Septuagint Research: Issues and Challenges in the Study of the Greek Jewish Scriptures.

• Author: Gentry, Peter J.
• Position: Book review

Septuagint Research: Issues and Challenges in the Study of the Greek Jewish Scriptures. Edited by WOLFGANG KRAUS AND R. GLENN WOODEN. SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies, vol. 53. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2006. Pp. xv + 414. $49.95 (paper).

Septuagint Research is a collection of papers presented at a conference at Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine, September 2002. The conference leaders, David Trobisch of Bangor Theological Seminary and Wolfgang Kraus of the Universitat des Saarlandes, Saarbrucken, brought together a group of German and North American scholars working on the translation projects New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), and Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D). Topics range from issues in translation theory to problems in individual books or groups of books, and to reception history in Early Judaism and Christianity. Although the papers are nicely arranged, each is best described and assessed individually.

Cameron Boyd-Taylor, in an essay entitled "In a Mirror, Dimly--Reading the Septuagint as a Document of Its Times;" addresses efforts to reconstruct intellectual and religious traits from the Septuagint. He employs descriptive translation studies as developed by Gideon Toury and the interlinear model developed by the editors of the New English Translation of the Septuagint to argue for methodological rigor in assessing evidence from a translation, J. Schaper's claim to identify eschatological perspectives in the Greek Psalter are critiqued from this perspective. One need not adopt the interlinear model to find Boyd-Taylor's insistence on principled study of translation technique cogent and necessary to evaluating individual renderings within the corpus of a particular translator.

The essay by Boyd-Taylor is appropriately followed by another on the same theme by his Doktorvater, Albert Pietersma, entitled "Exegesis in the Septuagint: Possibilities and Limits (The Psalter as a Case in Point)." Pietersma deals with "the explanatory framework within which one pursues exegesis in the Septuagint" on a broader scale than Boyd-Taylor, but also appeals to the work of Toury. He then assesses the claims of Martin Rosel to discover eschatological emphases in certain psalm titles. Once again the point is well made that one must first grasp the habits and patterns of the translator before attempting to isolate exegetical tendencies on the part of the translator.

Benjamin G. Wright's contribution, "Translation as Scripture: The Septuagint: The Septuagint in Aristeas and Philo," also employs the framework of descriptive translation studies. According to the interlinear paradigm the textual-linguistic makeup shows that the aim of the translation was to bring the reader to the Hebrew original rather than vice-versa. Since the Letter of Aristeas argues for the Septuagint as independent and scriptural, it points to the author's time rather than the time of translation. The same is true of Philo's insistence on the inspired nature of the...