From Jim Aitken
February 8th is “International Septuagint Day.” Bloggers will be reminding us why it is important to study the LXX, including its text-critical value, its witness to early biblical exegesis, and its place as the first Bible of the Church. Let me offer some other rarely cited reasons:
• It is the largest extant piece of Ptolemaic Greek.
• It is one of the major works of Egyptian Greek literature.
• It is one of the first works of Hellenistic Judaism, though mostly ignored in books on the subject.
• It is (possibly) the largest work of translation literature from antiquity, offering valuable insight for translation studies on both bilingual interference and translation technique.
• It is a work of sub-literary Greek that demonstrates the complexities of Greek register.
• It is a major lexical resource for lesser-known koine words. (not only illustrated by papyri, but illuminating for papyri).
• It testifies to a distinct Jewish-Greek (even Egyptian?) identity.
• It tells us much about educational levels in Egypt and among Jews.(To understand its theology, we must place it in its context first).
I’ll be taking part, and providing citations from the highly esteemed Göttingen Septuagint.
Zwinglius Redivivus 