a handbook to the septuagint

BY

richard r. ottley, m.a.

author of

“isaiah according to the septuagint”

METHUEN & CO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

First Published in 1920

VXORI DILECTAE

𝔏.

CVIVS MEMORIA

PACEM IAM CONSECVTAE

SEMPER DVLCIS EST

Preface

THIS handbook deals with the oldest translation of the Hebrew Scriptures; older than the New Testament, and written in the same language. Very naturally, therefore, the Old and New Testaments in Greek came together to form the Bible of the early Christian Church. For five centuries or so this version of the Old Testament was dominant; translations into other languages were, as a rule, made from it, and not from the Hebrew, until the Vulgate appeared. It is only the Bible’s due that the better translations of it have ranked, side by side with original works, among the world’s great literature; but the Septuagint counted for generations of men almost as the sacred original itself. Yet its makers, excepting only the grandson of the author of Ecclesiasticus, are anonymous and unknown; they have won no such personal repute as Jerome, Wiclif, Luther, or Coverdale. But their work exercised for long years an influence which it is hardly possible to over-rate, until the Vulgate prevailed, not directly over the Greek Version itself, but over its Latin daughter-version. And when, after the Dark Ages, the revival of learning brought Greek literature westward again, the hold of the Vulgate upon the Latin countries was too strong to be dislodged or even shaken, and the Northern nations demanded translations from the original into their own tongues. So vanished all chance of the Septuagint regaining its former place as a popular possession. It has lived on only as a field (but there was treasure hid in that field) for a narrow circle of students.

Of late, however, it has begun to seem possible that this circle might be to some extent enlarged. Greek scholarship is not, so far, extinct in this country, and may yet survive for some time. But the Septuagint was not fully intelligible to every Greek scholar as such; and only lately has the help that he needed been forthcoming, in the shape of an improved text, and aids to the understanding of it. There still seems room for the present book, which demands from the reader, as a minimum, only a fair knowledge of the Greek language, and of the Old Testament; and begins, as far as possible, at the beginning.

In recent years, several of those to whom reference is made in this book have been taken away. My friend Professor James Moulton succumbed to the results of the pirate methods of the German Empire; I cannot write of it unmoved.

‘His virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against

The deep damnation of his taking-off:’

I leave my references to his work unaltered, as I believe he would have wished.

Professor Swete has also passed away, honoured by all who knew him, and by many who knew only his writings. I owe him far more than I may here set down. As, doubtless ...