Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies
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Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies Volume 48 • 2015 Editorial ......................................................................................................... 3 Articles Was the Earth ‘Invisible’? A Note on a0o/ratoj in Genesis 1:2 LXX .......... 5 Pieter W. van der Horst in Greek Exodus .......................... 8 ׁשכן and מׁשכן/אהל מועד The Translation of Larry Perkins Divergent cultic practices in the Septuagint. The “shoulder” (βραχίων) of the priest ........................................................................................... 27 Jan Joosten The Battle against Ai and the Textual History of the Book of Joshua ......... 39 Kristin de Troyer Narrative Sensitivity and the Variation of Verb Tense in 1 Reigns 17:34-37 (Wevers Price Paper 2013) ................................. 54 Benjamin Johnson The “Three” in early Christian commentary: The case of the “Song of the Vineyard” (Isaiah 5:1–7) ................................................. 72 Alison Salvesen Isaiah 14 (LXX) as Narrative Template for Antiochus IV in 2 Maccabees 9 .................................................................................. 86 Bradley C. Gregory Zwei Anmerkungen zu Jeremia 27LXX im Hexapla-Apparat der Göttinger Edition .......................................................................... 104 Herbert Migsch A Supplement to A Greek ≈ Hebrew/Aramaic Two-way Index to the Septuagint ........................................................................................... 113 Takamitsu Muraoka Les premières traductions roumaines de la Septante (XVIIe siècle). Le projet «Monumenta Linguae Dacoromanorum. Biblia 1688.» ..................... 128 Ana-Maria Gînsac et Mădălina Ungureanu 1 2 JSCS 48 (2015) Book Reviews Anwar Tjen, On Conditionals in the Greek Pentateuch: A Study of Translation Syntax. ............................................................................. 145 Takamitsu Muraoka J. Frederic Berg, The Influence of the Septuagint upon the Peshitta Psalter. .................................................................................. 147 Alison Salvesen Timothy Michael Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible. ........................................................... 149 Tessa Rajak Johannes de Vries and Martin Karrer (eds.), Textual History and the Reception of Scripture in Early Christianity / Textgeschichte und Schriftrezeption im frühen Christentum.. ........................................... 152 Gert Steyn Randall X. Gauthier, Psalms 38 and 145 of the Old Greek Version ......... 164 Gilles Dorival Wolfgang Kraus, Siegfried Kreuzer, in Verbindung mit Martin Meiser und Marcus Sigismund, eds., Die Septuaginta – Text, Wirkung, Rezeption, 4. Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal, 19-22. Juli 2012. ............................................. 167 Theo van der Louw Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica, revised by Alexander Achilles Fischer .................... 172 Mark A. Hassler Congress Announcements XVI. Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Stellenbosch Sept. 4-7, 2016 .................................. 174 VI. Internationale Fachtagung zur Septuaginta in Wuppertal, June 21-24, 2016 ................................................................................ 174 IOSCS Matters IOSCS Minutes, Annual Business Meeting, 2014 ..................................... 175 Treasurer’s Summary 2014 ........................................................................ 176 Editorial This issue with its papers and book reviews once more represents the wide range of Septuagint studies, and in view of the many contributions we have ventured to increase the size of the issue. Again I want to thank all the contributors of articles and reviews, the members of the editorial board, and the unnamed peer reviewers. JSCS 48 (2015) opens with the study “Was the Earth ‘Invisible’? A Note on ἀόρατος in Genesis 1:2 LXX” by Pieter W. van der Horst, who challenges the traditional view that the famous a0o/ratoj should be understood against a ׁשכן and מׁשכן/אהל מועד platonic background. Larry Perkins, “The Translation of in Greek Exodus”, studies important aspects of temple and cult terminology. In “Divergent cultic practices in the Septuagint. The ‘shoulder’ (βραχίων) of the priest” Jan Joosten demonstrates an interesting aspect of change not only in cult terminology in the book of Leviticus but also in cultic practice. Kristin de Troyer, “The Battle against Ai and the Textual History of the Book of Joshua”, notes narrative structures that have evidently been intensified in the Septuagint. The paper by Benjamin Johnson, “Narrative Sensitivity and the Variation of Verb Tense in 1 Reigns 17:34-37” won the Wevers Price 2013. Alison Salvesen, “The ‘Three’ in early Christian commentary: The case of the ‘Song of the Vineyard’ (Isaiah 5:1–7)” demonstrates how the later Jewish translations have been taken up by writers of the early church in an increasingly positive way. A piece of inner-Septuagint influence and exegesis is analyzed in Bradley C. Gregory, “Isaiah 14 (LXX) as Narrative Template for Antiochus IV in 2 Maccabees 9”. Herbert Migsch in his detailed study makes “Zwei Anmerkungen zu Jeremia 27LXX im Hexapla-Apparat der Göttinger Edition”. Takamitsu Muraoka draws attention to a widely overlooked Aramaic Vorlage to a passage in the Greek text of Daniel and for further study provides “A Supplement to ‘A Greek ≈ Hebrew/Aramaic Two- way Index to the Septuagint’”. Ana-Maria Gînsac and Mădălina Ungureanu, Les premières traductions roumaines de la Septante (XVIIe siècle), report on the edition of the first translation of the Bible into Romanian, according to Orthodox standards regarding the Septuagint (mostly based on the Frankfurt- edition from 1597) that not only stood at the cradle of the modern Romanian language but which may have been the first modern translation of the 3 4 JSCS 48 (2015) Septuagint alone (i.e. not only in addition to the Hebrew and Latin text, although not without consideration of them). The book reviews on five monographs and sixty-three articles in work reports and congress volumes show the wide range of interest and the manifold questions of Septuagint research. IOSCS - Matters reports on the 2014 meeting of the Organization in San Diego. In regard to the Journal it may be mentioned that its last year’s distribution evidently went well. Thank you to Jim Eisenbraun and his staff. Eisenbrauns also has agreed that all issues of the former “Bulletin”, i.e. up to 43 (2010) should be accessible on the homepage of IOSCS. Thanks to Jay Trait this has already been implemented (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ ioscs/journal/volumes/). For information about membership, please see the homepage (see: www.eisenbrauns.com → Journals → JSCS or access via the IOSCS hompage: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ioscs.). For paying the membership fee, besides via Paypal there will now be set up a European bank account. For information see also the homepage. Siegfried Kreuzer November 2015 Was the Earth ‘Invisible’? A Note on a0o/ratoj in Genesis 1:2 LXX. PIETER W. VAN DER HORST In the Septuagint version of the creation story, the Hebrew sentence ha’aretz hayetah tohu wa-bohu in Gen. 1.2 is rendered as h9 de\ gh= h]n a0o/ratoj kai\ a0kataskeu/astoj. All modern translations of the LXX agree in translating a0o/ratoj by ‘invisible’: So do the New English Translation of the Septua- gint [NETS] (‘invisible’), the German Septuaginta Deutsch (‘unsichtbar’), and the French La Bible d’Alexandrie (‘invisible’).1 This translation is sup- ported by the lemma a0o/ratoj in T. Muraoka’s Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint 2 and by Wevers’ Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis.3 But does this translation make sense? To begin with, whatever the precise meaning of the much debated tohu, most scholars would agree that its semantic range includes the elements of desolation, trackless waste, lifelessness, worthlessness, and futility.4 Invisi- bility is not part of this semantic field. It is too easy to argue, as is sometimes done, that the translators were hampered by unfamiliarity with the meaning of the word tohu. If Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion could produce more or less satisfactory translations (such as ke/nwma, keno/n, a0rgo/n), then the LXX translators could do so too. Also the widely held theory that the transla- tors chose this rendition under the influence of Platonic cosmology, though not impossible in itself, does not solve the problem and would seem to me to be less likely in this case.5 The supposed reference to Timaeus 51a would be 1 English: eds. A. Pietersma & B.G. Wright (Oxford: OUP, 2007). French: eds. M. Harl et al. (Paris: Cerf, 1986). German: eds. W. Kraus and M. Karrer (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bi- belgesellschaft, 2009). 2 Louvain: Peeters, 2009, 62 s.v. 3 SCS 35; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993, 1-2. 4 See M. Görg, ‘Tohu,’ TDOT 15 (2006; German original 1995) 565-574. 5 Marguerite Harl defends the thesis of Platonic influence here; see La Bible d’Alexandrie 1: La Genèse, 87. She is followed by W. P. Brown, Structure, Role, and Ideology in the Hebrew and Greek Texts of Genesis 1:1-2:3 (SBL Dissertation Series 132; Atlanta: Schol- ars Press, 1993), 48; and by M. Rösel, Übersetzung als Vollendung der Auslegung: Studien 5 6 JSCS 48 (2015) oversubtle here and, moreover, Plato there uses a0o/ratoj to describe the in- corporeal world of the Ideas, not the