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1. Jennifer M. Dines, The Septuagint (New York: T&T Clark, 2004) 74.
At some point, a tradition emerged that the [LXX] translators deliberately changed certain verses in the LXX in order to avoid scandalizing King Ptolemy or creating misunderstandings in the Torah. In the Minor Tractate b. Masseket Soferim 1.8, the miraculous element is that ‘the seventy-two’ were all inspired to make the same alterations…The number of these alterations varies, and they do not all correspond to current forms of the LXX. They probably reflect rabbinic exegetical responses to problematic verses in the MT, rather than textual differences in the LXX…The grounding of these passages in the historical circumstances of the first translation, however, suggests that the debates have deep roots going back to very early perceptions of differences between the Hebrew and Greek texts.
I couldn’t find b. Masseket Soferim 1.8 on my Judaic Classics Library, but I did find B.T. Megilah 9a, which discusses the Septuagint and the changes that the 72 translators made to the biblical text. Here are the changes, and I’m relying on the notes to understand their basis. I also check what the Talmud says the LXX has against my BibleWorks LXX, for the quote from Dines above states that not all of the alterations “correspond to current forms of the LXX.”
The original LXX (according to this Talmud passage) had “God created in the beginning” rather than “In the beginning God created” for Genesis 1:1. According to the note, The purpose of this change was apparently to prevent the idea of Two Powers being read into the text, i.e., “In the beginning” and “God.” Apparently, the translators feared that people would take “in the beginning” and “God” to be two separate figures creating the cosmos. The LXX on my BibleWorks, however, has “In the beginning God created.”
“I shall make man in image and likeness” replaces “Let us make man in our image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26), again, to avoid the heresy of the two powers in heaven creating the cosmos. My BibleWorks LXX has “Let us make.”
“And he finished on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh day” replaces “and he finished on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2), which the note says “might be taken to imply that some work was done on the seventh day.” The LXX says God finished his work on the sixth day and rested on the seventh day. I once asked one of my Jewish studies professors why the Bible says God finished his work on the seventh day, when God did his work in six days and rested on the seventh. He replied that God created the Sabbath on the seventh day, and, after he did that, was finished. This interpretation appears in the rabbinic text, Genesis Rabbah 10:9. So some rabbis apparently believed that one could change the text under divine inspiration (as did the translators of the LXX), while others felt compelled to stick with the Hebrew text as it was, whatever its difficulties might be.
“Male and female he created him” replaces “Male and female he created them” (Genesis 5:2). My BibleWorks LXX has “he created them.” I’m not sure what’s going on here. Genesis 5 is a genealogy, and I guess it makes more sense to say that God called a single person “Adam” rather than two people, since genealogies tend to focus on successive generations of individuals. Is the original LXX (according to the rabbis) going with the rabbinic view that Adam was a hermaphrodite before God split him/her into male and female?
“Come let me descend and confound their tongues” replaces “Come let us descend” (Genesis 11:7), again to prevent the two powers in heaven heresy. My BibleWorks LXX has “Let us go down.”
“And Sarah laughed among her relatives” replaces “And Sarah laughed in herself” (Genesis 18:12). The note states that this is ”to make a distinction between Sarah and Abraham, who also laughed inwardly.” The goal of the original LXX (according to the Talmud passage) is to make Abraham look better than Sarah: Abraham laughed inwardly, whereas Sarah laughed in public, which is more disrespectful to God. My BibleWorks LXX says that Sarah laughed within herself.
“For in their anger they slew an ox and in their wrath they digged up a stall” replaces “For in their anger they killed men, and at their whim they hamstrung oxen” (Genesis 49:6; NRSV). The goal here is to spare the names of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, who killed the Shechemites. My BibleWorks LXX has “in their anger they killed men.”
“And Moses took his wife and his children, and made them ride on a carrier of men” replaces “and made them ride on an ass” (Exodus 4:20) to safeguard the dignity of Moses. Apparently, an ass wasn’t considered a dignified animal by this time! My BibleWorks LXX says Moses put them on a donkey.
“And the abode of the children of Israel which they stayed in Egypt and in other lands was four hundred years” alters the Hebrew of Exodus 12:40, which mentions only Egypt. The note states, The words “and in other lands” are inserted because, according to the Biblical record, the Israelites were at the utmost 210 years in Egypt. My BibleWorks LXX has “in Egypt and in the land of Canaan.” See The Rabbis (and Rashi) on Israel’s “Sojourn” for my discussion on this issue.
“And he sent the elect of the children of Israel” replaces “And he sent the young men of the children of Israel” (Exodus 24:5). The note says this change was made because “young men” wasn’t suitable for the context. Maybe the translators couldn’t figure out why Moses sent young men to offer the sacrifices. My BibleWorks LXX has “young men.”
“And against the elect of the children of Israel he put not forth his hand” replaces “And against the nobles,” etc. in Exodus 24:11. My BibleWorks LXX has “elect,” or “chosen.” The idea may be that God chose those who would experience him up-close based on their righteousness, not their political status.
“I have taken not one valuable of theirs” replaces “I have not taken an ass” (Numbers 16:15), maybe because “ass” is considered a bad work. My BibleWorks LXX has “valuable.”
“Which the Lord thy God distributed to give light to all the peoples” adds “to give light” to Deuteronomy 4:19. The passage states that the Israelites are not to worship the heavenly bodies, for God has given them to the other nations. The translators don’t want people to think that God’s okay with the Gentiles worshipping the sun and the moon, so they say God gave those heavenly bodies to the nations to give them light. My BibleWorks LXX doesn’t have “to give light,” however.
“And he went and served other gods which I commanded should not be served” adds “should be served” to Deuteronomy 17:3, which does not specify what God has not commanded the Israelites to do. Here, the translators’ goal is clarification, making the implicit explicit. My BibleWorks LXX doesn’t have “to be served.”
On Leviticus 11:6, which lists unclean animals, the Talmud passage states, “They also wrote for him ‘the beast with small legs’ and they did not write ‘the hare’, because the name of Ptolemy’s wife was hare, lest he should say, The Jews have jibed at me and put the name of my wife in the Torah.” My BibleWorks LXX has “hare,” so maybe the translators weren’t too worried about insulting Ptolemy’s wife (or actually his father, according to the note).
Dines is probably right that this Talmud passage is not discussing actual versions of the LXX (with a few exceptions), but rather is giving the rabbis a sounding-board to complain about the passages of the Hebrew Bible that trouble them. Later in her book, Dines says that Jews accused Christians of altering the biblical text, whereas Christians made the same accusation against the Jews about their Hebrew version, asserting that the Septuagint was more authentic. In my opinion, the fact that the Hebrew version contains so much that troubled the rabbis tells me that they didn’t manipulate their biblical text at will to fit their ideology. Or at least they didn’t do so often! In many cases, they just stuck with the Hebrew version and tried to live with its difficulties.
2. Folker Siegert, “Early Jewish Interpretation in a Hellenistic Style,” Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: The History of Interpretation I/1: Antiquity, ed. Magne Saebo (1996) 135-136.
According to Siegert, Alexandrian scholars (such as Aristarchus in the third-second centuries B.C.E.) practiced a form of textual criticism with Homer, as they sought to determine what was authentic and what was not. They used “dialectological studies” and “intra-Homeric analogy,” meaning perhaps that they tried to spot passages in Homer that didn’t fit with his usual style. Josephus in the first century C.E. discusses this in Against Apion 1.12 and 2.256, noting that there were (in Siegert’s words) “divergencies in the texts of Homer.” Siegert states that no attempt was made to apply this method to the Bible before Origen (second-third centuries C.E.), who compared the Hebrew version of the Bible with the Septuagint and other Greek translations. For a long time, Alexandrian Jews such as Philo simply assumed that the Septuagint and the Hebrew version of the Hebrew Bible said the exact same thing, only in different languages.
The discovery that such is not always the case probably led to the Talmud passage I discuss in (1.) Once the rabbis knew that the Greek and the Hebrew versions differed, some of them tried to say that the translators altered the Hebrew version in their Greek translation, under the influence of divine inspiration. I’m a little surprised that they take this route, though, for, by and large, the rabbis stick with the Hebrew version.
