Section II: On the Greek Translation of the Old Testament
Section II: On the Greek Translation of the Old Testament
§ 507. In our treatise De methodo studii theolog., part 2, sect. 1, c. 4, we said that various Greek translations of the Old Testament once existed but that they ceased being used when that famous Septuagint translation came along.
** In Clement of Alexandria, Stromat. 1, we read: “The Scriptures were translated into Greek even before the time of Alexander, and Plato drew some things from them.” This is hardly likely, however. Nevertheless Genebrardus claims and thinks that only the Pentateuch was translated and that it was imposed on those who denied that the entire corpus was translated by the seventy. **
Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 18, c. 43: “Although there were also other translators who translated the sacred words from Hebrew into Greek—such as Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion—and just as there is also that translation whose author is unknown and because of that it is called the ‘fifth edition’ without the name of its translator, yet the Church has accepted that Septuagint as if it were the only translation. The Greek Christians use it, and most of them do not know whether there is any other translation.” In that same treatise, we explained the occasion that gave rise to that translation from Aristaeus, Josephus, Philo, and Justin.
Because most of the theologians of the early Christian Church were not knowledgeable of the Hebrew language, they give great weight to this Greek translation. Augustine, De civit. Dei, bk. 15, c. 23: “The Septuagint translators are justly believed to have received the spirit of prophecy, so that one would not doubt that it was spoken divinely if they changed anything by the authority of that Spirit and were speaking differently from the text that they were translating.” Irenaeus (Adv. haeres., bk. 3, c. 25, p. 116) has followed Justin (Orat. exhortat. ad gent.) and claims that individual translators were shut up, one to a room, and that each of them translated Scripture in the same words miraculously. He says:
Ptolemy wanted to use their (the elders) experience but was afraid that they would agree on the truth that was in Scripture but would hide it with their translation. So he separated them from one another and ordered them all to translate the same Scripture. He did this for every book. When they gathered together in Ptolemy’s presence and compared their translations, God was glorified and the Scriptures were believed to be truly divine. They all were reading the same thing with the same verbs and nouns from beginning to end, so that all the people present knew that the Scriptures was translated by the inspiration of God. Peter, John, Matthew, Paul, and the rest, as well as their followers, declared that all the prophetic statements were just as that translation of the elders contained them. For one and the same Spirit of God had prophesied in the prophets about who the Lord was and how He would come, and now translated well in the elders what had been prophesied well and also announced in the apostles that the fullness of time of the adoption had come.
He even adds that he had seen the remains of those little rooms in Alexandria. In agreement with Justin and Irenaeus are Clement of Alexandria (Stromat., bk. 3), Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. 4), and others.
§ 508. We cannot attribute authentic authority, however, to that Greek translation nor equate it with the Hebrew text. This is because: (1) It is a translation and, therefore, is not authentic nor does it have the same authority as the Hebrew text.
(2) In many passages it disagrees with the Hebrew source, especially in the Psalms. It has some things that are not in the Hebrew text, as Jerome reveals (preface to the Pentateuch, Epistle ad Suniam, and elsewhere). As a result, Origen, in his Hexapla arranged the version of the Septuagint translators in such a way that one could judge conveniently from it alone with a single glance what did appear in the Hebrew and what did not. Because those translators on their own added many things everywhere to explain the subjects they were treating and also intentionally omitted many things as being superfluous, Origen silenced, as it were, whatever he saw they had added beyond what was in the Hebrew text by adding obelisks and substituting from the translation of Theodotion what they had taken out, marking that with asterisks.
(3) The Septuagint was not always used in the Church, for according to Sigebertus (Chronic.): “They began to hold it in second place after Jerome’s translation.”
(4) It contains many errors in the counting of chronology. It counts 2,242 years from Adam to the flood, though the Hebrew text has only 1,656 years. It counts 1,082 years from the flood to Abraham, though there are 292 in the Hebrew. Adam is said to have lived 230 years (330, according to some editions) when he begot Seth, though the sources of truth give him only 130 years. Methuselah, according to the Greek translation, survived for fourteen years after the flood and, as a result, the great question arises as to how he was saved in the flood. (In De civ. Dei, bk. 15, c. 11, Augustine wastes much effort in untying this knot.) From the Hebrew text, however, we gather that he died in the same year that the flood covered the earth. In the Greek, Jon. 3:4 reads: “Yet three days and Nineveh shall be destroyed!” In the authentic Hebrew text, destruction is declared more accurately to come after forty days, for Jonah could scarcely go throughout the whole city in three days.
(5) Some of the ancients reject the nonsense about the individual rooms as uncertain, and some as false and spurious. Justin and Irenaeus mention that the king shut up each in his own cell, but Epiphanius writes that they were enclosed in each cell “two by two” (De mensur. et ponderibus). Augustine does not dare confirm the assertion about cells as something certain, though he assigns great significance to this version (De doctr. Christ., bk. 2, c. 15). He says:
Among the Greeks, the authority of the Septuagint translation, as far as the Old Testament is concerned, is preeminent. Throughout all the more experienced churches, they are said to have been interpreted with so great a presence of the Holy Spirit as though so many men had but one mouth. If, as the report goes and as many people who are not unworthy of our confidence declare, they were separated so that each was in his own cell while he translated, and if we find nothing in the manuscript of any one of them that we do not find in the same words and in the same order of words in the others, who would dare compare anything with this authority, much less prefer anything to it?
(Erasmus has noted in the margin: “Others laugh at this as a fable.”) Jerome (preface to the Pentateuch) is more confident: “I do not know who was the first author to build the seventy cells at Alexandria with his lie, because neither Aristaeus, who took part in the task, nor Josephus, who narrates this account, make any mention of the cells. It is one thing to be a prophet but another to be a translator.”
(6) There are many who doubt whether the Greek version that is extant today is that Septuagint so highly praised by the ancients. You see, Aristaeus (in his Histor. of this translation) and Philo (Vita Moysis, bk. 2) testify: “The seventy interpreters translated faithfully and properly all things word for word. Many people examined their translation carefully before it was placed in the royal library. They all praised it for being faithful and literal.” The Greek version that we have now, however, disagrees with the Hebrew text in many places. Moreover, the Greek version that we have today in many places cannot in any way be reconciled with the Hebrew text unless the points be removed and things be read differently from what the points require. This is the basis for the argument that the author of this translation used an unpointed Bible, but this is not likely with regard to the Septuagint translators. Casaubonus, Exercit.: “Baronius thinks that the Greek edition of the Bible that is kept at Rome is the actual translation of the Septuagint translators. This is an opinion one could scarcely excuse in the case of some novice of theological study, much less in the case of a man of such great reputation.” The same claim is made by Drusius (Observ., bk. 6, c. 9) and Whitaker (De Script. quaest., c. 3).
(7) Origen, Lucian, Hesychius, and Jerome already began to correct the Septuagint translation. How, then, was it free of errors? And who would believe that, though it contracted corruption in its first three hundred years, it remained uncorrupted for the other thirteen hundred years? Justin, Dial. cum Tryphone, p. 231: “Your teachers have removed many complete passages of those Scriptures in their entirety from the translation of the elders who were with Ptolemy. Those passages show clearly that He who was crucified is both God and man and that His crucifixion and death were foretold”—a fact that he proves in the same book with several examples.
(8) The evangelists and apostles in the New Testament follow the Septuagint translation in quoting statements from the Old Testament “because at that time that translation had been published among the nations,” as Jerome points out in his commentary on Genesis 47. Jerome, however, sets down this rule: “Whenever the prophets and apostles quote testimonies from the Old Testament, one must note quite carefully that they did not follow the words but the sense. Wherever the Septuagint translators differ from the Hebrew, one must note that they have expressed the Hebrew sense in their own words” (Epistle 151 ad Algasiam).