QTnurnr~tu ml1rningtrul !lnutIJly Continuing LEHRE UND WEHRE MAGAZIN FUER Ev.-LuTH. HOMILETIK THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY-THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY Vol. VII December, 1936 No. 12 CONTENTS Page The Tr~ing of Ministers. J. H. C. Fritz. . . . . . • . . . . • • • • • •• 881 Einige roemische Gesetze im ersten Drittel des vierten Jahr- huriderts. R. W. Heintze ....•.•.••.......•...........• 885 The Study of the Apocrypha by the Preacher. H. H. Kunmick 899 Are We Using Our Septuagint 1 P. E. Kretzmann. • . . . . . . . .. 906 Der Schriftgrund fuer die Lehre von der satisfactio vicana. P. E. Kretzmann . • . . . . • . .. 912 Outlines on the Eisenach Epistle Selections. . . . . . . . . . . .. 916 :Miscellanea ........................................ 928 Theological Observer. - Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches . . . .. 933 Book Review. - Literatur .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 951 Ein Predlger mus. nicht allein weiden. also dasa er die Scbale unterwel8e, wie aie recbte Obrlsten soil en seln, sondem auch daneben den Woe1len wehren. dass ole die Schafe nlcht angreUen und mit ialacher Lebre verfuehren und Irrtum ein· fuehren. - Luther. Eo ist kein Ding, das die Leute mehr bei der Kircbe bebaelt denn die gnte Predlgt. - Apologie. A rI. lj. If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? 1 Cor. LJ. 8. Published for the Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States CONCORDIA PUBLISHING HOUSE, St. Louis, Mo. -l ~ ARCHIV 906 Are We Using Our Septuagint? must have interest for anyone who delights in religious poetry. Take for example the Song of the Three Holy Ohildren. Oertainly the writer of this song must have been acquainted with Psalm 146, of which it is an echo. There is glow, uplifting power, and rich devo- tion in its verse. Or take as another specimen the description of wisdom, Wisdom of Solomon, 7, 22; 8, 1, of which Dr. Westcott once said: "This magnificent description of wisdom must rank among the noblest passages of human eloquence." The distinctive feature of the apocryphal books as literature, if not also as religious thought, will be found in the gnomic books, the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesi- asticus. In gnomic poetry the Hebrew literature is especially rich, for the Hebrew language enables pithy sentences to be concentrated into a few pregnant words. In Ecclesiasticus will be found also specimens of a grim humor and biting irony, of which the following examples may be pointed out: the itch of the scandal-monger to tell his tale (9,10--12), the folly of the man that ''buildeth his house with other men's money" (21,8). Who cannot appreciate the wit in this: "A slip on the pavement is better than a slip with the tongue"~ This will go to show that the apocryphal books do have a place as valuable reading even for the busy and overworked pastor of to-day. Nothing should ever be done to create the impression that they are put on the same level with the canonical books. But now that modern research has shed much additional light on the apocryhal era in con- nection with the study of New Testament background, a repeated perusal of these books will be of great value to us pastors. An interesting and profitable course of lectures might grow out of a study of the apocryphal books. Such a course would treat of the history of the books themselves; of the history of the Jewish nation between the Old and the New Testament; of the essential difference between these books and the inspired writings; of the origin and rise of the religious parties, or sects, Pharisees and Sadducees; of the development of rabbinic Judaism, etc. Valparaiso, Ind. H. H. KUMNICK. Are We Using Our Septuagint? The Septuagint challenges our interest from practically every angle from which we may approach its study. Its history, which for centuries was the subject of strange speculations, has only recently been cleared of the accumulation of these theories. Shorn of these mythical accretions, the story of the Septuagint may be reduced to the following facts. The instigation came from Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, ca. 283-247 B.O., who desired a translation of the Jewish holy books for the great library founded by his father. The work was not done at one time, as has been stated, much less by a Are We Using Our Septuagint? 907 group of exactly seventy-two learned Jews, but in the course of ap- proximately a century and a half, one of the chief men concerned being Jesus ben-Sira. As Ottley remarks (A. Hanilbook of the Septuagint, 35): "By 100 B. C. or thereabouts the Greek Bible must have been nearly complete." Just before that he remarks: "We may believe, then, without hesitation, that the Law, the Pentateuch, with which alone Aristeas is concerned, was translated at Alexandria, probably within fifty years of the date indicated in the 'Letter' [namely, that of Aristeas to Philocrates, on which the ancient nar- mtive is based]. The translation of the remaining books followed, bit by bit, during the next century and a half. In some cases one book of a group may have been translated first, as I Kingdoms among' the historical books or Isaiah among the prophets; or again, some separate passages, used as lessons in the synagog, may have been first interpreted when these lessons were read, then committed to writing, and later used as instalments of the translations of those books in which they occur. Various hands would of course be em- ployed in the work, as it extended over several generations; and the books which do not belong to the Hebrew Old Testament, whether original or translated, were added, from time to time, to the Alexan- drian collection." If we wish to stay more closely with the tradi- tional view, we may assume, with the editor of the Bagster Sep- tuagint, that the Septuagint version had been commenced prior to the year 285 B. C. "and that in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus [283-247J either the books in general or at least an important part of them had been completed." This still permits us to assume that the work was not definitely completed until approximately 150 B. C. A second point of interest which really amounts to a problem is the question of the manu8C1-ipts from which the translation was made. It was presumably made from the best available copies of the Hebrew Old Testament, either from manuscripts obtained in Jerusalem for this particular purpose or from such manuscripts as were contained in the great library at Alexandria. And here one of the greatest difficulties is connected with the fact that the Septuagint in various places has sections which are not found in the standard Hebrew text as we now have it. The Bagster editor has the following paragraph on this question: "In examining the Pentateuch of the Septuagint in connection with the Hebrew text and with the copies preserved by the Samaritans in their crooked letters, it is remarkable that in very many passages the readings of the Septuagint accord with the Samar- itan copies where they differ from the Jewish. "'IVe cannot here notice the various theories which have been advanced to account for this accordance of the Septuagint with the Samaritan copies of the Hebrew; indeed, it is not very satisfactory to enter into the details of the subject because no theory hitherto brought forward explains all 908 Are We Using Our SeptuagiJ1t? the facts or meets all the difficulties. To one point, however, we will advert because it has not been sufficiently taken into account, - in the places in which the Samaritan and Jewish copies of the Hebrew text differ in importa,nt and material pointg, the Septuagint accords much more with the Jewish than with the Samaritan copies, and in a good many points it introduces variations unknown to either." An ex- planation which would agree with the psychology of the situation and fully satisfy the conservative Bible scholar is this, that the Alexan- drinian translators added the Samaritan expansions of the authentic Hebrew text to their translation in order to have all the glosses and explanatory material complete. The careful reader of the Septuagint who compares every section with the original will readily see the difference in content and tone of the text. Nevertheless this is one of the difficulties which further work in a scientific study of the Sep- tuagint will attempt to solve. Fortunately the quotations from the Septuagint in the New Testament are not appreciably involved in this problem. The difficulty does not include the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and Hesychius, and the recension of Origen, except as certain emendations of the text of the Septuagint may have crept into some copies. Another interesting feature which challenges the attention of every student of the Septuagint is the fact that the variety of translators naturally resulted in a very unequal cllaracter of the version. Some books bear evidence of the fact that the men who attempted their translation were by no means equal to the task, while others indicate that the work was very capably performed. Most scholars agree that the Pentateuch was very well executed, while Job and the Book of Isaiah show the very opposite. It is evident from the outset that the men who did the work were learned Jews, who, moreover, were filled with the most profound respect for the holy writings. In other words, they adhered to the traditional understand- ing of the Scriptures as they had been taught. They did not con- sciously inject into their translation any views they may have held for their own persons; they attempted to offer an objective trans- lation. Therefore any inaccuracies and inadequacies in the text are not to be ascribed to dishonest intentions on the part, but simply to the incompetency of some of the translators, whether as to exact knowledge of many of the Hebrew terms or a failure on their part to find Greek words and expressions which would adequately convey the sense of the original. "One difficulty which they had to over- come was that of introducing theological ideas, which till then had their proper terms only in Hebrew, into a language of Gentiles, which till then had terms for no religious notions except those of heathens. Hence the necessity of using words and phrases in new and ap'" propriated senses." Are We Using Our Septuagint? 909 l'he langu{},ge of the Septuagint is Greek, a fact which is closely .associated with the conquest of the greater part of Asia and a large part of Northern Africa by Alexander the Great between 334 and 323 B. O. Yet it is not the so-called classical Greek, that written by the authors of the Golden Age of Greek literature, but the post- Attic Greek in the Alexandrine idiom. (Op. "Notes on the Greek of the Septuagint and the New Testament," in Theological Quarterly, 'Oct., 1920.) One might well call it the Greek as developed in the University of Alexandria, one which might well bear the designation "the written Kaine." The most striking phenomena of the Alexan- drine dialect are, according to the article just referred to: the blend- ing, fusion, simplification of verb inflection as to the preterit tenses, especially in the fusion of the first and second aorist; the emphatic ·duplication of the verb in prediction, warning, etc., as in the Hebrew; the iteration for the relative; the breaking down of the exact use of prepositions; the luxuriance of articular infinitives in a great mul- titude of syntactical forms, and other peculiarities. A working knowledge of these phenomena enables the student to grasp the in- tended meaning of the text with much greater facility. H the Septuagint carries no other appeal to the average pastor, it challenges his attention on account of the quotations from it in- -eluded in the New Testament, which are usually given as 215, with 32 in Matthew, 36 in Romans, and 33 in Hebrews alone. The problems associated with these quotations are not beyond solution; but they do require careful study, partly on account of their form, partly on ac- count of their content. We have but to think of Matt. 2, 15 and 23 to realize that the Lutheran theologian must be sure of his ground. Or take the example of Matt. 1, 23. In a recent article on the "His- tory of the Septuagint Text" we read: "In the frequent disputations that took place between the Jews and the Ohristians the latter often made quotations from the LXX which the former could not regard as conclusive. These were, in part, concerned with inaccurate trans- lations, of which a well-known example is the rendering of M7::>Sy, Is. 7,14, by nIlQ1'tEvo,;, which has been ever recu,rring in all polemical writings against the Jews." It seems strange to find such a concession in a Protestant discussion of the Isaiah passage, especially in view of the fact that the Holy Ghost has sanctioned the translation of nIlQ\lsvo, in Matt. 1, 23. But similar problems await the student in scores of other passages quoted in the New Testament from the Septuagint. It is not merely that one must be sure of his actual translation of a given passage, but he ought to have the full back- ground of the context also in the Old Testament, both in the Hebrew and in the Greek. In other words, a working knowledge of the Sep- tuagint is practically indispensable for scientific work in both the Old and the New Testament. 910 Are We Using Our Septuagint? The number of manuscripts of the Septuagint is not very great if compared with the manuscripts of the New Testament, but the list nevertheless presents a formidable array. There are approximately thirty codices in uncials, about half of which are complete. Among' these Oodex B, the Vatican us, of the fourth century, now in the Vatican Library in Rome, supposed to be one of the fifty copies which Oonstantine deputed Eusebius to have prepared at Oaesarea, Oodex S (or ~), the Sinaiticus, found by Tischendorf in 1844 at St. Oatherine's Oonvent on Mount Sinai, formerly in Leningrad, now in London, and Oodex A, the Alexandrinus, which was brought to England after the accession of Oharles I, are considered the most authentic and valuable, and they are basic in all recent editions of the Greek version. There are more than one hundred cursives of the Septuagint, thirty of which were regarded as important enough to be considered in the Oambridge Septuagint. The poetical books are found in about 180 cursives, and of these about 130 are Psalters or contain little else~ except sometimes the canticles or hymns. Of greater interest to the average Bible student are the printed editions of the Septuagint, as they are available pm·tly in the libraries of universities and of large cities, partly in private librm'ies of specialists in the field. We merely refer to the Septuagint text con- tained in the Oompl1densian Polyglot, published in 1521, at Alcala~ near Madrid, the Aldine edition, printed after, but published before, the Oomplutensian, in February, 1518, and the Six tine edition, pub- lished at Rome in 1587, under Pope Sixtus V, because these editions are accessible to the scholar in only a few libraries. The situation is not much better with regard to the edition begun by Johannes Ernst Grabe, who himself finished two volumes before his death, in 1712, and whose work was completed by Francis Lee and George Wigall (1719 and 1720); for this edition is also rare. More accessible to the average scholar in the field are the great editions by Holmes and Parsons (the Oxford Edition): Vetus Testamentum Graece, edd. Holmes et Parsons, Oxonii 1798-1827) and that by Brooke, McLean, and Thackeray (the Cambridge Edition: The OZd Testament in Greek according to the Text of the Codex Vaticanus, supplemented from other uncial manuscripts, with a critical apparatus containing the variants of the chief ancient authorities for the text of the Sep- tuagint). Not quite beyond the reach of the less opulent individual scholar is the Septuagint edition furnished by H. B. Swete (The Old Testament in Greek, Oambridge, 3 vols.; first edition, 1887-94). This was, till recently, the best edition for general desk use. In Ger- many we have the Goettinger Septuagint (Septuaginta, Vetu8 Testa- mentum Graecum Auctoritate Societatis Literarum Gottingensis editum), of which Volume IX, fasc. 1, has recently appeared. In keeping with the question in our caption we are especially Are We Using Our Septuagint? 911 interested in less expensive editions, which are accessible to the average pastor and student in the field. Bagster has issued The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, with an English Trans- lation, the text being eclectic, the Sixtine text being used, with variants of Grabe's text at the beginning or the end of each book, therefore containing hexaplar matter, but not marked as such. The translation was prepared by Launcelot Oharles Lee Brenton. This is a handy volume for comparison and will serve for cursory reading and quick reference work. But the edition of the Septuagint to which we want to call par- ticular attention is that which was recently issued by the Privilegierte Wuerttembergische Bibelanstalt in Stuttgart (Septuaginta, id est, Vetus Testamentum Graece iuxta LXX Interpretes, edidit Alfred Rahlfs). This edition combines scientific accuracy and completeness with inexpensiveness and should therefore have a strong appeal for every student of the Bible who knows any Greek, no matter how little. The text of this edition is based mainly upon Oodex B, or the Vaticanus, Oodex N or S, the Sinaiticus, and Oodex A, or Alexan- drinus, thereby offering a combination of the best sources available. The work of the editor has been done with painstaking and scientific care and exhibits a scholal"ship which will bear comparison with that (If the fOl"emost workel"s in the field. The name of Alfl"ed Rahl£s is a guarantee of this statement, and the Stuttgal"t Septuagint l"epl"e- Bents the culmination of his life-work. On April 1, 1935, he signed the pl"eface, and on April 8 he died. His name will always be con- nected with the chapter on Septuagint l"eseal"ch; for since the death (If Lagal"de, his teachel", he was the foremost Gel"man scholar in this field. And the Stuttgart Septuagint will be the visible monument of his life-wol"k, which will keep his name alive in the field of theology and in the Ohurch for decades, if not longer. As the name of Rahlfs guarantees a production of superior merit from the standpoint of collating and editing, so the name of the in- stitution that had the courage to publish the two-volume edition in this splendid form guarantees an excellent production so far as print and mechanical details are concerned. The type, both in the text proper and in the footnotes, is clear; the paper is strong and smooth, but not glossy; the binding leaves nothing to be desired. And the price of twelve marks for the two bound volumes is surely most reasonable, especially in view of the nature of the work. The Stutt- gart Septuagint enables every pastor and every student of theology to devote himself to this gl"eat field of theological study. It is true that the value of the Septuagint in the Lutheran Ohurch does not equal that of the Hebrew Old Testament or the Greek New Testa- ment, without which any kind of real study in the text of the Scrip- tures is impossible. And yet the Septuagint is so closely connected 912 l1er Sd)rtftgrunb flir Me ~e~te bon bet satisfactio vicaria. with the history of missions in the Church and offers such enormous possibilities in the field of exegesis and textual criticism that a proper appreciation of these fields of study is not possible without this version. The study of the Old Testament without the Septuagint is hardly to be thought of, and that of the New Testament will gain immensely by the constant reference to the many direct and indirect Septuagint quotations. The writers of the New Testament constantly drew upon its vocabulary and its world of ideas, and thus the treasures of a large part of the Septuagint have become the property of the New Testament Ohurch. Let us hope that the time will soon come when the question proposed in the caption of this short dis- cussion will receive a general positive answer; for this will certainly redound in blessings for our Ohurch, both in its evangelistic work and in its inner growth. P. E. KRETZMANN. ~ .. ~er e;djriftgruub fur Me 2eijre UJ.lU bet satisfactio vicaria. (5d)(ufj.) 11. (£fjrift1t~ ~l'It hie ~l'Ittbfdjtift getifgt. 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