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This article explores the roots of the modern impulse of Bible translators to get the Bible right in translation and its connection to the Jewish revisions of the Greek Septuagint. It examines the contributions of Jewish scholars like Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus to the field of Biblical translation and their commitment to accurate and faithful translation.
The Septuagint (LXX) is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures and was made for the Jewish community, not Christians. The vocabulary is Greek and the syntax Hebrew. There is a Semitic influence in the vocabulary of the LXX. The New Testament is not a translation and is written for Christians who have the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Third, The Greek of the NT is 180 years to 310 years removed from the Greek of the Septuagint.
The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint, is the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible, various biblical apocrypha, and deuterocanonical books.
Papyrus Rylands 458 is a copy of the Pentateuch in a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint.
Papyrus Fouad 266 is a copy of the Pentateuch in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint. It is a papyrus manuscript in scroll form. The manuscript has been assigned palaeographically to the second or the first-century B.C.E.
Parts of four leaves from this Greek Septuagint codex that contain portions of six chapters of Genesis. This codex is very important because of its being dating to the late second or early third century C.E. However, aside from dating early, these chapters are absent in the Codex Vaticanus and they are defective in the Codex Sinaiticus. The article is easy to understand and the footnotes are in-depth adding even more information.
At the end of the second century, there were (at least) four competing Greek versions of the OT. Origen, one of the most important theologians in the Eastern church, was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and was active in the middle of the third century CE. Aware of differences between the Greek and Hebrew texts, he set out to bring order and understanding to the confusing array of competing textual witnesses and to produce an edition that would account for those variations.
The Hebrew Text has the reading “they settled” in verse 18 of chapter 25. On the other hand, the LXX and VG, have “he settled” in verse 18 of chapter 25, the latter translations being a reference to Ishmael for the sake of clarity.
Codex Sinaiticus (01, א) alone has a complete text of the New Testament. It is dated to c. 330–360 C.E. The codex is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in uncial letters on parchment in the 4th century. Scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of the New Testament, along with the Codex Vaticanus.
Hands down, the Greek Septuagint version is the most important of the early versions of the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, it is the first translation. The Greek Septuagint is abbreviated as the Roman numeral LXX (meaning, “Seventy”).