This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
22 July 2022 - 31 July 2022
The Septuagint is an important early witness to the text of the Hebrew Bible, as a translation of it -- plus some deuterocanonical books -- made beginning in the third and second centuries BCE. It is one of the four most important witnesses for determining the earliest forms of the Hebrew Bible, alongside the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran scrolls). See also its Wikipedia page.
Unfortunately, the earliest full copies of Hebrew Bible date to about a thousand years ago, although the Hebrew Bible was written over two thousand years ago -- some passages may go back about three thousand years.
So this means that for over 1000 years, the Hebrew Bible was copied in all sorts of manuscripts that no longer exist today, except in fragments, the most notable of which are the Qumran Scrolls. The oldest full Hebrew Bibles are of what is known as the Masoretic Text, a highly standardized form of the Hebrew Bible that became standard in Judaism. Masoretic manuscripts agree with each other pretty much letter for letter, with very few variations. This is unfortunate for people who want to figure out how passages in the Bible originally read, because the ascent of the Masoretic Text resulted in the disappearance of older variant text-types.
But about two thousand years ago, a translation of the entire Hebrew Bible was made into Greek. This is the Septuagint. And what's more, the text of the Septuagint often shows that the Septuagint translators were often using a different Hebrew text than the Masoretic Text. In places, you can "back-translate" and work out what these no-longer-extant Hebrew manuscripts read.
Another witness to the earliest form of the Hebrew Text, for the Pentateuch, is the Samaritan Pentateuch, a version maintained by the small Samaritan community that exists to the present day. In many places, the Samaritan Pentateuch agrees with the Septuagint against the Masoretic Text, showing that the Septuagint variants do in fact trace back to very old Hebrew texts. But in other places, it agrees with the Masoretic Text.
The state of the evidence at present does not allow for blanket statements about whether the Septuagint is "more original" than the Masoretic Text or vice versa. Things have to worked out case by case, and in many cases no certain answer is possible.
Unfortunately, as far as I know no complete collection exists online of all the places that the Septuagint disagrees with the Masoretic Text. But a full set of English translations of the Septuagint does exist online. You can read it online at the New English Translation of the Septuagint website. An older translation can also be found online, the Brenton translation, which has fallen into the public domain: here.
For the Septuagint itself, there is Swete. His Volume I can be found here, Volume II here, and Volume III here. Swete has become outdated.
Then there is the Larger Cambridge Septuagint, though it was never completed. Available fascicles include Genesis; Exodus and Leviticus; Numbers and Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, and Ruth; Samuel; Kings; Chronicles; 1 Esdras and Ezra-Nehemiah; or a single PDF combining the volumes.
Then there is Rahlf's, though I have not found a facsimile of his edition online. A 2006 revision, Rahlfs-Hanhart, does exist online.
To the best of my knowledge, the developing standard for the Septuagint is the Göttingen, still incomplete but progressing after over a century.
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