Abstract
Scholars are often struck by the frequent use of pronouns in the Septuagint, particularly placed in postposition, linking both these aspects to the translation technique or the competency of the translators. In this article, I argue that pronominal usage in the Septuagint can be linked to developments in post-classical Greek more so than to interference from the source text. I focus particularly on pronominal usage in relation to syntax and word order to show that the traditional approach to translation technique has limited our understanding of linguistic features in the Septuagint, and deal with questions that arise from an approach to the Septuagint as reflective of post-classical Greek, namely, what can pronouns in the Septuagint tell us about the educational background of the translators and their translation methods?
Pronouns are a complex part of language with grammatical, syntactic, and pragmatic dimensions.1 Modern linguists are paying significant attention to the relationship between the development of pronoun usage and first and/or second language acquisition.2 In this article, I will consider the use of enclitic pronouns in the Septuagint (LXX), with a focus on Genesis, against the background of post-classical Greek, and reflect on its relevance for our understanding of the translators’ approaches and abilities.
By way of introduction, I would like to consider the following two examples from LXX Genesis.3
Gen 20:12
ותהי לי לאשה “and she became a wife to me”
ἐγενήθη δέ µοι εἰς γυναῖκα “and she became a wife to me”
Gen 24:674
ותהי לו לאשה “and she became a wife to him”
καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῦ γυνή “and she became his wife”
The Hebrew features a similar grammatical and syntactic construction in both verses. We encounter a form of the verb
Scholars of the LXX have been struck by the frequent occurrence of personal pronouns in the Greek text.8 Not only their redundancy, but also their frequent postpositioning, has often been regarded as a Semitism.9 James Moulton was the first to link pronoun usage in the LXX to intralinguistic developments in post-classical Greek.10 Indeed, regarding pronominal usage in the LXX only within a framework of interference overemphasises the influence of Hebrew form over Greek idiom. Furthermore, in stating that “a redundance of personal pronouns is just what we should expect in the colloquial style,”11 Moulton expresses a viewpoint on the nature of Koine that, albeit common in biblical scholarship,12 warrants reconsideration. An understanding of Koine as the common language, “common” not so much in the sense of “shared” but rather in the sense of “ordinary” or “vulgar,” has resulted in a predominantly negative understanding of Koine as low-level Greek. Yet, Koine is the general designation of the supraregional variant of Greek spoken from about the third century BCE until the sixth century CE.13 It comprises all levels and registers, from colloquial Greek as attested in some papyri, particularly in private letters, and an administrative jargon in official documents, to the literary style of authors such as Polybius.14 Therefore, a more neutral term would be “post-classical Greek,” which underlines that we are talking about a stage in the development of the Greek language.
The use of enclitic pronouns was undergoing developments in the post- classical period. If we acknowledge that pronoun usage in the LXX may well be linked to developments in post-classical Greek, we may ask what pronouns in the LXX can teach us about the Greek-language ability of the translators and about the translation technique. Understanding the balance between Greek idiom and Semitic interference in a translated LXX text is a delicate question.15 In this article, I will show how a nuanced discussion of aspects related to pronominal usage can help us answer this question. In doing so, I build upon the works of Albert Wifstrand, Mark Janse, and John Lee, who have looked particularly at the positioning of enclitic pronouns in the context of Wackernagel’s Law in the Greek of the LXX and the New Testament.16 They have shown that the use of pronouns positioned before their governing word, rather than after (as it would when reflecting the Hebrew construction of suffigated pronouns), suggests the hand of a translator fluent in Greek.17 Their work has tied in with a general trend in Septuagint scholarship to focus particularly on deviations between the Hebrew and the Greek. The positioning of pronouns in the LXX has mainly been studied in relation to deviations from Hebrew word order.18 When a translator follows the Hebrew, “literalism” is generally taken as a sufficient explanation for the translation, and such renderings are often not considered further. I have argued elsewhere, however, for a more complex and multifaceted understanding of all translation,19 including isomorphic ones. After all, the examples of Gen 20:12 and 24:67 show that even when seemingly rendering the Hebrew word-for-word, translations may vary, and this variation needs to be considered. In this article, I will discuss word order deviations between the Hebrew and the Greek, as these cases contribute to a full picture of pronominal use in the LXX, but I will draw particular attention to cases of non-deviation in word order, which are interesting in other ways. After all, as Trevor Evans rightfully has pointed out, “syntax is about more than word order.”20
In my discussion, I include pronominal enclitics (in the LXX particularly
1 Pronoun Usage in Classical and Post-Classical Greek
Two features related to pronominal usage in post-classical Greek are of particular interest. First, there is a notable increase in the frequency with which pronouns are used.23 We find examples in non-literary papyri, such as in BGU 14, 2417 (258–257[?] BCE), where the pronoun of the first person plural appears eight times in fifteen short lines of text, totalling fifty-six words (greeting formulas not included), even though the sense is clear from context and one would not necessarily need the repetition of the pronoun. We also see an increase in pronouns in the literary register of Polybius, such as
A second noteworthy aspect related to pronoun use in the post-classical period is the position of the pronoun vis-à-vis its constituent word, often expressing the direct or indirect object to a verb or the possessor to a noun. Enclitic pronouns are so-called postpositives, words that do not occur at the very beginning of a clause. In early Greek, they tend to be placed after the first word of the sentence, regardless of the relationship they have with other parts of the sentence.25 This may lead to a wide separation of words that are syntactically connected. Herodotus, Hist. 6.63.2 provides an example:
In the history of Greek, there is a progressive development to distribute clitics rather than grouping them together in the position immediately after the first non-clitic word in the sentence.28 This results in clitics, particularly clitic pronouns, increasingly appearing in proximity with their head constituents, as for example in Plato, Eutyphr. 9c:
In post-classical Greek, we still see a tendency to place clitics in second position, though what constitutes “second position” is increasingly flexible: it can be second within the context of the sentence as a whole, the clause, or the phrase, depending on the discourse structure.33 At the same time, personal pronouns appear more frequently in immediate postposition (that is, immediately following the word it is syntactically connected with) than in the classical period.34 For example, in a corpus of papyrus letters found in Egypt and dated from 30 BCE to 100 CE,35 we find 41 cases of
2 Pronouns in the LXX: Initial Observations
When a Greek translator adheres to the word order of the Hebrew, he will place the pronoun indicating the possessor (to a noun) or the object (to a verb) in the Greek after its governing word, reflecting the suffix-construction of the Hebrew.40 As a result of this aspect of translation technique, postpositioned pronouns are the norm in the LXX Pentateuch. For example, Gen 4:11 features several possessive pronouns placed after the noun, thus reflecting the word order of the Hebrew.
Gen 4:11
ועתה ארור אתה מן האדמה אשר פצתה את פיה לקחת את דמי אחיך מידך
And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
καὶ νῦν ἐπικατάρατος σὺ ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς, ἣ ἔχανεν τὸ στόµα αὐτῆς δέξασθαι τὸ αἷµα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ σου ἐκ τῆς χειρός σου.
And now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened wide its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
In Hebrew, suffix pronouns can also be attached to verbs to express the object. If the Greek translator adheres to the Hebrew word order, the pronoun expressing the object in Greek will follow the verb, as happens repeatedly in the example of Gen 5:2.
Gen 5:2
זכר ונקבה בראם ויברך אתם ויקרא את שמם אדם ביום הבראם
Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them “Humankind” when they were created.
ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτοὺς καὶ εὐλόγησεν αὐτούς. καὶ ἐπωνόµασεν τὸ ὄνοµα αὐτῶν Ἀδάμ, ᾗ ἡµέρᾳ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς.
Male and female he made them and he blessed them. And he named them “Adam” on the day that he made them.
The repetition of the object pronoun in these coordinated sentences appears to be the result of interference from the Hebrew source text. Yet, against the background of a post-classical increase both in the frequency of pronominal use as well as in postpositioning, translation technique and linguistic change are reconcilable. It is not necessary to choose one over the other as explanation for this feature in the LXX translation: multicausality in translation suggests that one rendering may well have different causes that simultaneously motivate the translation.41
This is only one part of the pronominal story in the LXX, however. The translators, when rendering a Hebrew construction with a pronominal suffix, at times choose to place the pronoun before its constituent word, thus deviating from the Hebrew word order. In traditional scholarly terminology, these examples relate to what is considered the translator’s “freedom” in handling Hebrew word order. Examples appear in all books of the Pentateuch42 and fall in various categories of usage.
A first example pertains to the position of the reflexive pronoun in the genitive. When
Gen 4:2344
ויאמר למך לנשיו “And Lamech said to his wives”
εἶπεν δὲ Λάµεχ ταῖς ἑαυτοῦ γυναιξίν “And Lamech said to his wives”
In rendering the possessor in
Secondly, as mentioned above, the Pentateuch translators are sensitive to syntactic and pragmatic organisation of the clause, such as evidenced in the observation of Wackernagel’s Law in the LXX.45 Genesis 29:32 provides us with an excellent example of two different cases of word ordering related to Wackernagel’s Law:
Gen 29:32
ותהר לאה ותלד בן ותקרא שמו ראובן כי אמרה כי ראה יהוה בעניי כי עתה יאהבני אישי
Leah conceived and bore a son, and she named him Reuben; for she said, “Because the Lord has looked on my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.”
καὶ συνέλαβεν Λεία καὶ ἔτεκεν υἱὸν τῷ Ἰακώβ· ἐκάλεσεν δὲ τὸ ὄνοµα αὐτοῦ Ῥουβὴν λέγουσα Διότι εἶδέν µου κύριος τὴν ταπείνωσιν· νῦν µε ἀγαπήσει ὁ ἀνήρ µου.
And Leia conceived and bore a son to Iakob, and she called his name Rouben, saying, “Inasmuch as the Lord has seen my humiliation, now it is me my husband will love.”
First, in the rendering of
A third example in which the translator deviates from Hebrew word order in relation to the position of the pronoun is presented by Gen 17:16.
Gen 17:16
וברכתי אתה וגם נתתי ממנה לך בן “I will bless her and I will give you a son by her”
εὐλογήσω δὲ αὐτὴν καὶ δώσω σοι ἐξ αὐτῆς τέκνον “I will bless her and I will give you a child from her”
In this case, the indirect object
All these examples show that the translator of Genesis is sensitive to various aspects related to the Greek use of pronouns. In all of the aforementioned examples, the syntax of the Greek clearly reflects that of the Hebrew: a possessive suffix becomes a possessive genitive (e.g., Gen 4:11, 23; 29:32a), an object suffix becomes an accusative of direct object (Gen 5:2; 29:32b), and a complement with
While in the first set of examples, Gen 4:11 and Gen 5:2, the Greek followed the same word order as the Hebrew, in the last three examples, Gen 4:23, 29:32, and 17:16, the Greek features a change in word order compared to the Hebrew text. In traditional translation-technical terminology, these deviations are an aspect of the translator’s “freedom.”48 In such “freedom,” we are often told, scholars can see traces of the background and competence of the translators.49 I do not contest this, but I would like to demonstrate that the nuance of their linguistic abilities goes beyond that which we see in their exercise of supposed freedom.
3 Pronouns in the LXX in Relation to Word Order and Syntax
Even within renderings that superficially appear to follow the Hebrew, especially from the viewpoint of word order, there at times is a syntactical surprise. Let us reconsider one of the examples cited at the beginning of this article:
Gen 24:67
ותהי לו לאשה “and she became a wife to him”
καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῦ γυνή “and she became his wife”
We find an idiomatic expression for “becoming” in the Hebrew, where
Another case where the word order of the Hebrew is reflected in the Greek but the syntax indicates a prepositioned pronoun can be found in Gen 17:7
Gen 44:10
יהיה לי עבד “he will be a slave to me”
ἔσται µου παῖς “he will be my slave”
Gen 44:17
הוא יהיה לי עבד “he will be a slave to me”
αὐτὸς ἔσται µου παῖς “he will be my slave”
Compare also:
Gen 27:37
ואת כל אחיו נתתי לו לעבדים “and I have given all his brothers to him as servants”
καὶ πάντας τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς αὐτοῦ ἐποίησα αὐτοῦ οἰκέτας “and I have made all his brothers his servants”
In these examples, we find the prepositional phrase introduced by
Gen 44:9
וגם־אנחנו נהיה לאדני לעבדים “moreover the rest of us will become my Lord’s slaves”
καὶ ἡµεῖς δὲ ἐσόµεθα παῖδες τῷ κυρίῳ ἡµῶν “and we will become slaves to our Lord”
Gen 50:18
הננו לך לעבדים “we are here as slaves to you”
οἵδε ἡµεῖς σοι οἰκέται “we are here as slaves to you”51
Instead, Gen 44:10, 17 and Gen 27:37 show that the translator adheres to Hebrew word order but opts for a specifically Greek syntactical structure, resulting in a prepositioned pronoun.
Gen 45:7
לשום לכם שארית בארץ ולהחיות לכם לפליטה גדלה “to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors”
ὑπολείπεσθαι ὑµῶν κατάλειµµα ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ ἐκθρέψαι ὑµῶν κατάλειψιν µεγάλην “to leave behind a remnant of you on the earth and to nourish a great posterity of you”
In this verse, too, we find the prepositional phrase
In each of these examples, the translator follows the word order of the Hebrew, and is isomorphic in this regard. However, rather than taking the pronoun as the direct or indirect object to the verb, the syntax of the Greek indicates that the pronoun is understood as a possessive pronoun to the object. The result is that the pronoun ends up being prepositioned in relation to its head constituent. This construction thus reflects an inner-Greek feature, and particularly one that correlates to a higher register of post-classical Greek.52 In other words, without changing word order, the translator is able to incorporate a feature elevating the register of the translated text.
If we now return to the two verses cited at the beginning of this article, Gen 20:12 and 24:67, they show that by varying the translation through syntax, without significantly altering the translation approach in terms of lexical choice and word order, the translator can bring in register difference. In Gen 20:12, Abraham is addressing Abimelech, while in 24:67 the example is part of the narrator text. A hypothesis is that perhaps the translator has opted for a less formal Greek rendering in the context of the direct speech of Abraham to the king in a situation in which Abraham appears to have the stronger position. An alternative and/or an additional possible explanation is that the prepositional phrase
The translator may have opted for
Finally, I want to look at one more example, namely Gen 3:15, which brings together some of the pronominal features we have seen.
Gen 3:15
הוא ישופך ראש ואתה תשופנו עקב “He will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him at the heel”
αὐτός σου τηρήσει κεφαλὴν καὶ σὺ τηρήσεις αὐτοῦ πτέρναν “He will guard your head and you will guard his heel”
In both parts of this clause in Gen 3:15, the Hebrew has a verb with an object pronoun (
In light of these subtleties relating to pronominal use and syntax, I would now like to consider the question what the use of prepositioned pronouns in the LXX can tell us about the translators, their approaches, and their backgrounds.
4 Implications
4.1 Natural Greek Usage and Educational Levels
First of all, pronominal usage is an indicator of the translators’ linguistic skills. A consideration of the syntax related to pronominal usage in Greek Genesis demonstrates the relevance of syntactic details: even within the constraints of apparent “literalism,” translators are able to show their competence as users of Greek. In the past, scholarship has drawn conclusions regarding the translator’s educational background on the basis of more readily noticeable phenomena, such as the use of Homeric vocabulary.54 However, since Greek education in antiquity was to a significant extent based on memorizing, imitating, and interpreting Homer’s works,55 the fact that Homeric vocabulary occurs in the LXX may not be as telling of a translator’s level of education as has been suggested at times.56 Furthermore, studies in modern linguistics have shown that common words and subtleties of language usage, though at times more difficult to identify, provide clearer indications of style.57 Janse has suggested that if the LXX translators were able to deal with subtleties of the Greek language such as prepositioned pronouns, it must be assumed that they were native speakers.58 Even if one would not want to go as far as positing that Greek was the translators’ mother tongue—which in a multilingual Egyptian society may be difficult to maintain—pronominal usage in the Pentateuch indicates that the translators were thoroughly familiar with natural Greek usage. The ability to demonstrate one’s fluency in the target language through syntactical changes in a translation that adheres closely to the formal features of the source text, requires significant linguistic ingenuity59—I would suggest at times even more so than when one permits oneself to deviate from the source’s formal make-up.
4.2 Translation Technique and Style
Secondly, pronominal usage tells us something about the approach of the translators. We may compare data on pronominal usage in different LXX translations. The number of postpositioned and prepositioned enclitic pronouns in the Pentateuch, for example, has been calculated as follows: in LXX Genesis, we find 785 postpositioned pronouns compared to 65 prepositioned pronouns, in Exodus 320 to 30, Leviticus 152 to 3, Numbers 181 to 14, and Deuteronomy 1055 to 25.60 If we indeed accept that the Pentateuch would have been translated first, we may compare it with presumably later translations, such as the Old Greek book of Job, for example, where the ratio is approximately 395 to 155.61 At the other end of the spectrum we find the Greek books of Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Amos, Micha, Joel, Nahum, Zephania, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, which contain only postpositioned enclitic pronouns.62
The fact that prepositioned pronouns occur in the Pentateuch means that the translators were educated. Does the observation that prepositioning happens more frequently in a book such as Job warrant the conclusion that its translator would have been more highly educated than the Pentateuch translators? We often find expressions of the viewpoint that a “free” translation approach is considered a sign of a translator’s advanced level of education, whereas a “literal” translation approach would be indicative of a limited educational background.63 Behind this viewpoint lies the observation that the freedom of a translator such as the one of Job often consists in using “good” Greek, and the use of “good” Greek is taken to imply that the translator must have been educated. A literal translation approach, in turn, is associated with an unidiomatic or Hebraistic style of Greek, and therefore seen as indicative of a limited education on the part of the translator. However, scholarship has now appropriately shown that the level of Hebrew interference in the Greek Pentateuch is significantly lower than what has long been assumed. Many phenomena thought to have resulted from influence from the Hebrew are, in fact, also normal in post-classical Greek.64 In addition, as I have shown in this study, even in an isomorphic approach we find clear indicators of the translators’ native-level abilities in Greek.65 This means that there is no self-evident link between a free/literal translation approach, natural/Hebraistic Greek style, and high/low educational levels. Moreover, modern translation studies have shown that the translation approach is, in fact, dependent on much more than a translator’s linguistic abilities. The translation process is governed by a complex array of socio-culturally determined principles, assumptions, and expectations about the correctness and appropriateness of translation.66 The fact that prepositioning is more frequent in Job than in the Pentateuch indicates not the translators’ relative levels of Greek-language education, but rather a development in the conventions of translation that governed the translators’ behaviour.
James Aitken has shown that the translation approach displayed in the Pentateuch corresponds to translation methods of other, in casu Egyptian documents into Greek.67 Taking his argument as point of departure, I have hypothesized that at the time of the first scriptural translations, presumably the Pentateuch, Jews did not yet have a precedent of translating scriptural texts into Greek. In other words, Greek-speaking Jews had not yet developed specifically Jewish norms of translation, and went about their translation with an approach that reflected what translation in the broader Egyptian society at the time looked like. The Pentateuch established a precedent and a model, and from there, Jewish translation practices could evolve. In other words, Jews developed their own norms for translations of Scripture.68 The data cited above provides some further support for this hypothesis.
LXX scholars have argued that the
a) The use of a genitive before its antecedent in Greek when rendering a Hebrew construct state:
Gen 21:16
מטחוי קשת —τόξου βολήν “bowshot”71Job 13:26
עונות נעורי —νεότητος ἁµαρτίας “the iniquities of my youth”b) The word order in cardinal numbers. In Hebrew, the cardinal number is generally placed before the noun. In Greek, they may be placed after the noun.
Gen 8:10
שבעת ימים —ἡµέρας ἑπτά “seven days”72Job 42:12
ארבעה עשר אלף צאן וששת אלפים גמלים ואלף צמד בקר ואלף אתונות —πρόβατα µύρια τετρακισχίλια ,κάµηλοι ἑξακισχίλιαι ,ζεύγη βοῶν χίλια “fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen”
It is primarily the frequency with which such word order deviations appear, that is higher in Job than in the Pentateuch. In Genesis, 65 out of a total of 850 pronouns are prepositioned (i.e., less than 10%); in Job, that is 155 out of a total of 550 (about 30%). When it comes to prepositioned genitive nouns, Greek Genesis only has one example (i.e., Gen 21:16, cited above), whereas Greek Job has 18 cases.73 The above implies that the approach of the translator of Job can be seen as a development from the Pentateuchal translation style, just as the
At this point, the issue of translation technique intersects with the question of style. These two terms have often been confused in LXX studies.74 While translation technique describes the Greek in relation to the Hebrew, focusing on style approaches the LXX as a Greek text. The LXX Pentateuch as a whole reflects acceptable post-classical Greek usage, since postposition became more frequent even in non-translated texts, but there clearly is a stylistic effect of the translation technique that makes the Septuagint correspond more to a vernacular register than a highly literary one. We saw that in post-classical Greek, the use of prepositioned pronouns correlates to a higher register of post-classical Greek.75 The examples mentioned above show that the translator of Genesis was already sensitive to the desire to stylize the translation product, even within the bounds of translation-technical constraints. The result of the translation approach of Job is still focused on the Hebrew to the extent that the ratio in LXX Job does not simply correspond to literary post-classical Greek texts, as we saw above: In LXX Job, 70 percent of pronouns are postpositioned, whereas in Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, the sample taken as representative for post-classical Greek literature above, only 22 percent are in postposition. But, in relative terms within the LXX, the higher ratio of prepositioned pronouns in Job shows that the translator of Job more clearly aims at a higher register by increasing variation and including more prepositioned pronouns.76 His sense of style lies not only in the big words, but also in the details of pronominal placement. Different ratios for Septuagint translations and non-translated Greek texts are only to be expected: translation studies have shown that audiences do not expect the same of a composition and a translation, and the so-called law of interference is universal. Combining quantitative and qualitative data, however, points us to ways in which we can add much-needed nuance to the field of Septuagint studies, and shows us that the translation technique is not a sufficient explanation for any rendering, but that each rendering must be considered from a multicausal perspective.
5 Conclusion
This article has considered pronominal usage in the LXX against the background of post-classical Greek. Prepositioned pronouns in the LXX indicate that the translators were thoroughly familiar with natural Greek usage, mastered the language at a high level, and were sensitive to Greek register. I have considered in detail isomorphic renderings in Genesis that attest to high levels of pronominal competence through syntactic creativity. In doing so, I have shown that the translation approach and the translators’ Greek-language education levels are not linked one-to-one. After all, translation is a complex process governed by an array of factors.77 One of those factors, I argue, is existing translation practices. Considering data on pronominal usage in different LXX books allows us to make comparisons and draw careful inferences regarding translation approaches. Prepositioned pronouns already occur in the Pentateuch. In later translations, they either become more frequent, such as in Greek Job, or they disappear entirely, such as in Greek Ecclesiastes. Where translators of books such as Ecclesiastes, Ruth, and Song of Songs focus on the isomorphic dimension of the Pentateuchal approach, consequently reducing the occurrence of prepositioned pronouns, the translator of Job focused more on aspects of natural Greek usage, thus increasing the amount of prepositioning. In other words, seemingly contrasting translation approaches have similar roots in the translation of the Pentateuch. Different translators have simply put emphasis on different aspects of the Pentateuchal translation approach and as a result, their translation techniques evolved in different directions. This helps us to conceive of the Septuagint as one varied corpus, rather than seeing the traditionally “free” translations as odd. It also enables us to characterize LXX translations more accurately and, as such, to extend our understanding of Jewish translation practices in antiquity as well as to locate LXX books as Greek texts within the history of the Greek language.
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Hermans, Theo. Translation in Systems: Descriptive and Systemic Approaches Explained (Manchester: St. Jerome, 1999).
Horrocks, Geoffrey. “Clitics in Greek—A Diachronic View.” In Greek Outside Greece II, ed. Maria Roussou and Stavros Panteli (Athens: Diaspora Books for the Greek Language Research Group, 1990), 32–52.
Horrocks, Geoffrey. Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers, 2nd ed. (West Sussex: Wiley & Sons, 2010).
Janse, Mark. “Aspects of Bilingualism in the History of the Greek Language.” In Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Text, ed. James N. Adams, Mark Janse, and Simon Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 332–392.
Jannaris, Antonius J. A Historical Greek Grammar, Chiefly of the Attic Dialect as Written and Spoken from Classical Antiquity down to the Present Time (London: Macmillan, 1897; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1968).
Joüon, Paul, and Takamitsu Muraoka. A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 3rd repr. of 2nd ed. (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 2006).
Juola, Patrick. “How a Computer Program Helped Show J. K. Rowling wrote A Cuckoo’s Calling.” Scientific American (20 August 2013) via https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-a-computer-program-helped-show-jk-rowling-write-a-cuckoos-calling/ (last accessed on 29 October 2022).
Kälker, Friedrich. Quaestiones de elocutione Polybiana cum epimetro de hiatu in libris Diodori Siculi (Leipzig: Hirschfeld, 1880).
Kreuzer, Siegfried. “Origin and Development of the Septuagint in the Context of Alexandrian and Early Jewish Culture and Learning.” In The Bible in Greek: Translation, Transmission, and Theology of the Septuagint (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015), 3–46.
Lavidas, Nikolaos. “Accusative.” In Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, ed. Georgios K. Giannakis (Leiden: Brill, 2014) <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2214-448X_eagll_COM_00000004>.
Lee, John A.L. The Greek of the Pentateuch: Grinfield Lectures on the Septuagint 2011–2012 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Luiselli, Rafaelle. “Authorial Revision of Linguistic Style in Greek Papyrus Letters and Petitions (AD i–iv).” In The Language of the Papyri, ed. Trevor V. Evans and Dirk D. Obbink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 71–96.
Morgan, Teresa. Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Mosteller, Frederick, and David L. Wallace, Inference and Disputed Authorship: The Federalist (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1964; repr. Stanford: CSLI, 2007).
Moulton, James H. A Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. 1 Prolegomena, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1906).
Muraoka, Takamitsu. “Syntax of Some Types of Pronouns in the Greek Genesis.” Linguistic Studies 15 (1976), 45–59.
Muraoka, Takamitsu. A Syntax of Septuagint Greek (Leuven: Peeters, 2016).
Olsson, Bror. Papyrusbriefe aus der frühesten Römerzeit (Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 1925).
Orlinsky, Harry M. “Studies in the Septuagint of the Book of Job. Chapter II: The Character of the Septuagint Translation of the Book of Job.” Hebrew Union College Annual 29 (1958), 229–271.
Perkins, Larry. “The Pronominal Clitics and Other Pronouns in Greek Exodus—An Indicator of the Translator’s Intentionality.” Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies 45 (2012), 46–76.
Rabin, Chaim. “The Translation Process and the Character of the Septuagint.” Textus 6 (1968), 1–26.
Rossi, Eleonora, Michele Diaz, Judith F. Kroll, and Paola E. Dussias. “Late Bilinguals Are Sensitive to Unique Aspects of Second Language Processing: Evidence from Clitic Pronouns Word-Order.” Frontiers in Psychology 8 (2017). DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00342.
Satlow, Michael L. How the Bible Became Holy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
Schäffner, Christina. “The Concept of Norms in Translation Studies.” In Translation and Norms, ed. Schäffner (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1999), 1–9.
Soisalon-Soininen, Ilmari. “Die Wiedergabe des hebräischen Personalpronomens als Subjekt im griechischen Pentateuch.” In De Septuaginta: Studies in Honour of J.W. Wevers for His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Claude E. Cox and Albert Pietersma (Mississauga: Benben, 1984), 115–128.
Soisalon-Soininen, Ilmari. “Die Auslassung des Possessivpronomens im griechischen Pentateuch.” In Studia Orientalia memoriae Jussi Aro dedicata, ed. Francesco Pomponio (Helsinki: Societas Orientalis Fennica, 1984), 279–294.
Sollamo, Raija. Repetition of the Possessive Pronouns in the Septuagint (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995).
Sorace, Antonella. “Pinning Down the Concept of ‘Interface’ in Bilingualism.” Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 1 (2011), 1–33.
Swete, Henry B., and Richard R. Ottley. An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914).
Tanz, Christine. Studies in the Acquisition of Deictic Terms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Tenhunen, Katri. “The Renderings of the Hebrew Preposition ל in Predicate Expressions Denoting Transition and Becoming Something in LXX Genesis and Exodus.” In Scripture in Transition: Essays on the Septuagint, Hebrew Bible, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honour of Raija Sollamo, ed. Anssi Voitila and Jutta Jokiranta (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 1–16.
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Wifstrand, Albert. “A Problem Concerning the Word Order in the New Testament.” Studia Theologica 3 (1949), 172–184.
Wifstrand, Albert. “Die Stellung der enklitischen Personalpronomen bei den Septuaginta.” Årsberättelse, Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund (1949–1950), 44–70.
This article was written with the financial support of a FWF Esprit postdoctoral fellowship, hosted at the Paris Lodron University Salzburg.
See, e.g., Budwig, “Functional Approach”; Chiat, “Personal Pronouns”; Rossi et al., “Late Bilinguals”; Sorace, “Pinning Down”; Tanz, Studies in Acquisition.
For the Hebrew scriptural material, I use the text of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and for the Greek, the Göttingen-editions of the Septuagint (or, for those books for which there is no edition in this series, the 2006 edition by Rahlfs and Hanhart). The translations are based on NRSV and NETS, respectively, and have been revised by myself. For classical Greek authors, I have used the Loeb Classical Library editions, also with revised translations.
Note that for Gen 20:12, there are no textual variants recorded that bear on this construction. In Gen 24:67, a textual variant is
Cf. Joüon and Muraoka, Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 509.
The phrase
For the sake of completeness, I also briefly want to address the rendering of
Moulton, Grammar, 84–85; Swete and Ottley, Introduction, 307; Blass and Debrunner, Grammatik, 74–75 (§278).
Jannaris, Historical Greek Grammar, §1399; Muraoka, “Syntax,” 50–51; Swete and Ottley, 307.
According to Sollamo, Repetition, 2–3, who refers to Moulton, Grammar, 84–85.
Moulton, 84–85. Modern research on the topic includes Lee, Greek, 122–27.
See, e.g., Campbell and Gibson, Reading Biblical Greek, 2: “It [i.e., Koine] was the language of the street throughout Alexander’s Empire.”
I follow the periodization of Bentein, Verbal Periphrasis, 6.
See the excellent description in Horrocks, Greek, 79–123.
See Evans, “Approaches.”
See, respectively, Wifstrand, “Stellung”; Janse, “Aspects of Bilingualism”; Lee, Greek, 123–27.
Janse, 380.
E.g., Sollamo, Repetition.
Dhont, “Multicausality.”
Evans, “Approaches,” 26.
Horrocks, Greek, 109. See also Dik, Word Order, 32.
I define an isomorphic translation as a translation that adheres to the form of the Hebrew text and thus reflects formal aspects of the Hebrew such as word order and quantitative representation.
Horrocks, Greek, 104 and 107.
This and other examples can be found in Kälker, Quaestiones, 273–74.
For a clear, diachronic discussion of the development of clitics in Greek, see particularly Horrocks, “Clitics.” See also Dik, Word Order, 31–51; Dover, Greek Word Order, 12–19; Goldstein, Classical Greek Syntax; van Emde Boas et al., Grammar, 704–6.
Example borrowed from Horrocks, Greek, 108.
Goldstein, Classical Greek Syntax, 4–6.
Dover, Greek Word Order, 15–19; Horrocks, “Clitics,” 35–43.
Example borrowed from van Emde Boas et al., Grammar, 705–6.
Horrocks, “Clitics,” 39–40.
Example borrowed from Horrocks, 39.
Horrocks, 32–43; Dover, Greek Word Order, 12–19; van Emde Boas et al., Grammar, 704–6.
Goldstein, Classical Greek Syntax, 4–6; Horrocks, 38 and 43–44.
Horrocks, Greek, 173.
Olsson, Papyrusbriefe.
Wifstrand, “Problem,” 179.
Wifstrand, 178. See also Luiselli, “Authorial Revision.”
Luiselli, “Authorial Revision.” See also Janse, “Aspects of Bilingualism,” 380; Wifstrand, 178–79.
Wifstrand, 180.
Janse, “Aspects of Bilingualism,” 379–80; Muraoka, Syntax of Septuagint Greek, 476–78 and 633–35; Wifstrand, “Stellung,” 44. See also Soisalon-Soininen, “Wiedergabe”; Soisalon- Soininen, “Auslassung” (both repr. in Studien zur Septuaginta-Syntax).
Dhont, “Multicausality.”
E.g., Gen 3:5 (noun) and 29:32 (verb); Exod 1:14 (noun) and 2:3 (verb); Lev 4:34 (noun) and 10:18 (verb); Num 14:22 (noun) and 24:13 (verb); Deut 11:6 (noun) and 8:16 (verb).
The only case in the Pentateuch where the translator uses the reflexive possessive pronoun but does not preposition it is Exod 34:35.
See also Gen 16:3; 24:44; 32:2; 49:16; Exod 2:11; 18:1, 23, 27; 21:7; 32:27; 33:11; Num 1:52; Deut 24:16.
Other examples can be found in Lee, Greek, 123–27.
With regard to a similar phenomenon in Exodus, it has been said that “in such cases [i.e., cases where the prepositioning of the pronoun in Greek matches Hebrew word order] we cannot tell whether the location of the pronoun in the Greek translation is due to serial fidelity or a deliberate decision on the part of the translator to reflect Greek word order conventions” (Perkins, “Pronominal Clitics,” 47). The cases from Exodus all feature a change in syntax in the Greek, which indicates that the translator’s main concern was, in fact, Greek word order conventions. I would, however, question whether or not this reflects intentionality. It is possible that for a translator with a good command of Greek, adherence to Greek-language conventions would have come naturally or subconsciously.
See Horrocks, “Clitics,” 41–45.
In LXX studies, freedom is often defined in terms of the absence of the criteria of literalness, of which word order is one. See Barr, “Typology of Literalism”; Tov, Text-Critical Use, 22–25. A more systematic treatment of freedom is offered by van der Louw, Transformations (on word order, see 63–64).
See, e.g., Aejmelaeus, On the Trail, passim; van der Louw, 9.
A systematic analysis of the Greek rendering of this construction in LXX Genesis and Exodus is provided by Tenhunen, “Renderings.”
In Gen 50:18 we encounter an ellipsis of the verb, a form of
Janse, “Aspects of Bilingualism,” 380; Wifstrand, “Problem,” 178–79. See also Luiselli, “Authorial Revision.”
The rendering of
Casevitz, “D’Homère aux historiens.”
Cribbiore, Gymnastics of Mind; Morgan, Literate Education.
Compare also Aitken, “Rhetoric and Poetry,” 72–73.
See, e.g., the seminal study by Mosteller and Wallace, Inference and Disputed Authorship, and the computer program designed by Patrick Juola at Duquesne University to conduct extensive stylistic analyses, called Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program. This program looks at, among other things, the hundred most common words used in texts (including articles and prepositions) as a basis for the analysis and categorization of texts and authorship attribution (see https://github.com/evllabs/JGAAP). It was used to argue that the novel A Cuckoo’s Calling, published under the name Robert Galbraith (London: Sphere Books, 2013), was in fact written by Joanne K. Rowling; see Juola, “How Computer Program Helped.”
Janse, “Aspects of Bilingualism,” 383.
Compare also, e.g., Aitken, “Homeric Rewriting,” 521–52.
Wifstrand, “Stellung,” 50–54.
The data I provide for Job differ from those provided by Wifstrand, 49, because I do not take into account asterisked material. For methodological considerations regarding the Old Greek of Job, see Dhont, Style and Context, 28–33.
Wifstrand, “Stellung,” 45.
E.g., Aejmelaeus, Parataxis, 164; Barr, “Typology of Literalism,” 26; Rabin, “Translation Process,” 20–22; Satlow, How Bible Became Holy, 158–59.
See in particular Lee, Greek.
Note that even in the book that is traditionally regarded as the most “literal” translation among the Pentateuch books, namely Leviticus, we find the same type of pronominal rendering discussed above in reference to Genesis, e.g., in Lev 26:12:
Schäffner, “Concept of Norms,” 1. Norms suggest that translating is a complex socio-cultural activity. As a result, it is reductionist to describe translation along a single axis of literal-to-free. See Hermans, Translation in Systems, 76. Recognizing norms in translation opens the door to multiple causation in LXX studies. On translational norms in LXX scholarship, see Dhont, Style and Context, 48–65.
Aitken, “Septuagint and Egyptian Translation.”
Dhont, Style and Context; Dhont, “Comprehensive Explanation.”
See, e.g., Gentry, Asterisked Material, 497; Kreuzer, “Origin and Development,” 23.
E.g., Orlinsky, “Studies II”; Cox, “Job,” 390.
Three manuscripts from the tenth century and later included in the critical apparatus have
The order
For an overview and discussion, see Dhont, Style and Context, 99–101.
For a discussion, see Dhont, 40–41.
Janse, “Aspects of Bilingualism,” 380; Wifstrand, “Problem,” 178–79. See also Luiselli, “Authorial Revision.”
At the same time, the translator of Job uses Septuagintal constructions, some of which originated in the Pentateuch. See Dhont, Style and Context, 132–40.
See Dhont, Style and Context.
