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Greek Expanded, Greek Transformed. The Vocabulary of the Septuagint and the Cultural World of the Translators
An important yet still understudied category of religious vocabulary in the Septuagint are words denoting practitioners and practices which would fall under the category of ‘magic’ and ‘sorcery’. Such words are found among almost all the genres of the Old Testament books: in the legislative texts of the Pentateuch prohibiting these practices, in accusatory contexts of the historical and prophetic books, and in the more neutral narrative passages describing how people appeal to soothsayers and sorcerers. My inquiry will focus not so much on the magical practices as such, but rather on the terminology denoting sorcerers, magicians and what they did, the contexts in which this vocabulary was used, as well as attitudes demonstrated in respect to them in different texts. The list of the words examined in the paper is not exhaustive and is confined to the terms μάγος, φάρμακος, ἐπῳδός and their cognates, i.e. the main roots which were used to speak about magic in the Classical Greek language.
Theological and ideological changes in the LXX in most cases witness to developments that started long before and continued well after. The Greek translation was but one link – though often the most visible link – in the chain of such developments. The LXX rendering of מֶלֶך as ἄρχων is a link in the chain of “antimonarchic” developments that started with the Hebrew Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic History and continued through centuries, as late as Pirqe Avot.
Der Sammelband bietet ein Spektrum gegenwärtiger Forschung an der Septuaginta, der griechischen Übersetzung der Hebräischen Bibel.
Dieser Band dokumentiert die Multiperspektivität gegenwärtiger Septuaginta-Forschung. Die Beiträge behandeln textgeschichtliche, philologische und historische Fragen ebenso wie Aspekte der Theologie und der Wirkungsgeschichte. In text- und theologiegeschichtlicher Hinsicht sind Veränderungsprozesse in der Textentwicklung und der Interpretation autoritativer Vorlagen bemerkenswert. Philologische Untersuchungen behandeln Stilistik und Semantik der jüdischen Übersetzung im Schnittfeld von allgemeiner griechischer Sprachentwicklung und möglichem Soziolekt. Historisch orientierte Beiträge arbeiten Einflüsse der Zeitgeschichte auf die Übersetzung heraus. Die Texte der Septuaginta sind Hilfe und Herausforderung, die eigene jüdische bzw. christliche Identität zum Ausdruck zu bringen.
In Old Russian hymns one sporadically observes the letter Э, incorporated in the text of a hymn. The author argues that this letter refl ects some Hebrew phrases referring to the name of God: he establishes connections between the hymnographic Э and some specifi c hebraisms in the Russian Old Testament manuscripts. The article deals both with the origin of the letter Э and its subsequent evolution.
The paper is dedicated to Hebrew phrases referring to God found in some Russian codices of the Pentateuch of the XV-XVII centuries. The author examines the origin of this phenomenon.
At the end of the homily IX In Hexaemeron St. Basil the Great promises to continue his Genesis exegesis with an account of man’s creation (Hex. 9. 6. 90−91: ἐν τίνι μὲν οὖν ἔχει τὸ κατ' εἰκόνα Θεοῦ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, καὶ πῶς μεταλαμβάνει τοῦ καθ' ὁμοίωσιν). However, he never got to it (the two homilies De hominis opificio were probably written by another person). Nevertheless, a close analysis of the homily In illud: attende tibi ipsi shows that in his account of man’s creation Basil’s is very much endebted to the Alexandrian tradition which adjusted Plato’s Timaeus to the interpretation of the biblical text. A special attention will be paid to the term ζῷον θεόπλαστον.