Inspired by Aboulet’s alliterated series’ Wednesdays with Waltke and Midrash Mondays; and Ancient Hebrew Poetry’s posts on textual issues of biblical passages I decided to start my own alliterated series on biblical passages. Since I am currently taking classes in Hebrew and Aramaic and nothing in Greek I decided to do something that would help me keep my Greek fresh. So (hopefully) every Saturday I will post a bit on a passage from the Septuagint. For those of you that don’t know the Septuagint (or LXX) is a Greek translation of the Old Testament from about the 2nd Century BC. It is one of my favorite areas of study. I do not think that many people will get much out of these posts but since this is for my own edification, and this is my blog I’m going to do it anyway. So, let’s start with the begininng:
Gen. 1:1 ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν
Gen. 1:2 ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος καὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος
Translation: In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was invisible and unformed and darkness was upon the deep and a breath of God was carrying itself upon the water.
Translation Notes:
1. πνεῦμα θεοῦ
1. The relationship of the genitive noun θεοῦ to the nominative noun πνεῦμα governs how one views this phrase. It seems to me that the two standard options are either a genitive of source (‘a spirit/wind from God) or a possessive genitive (‘God’s spirit/wind’). The NRSV has taken the genitive of source (it is the same grammatical construction in the MT) translating ‘a wind from God.’ The NETS has translated the Greek as ‘a divine wind.’ This is taking it as an adjectival genitive, which conveys the sense but I think I want to keep the θεοῦ as a noun. My translation ‘a breath of God’ is intentionally vague, allowing for the pun of Spirit and wind to be conveyed while leaving it open as to whether this is just a wind or God’s Spirit.
2. ἐπεφέρετο
1. For the sake of literalness and probably to the detriment of readability I have translated this Imperfect middle indicative verb as ‘carry itself’ (from ἐπιφέρω, ‘to bring, put’) I guess ‘hovering’ is probably a good translation but I wanted to bring out the ‘middle’ sense of the verb.
LXX vs. MT
1. The LXX is a very literal translation of the MT, down to following the word order.
2. τὸν οὐρανὸν vs. השׁמים
1. The only difference here is that the Greek has used a singular noun to translate the dual ‘heavens’ of the MT. But since Greek has no dual it had to chose between singular and plural. It would be interesting to see how the LXX translates duals throughout.
3. ἀόρατος vs. תהו
1. The LXX has used a word that implies the visual aspect of the state of the earth (from the root ὁράω, ‘to see’) against the MT which uses a word that implies the actual physical substance of the state of the earth: empty.
4. ἐπεφέρετο vs. מרחפת
1. The LXX has used an imperfect indicative verb to translate the piel participle of רחף (which means ‘to grow soft’ in the qal, and ‘to flutter’ in the piel). I think the Hebrew would inform the translation ‘was hovering’ which is actually not a bad translation to get the imperfect sense of the Greek verb and would work well as a representation of the participle in the MT. NETS has gone with “was being carried,” which seems like a good translation of the Greek without taking into account of the Hebrew.
This has been ‘Septuagintal Saturdays,’ I hope you enjoyed it. I know I did.
March 29, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Great stuff. I’m looking forward to future installments!
The contrast between aoratos and tohu is both interesting and somewhat profound.
The rabbis in both the midrash and the Talmud took this word to mean “desolate” and the following term (vohu) to mean “uninhabited.”
The problem of desolation was solved in Day 3 when the earth brought forth vegetation and the problem of uninhabitation was solved in Day 6 with the creation of animals and humankind.
This seems to be an interpretation and understanding of YHWH’s solution to those two problems that is based on the MT and doesn’t come through with the same force in the LXX.
I commented on these two words and their strong connotations to the original audience in the third installment of my series entitled Questions in Genesis.
Your series has inspired me to pay more attention to the LXX in further installments.
Good stuff.
March 30, 2008 at 1:26 am
aboulet: thanks for the comment. I do wonder what caused the translators of the LXX to change from the physical and spacial ‘tohu’ to the more visual ‘aoratos.’ Elsewhere the LXX translates ‘tohu’ as ‘mataios’ (empty), which seems to fit the physical and spacial ‘tohu.’ I don’t know the Rabbinic literature but I wonder if there is a shift away from the ANE concept of the deity ‘forming’ creation to making it out of nothing, i.e., there was nothing visible prior to creation. I don’t know but it would be an interesting thing to track down. I appreciated your post on the subject.
March 31, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Very nice, Ben. Keep it up.
May 12, 2008 at 7:21 pm
MT = Masoretic Text? That dates later than the LXX, I believe. Don’t recall what Hebrew text the LXX was translated from.
Also, the verb at the end is like ‘to be on’, in the new testament when Jesus rides on the colt the same verb is used. (Though the object is different.) Since we’re talking about ‘pneuma’, which is breath or spirit, it riding on the waters would be the same as hovering, and fairly indistinct from it.
Perhaps what is incorrect about ‘hover’ is the implication that there is some kind of space between the Spirit and the Waters; whether such a thing as space existed is unclear, and regardless it was un-seeable being that there was no light.
May 12, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Hi RiverC,
I appreciate your thoughts. As far as I know we don’t have a true Vorlage (read original Hebrew from which the LXX was translated from) for the LXX, though in places the Dead Sea Scrolls are close.
To the best of my knoweldge the common practice in LXX studies is to compare the LXX to the MT. It is assumed that the MT generally reflects the Hebrew text that the LXX is based on. Though not always, hence the importance of the LXX.
I didn’t realize the connection with Jesus’ riding on the donkey with epiphero (bad transliteration). I hadn’t read it as a standard verb to ‘ride’ upon something. Thanks for the input.