The Septuaginta: incorporating new perspectives

The Greek translation of the Hebrew (and Aramaic) text of the Bible is commonly called the Septuaginta. In this collection, there are Biblical books that are translated from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek as well as Biblical books that were originally written in Greek. Studying how the translators went about is helpful when attempting to reconstruct the Old Greek text and the Hebrew underlying text on the basis of which it was rendered. In some cases, the Old Greek text and its revisions shed light on the evolution of the Hebrew Biblical text. Moreover, for some books or parts thereof, not a text resembling the Old Greek text as it left the hands of the translators, but a revision of that Greek text is transmitted. The earliest revisions came from Jewish hands and are most commonly associated with the names of Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus. Their texts (or traces thereof) were being used by the later Christian revisers, such as Origen and Lucian. In the texts of the Old Greek as well as in the later revisions, one can observe the phenomenon of rewriting, which is also attested in texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.