a different Greek word, bοmos.

Interpretative features are especially evident when the translators omit and add words or phrases. An element in the Hebrew may be omitted by the translators simply because it sounds redundant in Greek, but the Omission may reflect a hermeneutical concern. Conversely, an element may be added to clarify or specify the thought, to harmonize the text with another biblical passage, or to make a historical or theological point. Translators may choose to highlight a certain thought by omitting phrases that distract from it or by adding phrases that heighten it. For instance, Hebrew Isaiah 5:13 says God's people will go into exile "for want of knowledge." In the Greek this expression is expanded to "because they do not know the Lord," clarifying the thought as the translator apparently understood it.

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The choices made by a translator can be examined for their interpretative blas (usually referred to as Tendenz, a German word meaning "tendency"). The translators who produced the Greek version were motivated to introduce such elements for three general reasons. First, their rendering of the Hebrew text was sometimes influenced by the theology of their time. Second, interpretative elements were introduced into the Greek text because of the translators' respect for the oral tradition and liturgy that had developed alongside Scripture. Third, just as the original biblical authors wrote with a target audience in mind, the translators produced their work for a people living within certain social and political situations, and thus they were motivated to actualize the Scripture, meiking it both comprehensible and relevant for their contemporary Situation.

Assuming that we can identify interpretative elements in the Greek text, inferences can then be made about the development of theology, extrabiblical traditions, and the sociopolitical Situation of the translanslators.

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Theology, like all Systems of thought, develops over time and is shaped by experience. For instance, Israels theology at the time of King David was significantly different from the theological understanding of the Jews exiled in Babylon, which was different from that of the Jews living under Roman domination in the first Century. Whatever theological elements the translator introduced into his text would presumably reflect the theological tendency of his day, which may not have been the same as or even consistent with the thought of the author of the original text. This issue is important not only for Septuagint studies, but also for tracing the development of thought in Judaism, the New Testament, and the patristic writings.

The sources we do have are not sufficient to deduce a reconstruction of Jewish theology in the

Hellenistic period. Therefore, it is impossible to know if the theological elements introduced by a translator were common to the thought of Judaism at that time, peculiar to the particular theological tradition of the translator, or idiosyncrasies of the translator alone.

Therefore, even if the theological elements introduced by the translator could be clearly distinguished from a variant Hebrew reading, generalizations implied by the expression "the theology of the Septuagint" are dangerous. Any inferences from the Greek version must be qualified by limiting them to the particular book from which they were drawn. For instance, the peculiar preference for the word doxa in Septuagint Isaiah has led scholars to conclude that „glory” is one of the central characteristics of God for the translator of that book. It would be precarious to generalize beyond this evidence and to attribute such a view to the Septuagint translators as a whole.

One debated theological topic is the question of how the Greek translators conceptualized God. The Hebrew Bible often speaks of the invisible God by means of anthropomorphic expressions, such as the hand or face or mouth of God. In the past, some scholars argued that the Greek translators avoided describing God in human terms so as not to confuse the God of the Bible with the anthropomorphic gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon. For instance, in Joshua 9:14 the Hebrew

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Statement "they did not ask at the mouth of the Lord" is rendered in Greek simply with "they did not ask the Lord." As scholars continue to explore this issue in the biblical corpus as a whole, most of them conclude that no consistent anti-anthropomorphic pattern is found throughout the Greek Bible.

It is interesting that while the Greek translators did not avoid these metaphors in a systematic fashion, they were consistently reluctant to refer to God as a rock. Mostly in the Psalms, but also in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Habakkuk, the Hebrew text sometimes speaks of God as a rock or stone, a figure that likens God to a fortress, a secure place of refuge. For instance, consider Psalm 18:31.46:

For who is God except the LORD?

And who is a rock besides our God? … The LORD lives! Blessed be my rock,

and exalted be the God of my salvation! [NRSV]

The Greek translators of each of these books avoid rendering this metaphor literally. Instead, they Substitute words such as God, helper, guardian, and protector, which preserve the sense but not the imagery of the metaphor' Since these books were probably translated at dif ferent times by different people, each of whom showed the same tendency, this pattern may well reflect a religious taboo of the Hellenistic period. It is difficult to say what motivated the translators to avoid referring to God as a rock, but Isaac L. Seeligmann suspects it was "an apologetic endeavor to escape even the semblance of approval of the worshipping of stone images."

Another theological concept that apparently developed within Judaism in the Hellenistic period is an eschatoiogy that involved personal resurrection at the final judgment. The Greek translation of the Psalms, produced within this period, may reflect such a tendency' To cite one possible example, Hebrew Psalm 1:5 reads, "Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment," whereas the Greek has. "Therefore unbelievers will not arise in the judgment." The semantic range of the Hebrew word qum includes both arising and Standing. The Greek verb chosen by the translator, anistemi, means specifically "to rise up," and the New Testament writers use it with reference to resurrection.

Clearly, the evidence for theological trends in the Septuagint can be very subtle. As in this last example, it often hangs on the issue of whether and to what extent the semantic ränge of a given Greek word encompasses the sense of the Hebrew. Equally competent scholars will give differing answers. Even if the sense of the chosen Greek word can be shown to be somewhat different from that of the Hebrew, it is still uncertain whether that means the translator was theologically motivated and, if so, whether the choice was deliberate or subconscious.

A further level of complication is illustrated by the debate whether the Septuagint, when compared to the Hebrew Scriptures, reflects a developing concept of the expected Messiah. Marguerite Harl observes that the concept of messianism declined among the Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora in the Hellenistic period but flourished during hat same time in Palestine. Accordingly, she lists several passages from the Greek version under the heading "A List of Verses that Reveal 'Messianic' Reading" (emphasis added). This heading makes an important distinction that is not limited to the concept of messianism, but applies to all theological topics later developed within the New Testament. It is very difficult to decide, for instance, if a rendering that could be read as evidence of a developing messianism actually reflected the State of messianic thinking when the translation was made or was simply the result of happenstance, a result that later during the Christian era was congenial to a messianic reading.

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This distinction is well stated by Johan Lust, who refers to Septuagint readings congenial to Christian theology as "christological applications," reserving the term "messianic" readings for those passages that would have been so understood at the time they were produced. This distinction should be kept in mind whether one is reading the Septuagint or the Hebrew Bible.

To further complicate matters, almost all manuscripts of the Septuagint are found in Codices that date from the fourth Century of our era or later and that also include the New Testament. They were evidently produced by Christian scribes, and so the question arises whether they edited Old Testament readings in light of Christian theology. The evidence that they did so is minimal, but the possibility cannot be excluded in principle. It should be clear to the reader at this point that the discussion of theological trends in the Septuagint is an intricate problem requiring expertise in semantics and textual criticism, as well as sensitivity to the historical vagaries to which the texts of the Greek Version were subjected.

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A second reason translators may have introduced interpretative elements into the Greek was to clarify the text or harmonize it to the way it had previously been understood, especially in consideration of the oral tradition and liturgies of Judaism. For instance, the Day of Atonement is sometimes referred to as "the great day" in the Greek version. Seeligmann suggests that this feature reflects the influence of a tradition that was later codified in the Mishnah and Talmud. Of course, it is difficult to say in which direction the influence went. It would be surprising if the Greek version of Scripture did not also influence the wording of the liturgy and tradition among the Greek-speaking Jewish communities.

An interesting exegetical example concerns Genesis 2:2, where the Hebrew reads, "On the seventh day God ended his work." In contrast the Greek version (and the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Peshitta, and the Genesis Midrash [Bereshith Rabbah]) reads, "On the sixth day God ended his work." The Hebrew expression could be construed to mean that God actually did some work on the seventh day before he rested, Because of the importance of this passage for Sabbath-keeping, this point apparently was argued and settled among Jewish exegetes, so texts subsequent to that exegetical discussion were reworded to avoid suggesting that God created anything on the seventh day. The cessation of work on the sixth day is meant to indicate that God may have worked right up to the last moment before the seventh day, but ceased his work as soon as the seventh day had begun. This is an example where the Greek translator apparently chose not to follow the Hebrew text, but to make his translation consistent with the traditional exegesis of the law.

Study of 2 Kings shows that the Greek text may have been shaped by the midrashic discussion of the rise and fall of Solomon’s power as indicated by the extent of his borders. Four Statements are found interspersed in Septuagint 2 Kings 4:6 that do not appear in the Hebrew. These four additions indicate a declining progression of Solomon’s borders commensurate with his declining obedience to God. This same interest in the relationship between Solomon’s life and the rise and fall of his power is found in the Midrash Rabbah of the Song of Songs and in the Babylonian Talmud, although the

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sequence differs. The written form of these texts was made much later than the Greek translation of Kings, but they probably preserve ideas that had been discussed for centuries among the Jews.

In the Greek version(s) of some biblical books, such as Daniel and Esther, entire chapters have been added to the Greek that are not found in the Hebrew. In the case of Esther, a book notorious for its lack of any mention of God, the additional chapters in the Greek add the explicitly religious elements missing from the Hebrew. The syntax, vocabulary, and style of the Greek of these additions is so different from that of the rest of the book that they were certainly introduced by an editor some time after the original translation was produced. Some of the additions show a distinct interest in circumcision and the temple, central symbols of the Mosaic and Davidic covenants, respectively. These themes no doubt reflect the concerns of the person(s) who introduced them, but because they cannot be accurately dated, it is difficult to infer from them what historical moment motivated their inclusion.

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In Isaiah 11:11 we find a list of geographical places from which the Lord will gather the remnant of his people. The reference to "Hamath" in the Hebrew is replaced by "Arabia" in the Greek. It is unclear whether Hamath and Arabia were the same territory, or whether the translator was using a contemporary location in place of one that was no longer known. In either case, the resultant rendering makes the list meaningful to the Diaspora Jews of the translator's own day.

This example illustrates how careful one must be in using the Septuagint for historical inferences. It would be erroneous to argue that simply because the Septuagint is a translation of a much older source it can be used to reconstruct the historical details of that source. In other words, it would be invalid to argue that because Septuagint Isaiah mentions Arabia, that name was current at the time of the historical prophet Isaiah. Although this point may seem obvious, it is easy to make similar fallacious use of the Septuagint on more subtle historical points by confusing the time of the translator with the time the Hebrew Vorlage was produced.

The Greek-speaking Jews who translated the Hebrew Bible were not only members of God's covenant people, they were also Citizens of Greek cities living in politically volatile times. The translations they produced reflect sensitivity to those who ruled them and determined the quality of their lives. For instance, although the translator of Isaiah sometimes substituted the names of Heflenistic deities in place of pagan Semitic deities, the specific name of Agathos Daimon, the city- god of Alexandria, was not one of those chosen.^'' In the biblical texts the pagan gods were usually being denounced, but the explicit denunciation of the city-god revered by the pagans with whom and under whose power they lived would have exposed the Jews of Alexandria to recrimination.

In the Greek versions of Esther, the theme of royal assassination is amplified.- Mordecais role in saving the life of the king is elaborated in the additions, and moreover Haman is revealed as plotting a coup that would give the Persian Empire to the Macedonians. This addition in the Greek makes the point that having a Jew in high office is good not only for the Jewish people, but also for the personal

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well-being of the pagan king and for the tranquility of the entire empire. Such a point, for instance, would have reassured the Ptolemies that the Jews of Alexandria were not a threat to the pagan king but were, on the contrary, a friend.

Before being dispersed among the peoples of the earth, the Jews enjoyed a national identity within the land God gave to them, under the theocratic leadership of the Davidic dynasty. In 2 Samuel 7, God had established a covenant with David, promising him something no other human had ever had, an eternal dynasty. Nevertheless, the Jews of the Hellenistic period found themselves living in a foreign land under the domination of a pagan king. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek within

this new political situation, the Hebrew word for "king," melek, was sometimes translated not by the

expected Greek word, basileus, but by words that indicated lesser political power, for example, archon ("ruler").

Such a lexical shift might be motivated by two different but related thoughts. First, there may have been a desire not to publicize the Jews' hope for a national identity under their own king if they were in a precarious political Position; after all, the forces of a pagan empire could turn against them at any time. Second, the translation may represent an attempt among the Jews to reconcile God's promise to David with the contradictory reality in which they found themselves living. They could constme the Davidic covenant as fulfilled by Jewish leaders who occupied positions of power subservient to the pagan king (e.g., Mordecai in the Book of Esther). This lexical shift, from king in the Hebrew text to ruler in the Greek, no doubt gave opportunity for, or perhaps reflected, a difference of opinion among Jews as to what should be their ideal political structure: an independent national identity under a Davidic kingship or a submissive role within Hellenistic society.

Whatever their reasons, the lexical choice of the Greek translators to tone down the theme of the Davidic kingship in the Septuagint highlights the boldness of the Jews who wrote the New Testament Gospels, and who did not hesitate to proclaim Jesus as basileus ("king") of a new kingdom.

CONLUSION

This discussion shows the complex problems of separating what the Hebrew parent text read from the work done by both the original translator and subsequent revisers. The final, extant form of the Greek Version of every biblical book is an amalgam of many changes made to the original text for many reasons by many hands over many centuries. It is impossible to reconstruct the textual history of the Greek text of a given book with complete certainty, and thus one must take into account this uncertainty when making inferences about how the Septuagint reflects the theology, exegetical practices, and historical setting of its time.