Seventy

History

From which comes the Seventy?

The origin of the Seventy is due to two facts:

the diaspora since the exile spreads Jewish communities around the Mediterranean; the installation of a community in Alexandria and in seaside, around the Palais Royal, following the conquest of Egypt by Alexandre;
the fact on the one hand that the worship synagogal was public, and that the Jews let read their texts with pagan instead of reserving them for their initiates as other religions did it. The Greeks were curious about “cruel wisdoms”. Some if were interested by the Judaïsme which they gained the recognized statute of “fear-God” (announced, well later, in the Acts of the Apostles) in that they followed the precepts of the Judaism, at least 7 laws of wire of Noah, except for the Circoncision.

Of what was made the worship synagogal?

Of a reading drawn from the Tanakh in Hebrew, of an often paraphrastic translation in the vernacular language (when the vernacular language is the araméen, one names that a Targoum) sometimes accompanied by a comment and a preaching. It is thought that the translation of the Seventy was preceded by Targoumim Greek. Many Jewish immigrants did not know any more Hebrew, and wished to read their texts crowned in the language of their commercial transactions, the araméen remaining their daily language. Only the Greek could be a language crowned beside Hebrew, so much was tall the prestige of philosophies and Greek sciences. A unified translation was probably made at the request of the sovereign Lagide Ptolémée, anxious to know the rules of the various people which were fixed to him, within the framework of a reorganization of the kingdom. The Seventy became the “civic law” of the kingdom of Egypt, in an element of safeguard of the Jewish identity in the Greek culture.

On which texts was unified the Seventy?

According to the Letter of the pseudo-Aristée , the Pentateuque was translated, with Alexandria, under Ptolémée II Philadelphe (285 - 246 before J. - C.) and the company continued during two or three centuries.

A school of translators dealt then with the Psautier, in Alexandria, towards 185 before J. - C.; they undertook then Ézéchiel, the twelve “minor prophets” and Jérémie. They dealt then with the historical books (Josué, Judges, Kings), and finally Isaïe.

The other books, Daniel, Job, and Siracide were translated into 150 before J. - C. and one hesitates over the place of translation.

One locates in Israel, at the first century of the Christian era, the translation of the Cantique of the Canticles, of the Lamentations, the Livre of Ruth and Esther, then that of the Ecclésiaste, probably by Aquila.

One extended the name of Seventy to books not received in ground the Judaism of Israel or composed directly in Greek like Wisdom, the complements with Esther, Jérémie or Daniel.

The first Greek translators laid out of texts Hebrew X purely consonant, which explains, partly, the differences between the Seventy and the received Hebrew text and which very early, in Jewish medium, one was concerned with correct this Alexandrine version to align it on the Hebrew text.

Manuscripts of Qumrân

But the discovery of the handwritten Hebrew and Greeks of Qumrân in 1947, who seem the remainders of a library having belonged to a sect Jewish, generally identified with that of the “Esséniens”, attest that the LXX (seventy) was accepted like biblical text, beside the Hebrew texts.

The discovery thus obliged to revise the design of the history of the Hebrew texts because these Hebrew manuscripts give a text a little different from that which will result later from the work of the Massorète S.

Contrary, Qumrân revealed forms which explain the translation of the LXX: certain passages, until now regarded as errors or amplifications due to the translators, receive from now on the support of a Hebrew support premassoretic. Nevertheless, the near total of the texts of Qumrân are written in Hebrew (90-95%). According to pr. Emmanuel Tov (Textual Criticism off the Hebrew Bible, Fortress Near, 1992,), approximately 47% of the texts of Qumrân are described as proto-massoretic , 2.5% are of type proto-Samaritan and only 3.5% are of type septantic . The remainder consists of original and/or erroneous writings.

Similarities of interpretation are also raised between certain writings of the sect of Esséniens and the LXX. The attention is now drawn to the whole of the post-biblical Jewish writings, conveniently gathered under the name of writings intertestamentaires.

The LXX is not any more one isolated document. It is located in the whole of the Jewish texts products right before the Christian era.

One can notice that the Greek used in the Seventy contains many Semitic turnings and presents the phenomenon of the attraction.

It is only at the 2nd century of the Christian era, after the extermination of the Jewish communities of Egypt and Cyrénaïque by Hadrian, that the Bible in Greek became exclusively that of the Christians. Previously, this translation met the needs for the Jewish people as a diaspora around the Mediterranean basin, of which a particularly hellenized and intellectual community, that of Alexandria.

The diversity of the designs of God

He would be much more significant to raise questions about the passage of an old language to a modern language, which leads to the abandonment of part of the semantic field or to the re-creation of another semantic field. The problems of translation presented by the passage of a Semitic language to the Greek language are much more varied. That one thinks of the diversity of the designations of divine the in the Hebraic Bible: El, Eloah, Elohim, El Shadday, Sabaoth of which some do not find any solution satisfactory or who are standardized, at the time of the passage in Greek by theos , the god, any, kurios, lord or pantokrâtor, very powerful. Initial, empty and deserted chaos (tohu wa bohu) becomes the invisible and unorganized matter philosophers; the divine breath becomes pneuma which can name the wind but which is also a component of the human heart (different from nephesh which represents a reality higher than the body, but lower than the heart: even the inert matter is equipped with a nefesh which can be regarded as all that enables him to exist).

Cultural divergences and difficulties of the text

The divergences with Hebrew are not all of the particular readings nor of the faults of translation. They are also explained:

by the difference between their model and the Hebrew text of today (the stuttgartensis, for example)
by various possible vocalizations (codified in Temura)
by the permutations of consonants
by the crossing-over in a proposal on another,
by various actualizations, like the obliteration or the attenuation of unsuitable turns judged to speak about divine, especially the threats of prophecies was softened, in the name of the divine mercy expressing the hope of the hellenistic Jewish communities.

Additional books

Initially the Seventy was consisted of the rollers of the Law of Brace (Torah or Pentateuque of the Greek Pentateuchos : “ five rouleaux ”) which was translated Hebrew at the beginning of the 3rd century before Jesus-Christ.

Then during the three following centuries and until the beginning of the Christian era, the other Jewish works written directly in Greek or only preserved in their Greek version, were added there.

The Seventy thus contains more books than those of the list Canonique of the Judaïsme and Protesting ism which has as a reference the Hebraic Bible resulting from the Texte massoretic and which was compiled, published and distributed by a group of Juif S called the Massorète S, between and the 10th century.

However these additional books (Deutérocanonique S or Apocryphal books), are not less important in the history of the Judaïsme and useful to include/understand the Jewish ideas at the time when Jesus-Christ lived and where will be born the new religion.

Here is the list:

Judith (preserved in the Latin Bible)
Tobie (preserved in the Latin Bible but rewritten by Jerome)
1st and 2nd Books of the Stiffs (preserved in the Latin Bible)
Wisdom of Solomon (preserved in the Latin Bible)
Wisdom of Sirach (Siracide or Ecclesiastic) (preserved in the Latin Bible)
Baruch (preserved in the Latin Bible)
Letter of Jérémie (preserved in the Latin Bible)
Suzanne (Daniel 13) (preserved in the Latin Bible)
Beautiful and the Dragon (Daniel 14) (preserved in the Latin Bible)
First book of Esdras (not preserved in the Latin Bible)
3rd and 4th books of the Stiffs (not preserved in the Latin Bible)
Psalms of Solomon (not preserved in the Latin Bible)

If these books appeared in the Old Testament of the orthodoxe Bibles, it is only since the Concile of Thirty (1545 - 1563), that the Roman Catholic church definitively integrated into the Canon of the Writings the majority of them, by distinguishing the books inspired, of those which are not it.

See too

Internal bonds

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