How different are Septuagint and New Testament greek?

[josephback]

If I learn the latter wil I be able to read the former?

[Salvatore123]

The Septuagint is the OLD TESTAMENT in Greek - not the New Testament.

If you can understand Koine Greek that was spoken from around 300 BC to 300 AD), you would probably be able to interpret some words, but not many.

[josephback]

Originally Posted by Salvatore123

The Septuagint is the OLD TESTAMENT in Greek - not the New Testament.

If you can understand Koine Greek that was spoken from around 300 BC to 300 AD), you would probably be able to interpret some words, but not many.

Ok.

My brother knows Hebrew. Maybe I'll rely on him.

[Rejoice Always]

If you learn Koine Greek, you'll be able to understand the Septuagint (OT in Koine Grk) and the NT.

Or you could learn Latin and read the Vulgate.

[pgepps]

Yeah, not sure what Salvatore's answer was meant to convey. The Greek of the Septuagint is common Greek (koine Greek), as is the Greek of the New Testament. There will be some differences in usage, but far fewer than between the Greek of Homer or Aeschylus and Biblical Greek.

But by all means, do rely on good Hebrew-language scholarship as well. And don't miss a chance to learn the Latin! :-)

[josephback]

Originally Posted by Rejoice Always

If you learn Koine Greek, you'll be able to understand the Septuagint (OT in Koine Grk) and the NT.

Or you could learn Latin and read the Vulgate.

I want to learn Latin, but more to read encyclicals and such At any rate, learning New Testament Greek is enough of a challenge for now. This is my second real attempt, and last time I went too fast. Didn't sufficiently memorize the prepositions or pronouns.

[Rejoice Always]

Originally Posted by josephback

I want to learn Latin, but more to read encyclicals and such At any rate, learning New Testament Greek is enough of a challenge for now. This is my second real attempt, and last time I went too fast. Didn't sufficiently memorize the prepositions or pronouns.

I find it challenging enough to read them in English!

[Salvatore123]

I hope you did not read my post as one trying to discouraging you from learning something new - I did not mean that at all.

I was simply pointing out that by learning Greek in the NT would not go a long way to learning Greek in the OT.

I just did not want you to get frustrated without realizing the NT and OT were written in two different "kinds" of Greek . . . that's all

[Rejoice Always]

Originally Posted by Salvatore123

I just did not want you to get frustrated without realizing the NT and OT were written in two different "kinds" of Greek . . . that's all

Since the Septuagint and the NT were written in Koine Greek, what are the differences?

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by josephback

If I learn the latter wil I be able to read the former?

Personally I think that there isn't much of a difference. Sure, there's this gap of at least a couple of centuries, but the fact is, many of the NT authors have AFAIK consciously adopted and alluded to the language of the OT via the Septuagint in their works (parts of which weren't in 'perfect' Greek anyway: some books were translated literally from the Hebrew and so retained some Semiticisms), so there's this connection. For a more concrete example, it's very much like trying to make allusions and references to the English of say, the King James Version.

There would only be a huge difference if you try to read Homer (Homeric Greek) alongside Aristotle (Attic Greek), the gospels (Koine), the Digenes Akritas (Medieval) or Zorba the Greek (Modern).

[Salvatore123]

Strictly speaking, the Koine Greek of the OT and the Koine Greek of the NT are not the same.

One must remember that the Koine Greek of the OT (Septuagint) was a TRANSLATION of Hebrew and Aramaic INTO Greek by Semitic scholars.

The Greek of the NT was directly composed into Greek (except, possibly, Matthew - scholars debate whether Matthew was originally composed in Hebrew/Aramaic or Greek).

Although, as some have said, there may not be MAJOR differences between the two, sufficient differences exist that cause fundmentalist protestants to argue against the Catholic position (which is one of the arguments for the inclusion of the deuterocanonicals as biblical) that Jesus and the Apostles were referring to the Septuagint when they quoted OT scripture.

There are several websites (I don't have the cites handy at this time) that demonstrate that the wording used by Christ and the Apostles were most definitely taken from the Septuagint version of the OT and NOT the Hebrew/Aramaic version of the OT. This is but one argument of why the Catholic version of the OT is correct and the protestant version is not.

Of course, Catholics then have to defend why the Septuagint is a valid basis to argue for inclusion of the 7 OT books we have that the protestants don't, when the Septuagint not only has the 7 OT books catholics have and protestants do not, but the Septuagint also has several other books that we catholics do not recognize as canonical. But this is for another discussion.

P.S. - an example of how differences arise when one is translating from one language into another vs. composing/writing in a language is that some languages simply do not have words that have literal counterparts in the translation. This occurs most often in english regarding the use of male/female pronouns. The english language does not have one first person pronoun that covers male and female, whereas other languages do. We either use (1) male, to refer to both (the traditional), (2) male or female (which becomes lengthy and tedious), and (3) male and/or female (which, from the perspective of english composition, is abhorrent).

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by Salvatore123

Strictly speaking, the Koine Greek of the OT and the Koine Greek of the NT are not the same.

One must remember that the Koine Greek of the OT (Septuagint) was a TRANSLATION of Hebrew and Aramaic INTO Greek by Semitic scholars.

I think its more proper to say that the Septuagint is not so much a ready-made set but a collection of different translations of different Scriptural books. And since they were probably made at different times by different translators (in a period between the 4th-1st century BC), the quality of translation ranges from the highly literal to the paraphrased. Of course a few books which were eventually included were apparently original compositions in Greek (like 2 Maccabees).

I should warn about projecting modern ideas of a fixed, closed canon of Scripture at this time. While the Torah was held by every Jew to be authoritative and people already had pretty good guesses about the Prophets and a few Writings, the 'canon' (I'm using it in a loose sense here) was far from being closed: people could conceivably consider other books as authoritative (deutero-canonical) and question some books that were in this de facto 'canon'. The closing of the canon came with the advance in the technology of the codex. Heretofore the norm was for different writings to be written in different scrolls (or later, codices). And not every community would have had a 'full set' of all the writings considered to be of importance. Very often local synagogues (and churches would have owned only those Scriptures that they 'need' (the popular ones which were read more often): a Torah scroll, some Prophets (Isaiah seems to have been a mainstay), and a few Writings (like the Psalms). Or one could use alternatives like the so-called testimonia: a collection of different Scriptural quotes, usually centered around a given theme. More convenient and cheaper than buying and keeping different scrolls.

Although, as some have said, there may not be MAJOR differences between the two, sufficient differences exist that cause fundmentalist protestants to argue against the Catholic position (which is one of the arguments for the inclusion of the deuterocanonicals as biblical) that Jesus and the Apostles were referring to the Septuagint when they quoted OT scripture.

There are several websites (I don't have the cites handy at this time) that demonstrate that the wording used by Christ and the Apostles were most definitely taken from the Septuagint version of the OT and NOT the Hebrew/Aramaic version of the OT.

This is what I'm talking about: the NT authors do not just quote, but also allude to the OT via the LXX - which could be obscured in some translations. That being said, while most OT quotations/allusions in the NT are taken from the Septuagint, there are a few exceptions to the rule.

That being said, I've always been confused with the claim that 'Jesus quoted the LXX.' The apostles I can understand, but I'm under the impression that Jesus would likely have spoken and taught mainly in Aramaic. Isn't it possible that He quoted Scripture using the Hebrew or Aramaic translations, but when the NT authors wrote about Jesus quoting Scripture they mostly just used what was readily available instead of translating from scratch?

[Southwell]

Originally Posted by josephback

If I learn the latter wil I be able to read the former?

Legend, and or history tells us that Kone Greek Was developed by Alexander b4 he conquered the known world. Since he commissioned the 70 rabbis to translate the OT into Greek OT/NT same - Kone - differences only in idiom and usage like American and British English

AMDG

Southwell

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by Southwell

Legend, and or history tells us that Kone Greek Was developed by Alexander b4 he conquered the known world. Since he commissioned the 70 rabbis to translate the OT into Greek OT/NT same - Kone - differences only in idiom and usage like American and British English

AMDG

Southwell

It was actually Ptolemy II Philadelphos who had commissioned it according to the legend. And yes, Koine Greek first arose as a common dialect among Alexander the Great's army. Now though elements of Koine Greek took shape during the Classical Era, the post-Classical period of Greek is defined as beginning with Alexander's death in 323 BC.

And as Salvatore said the NT is less distinctively 'Semitic' in flavor than the LXX since they were original compositions, although there is still that influence.

Of course this is just a broad generalization, since as mentioned different books vary in quality. There's the Septuagint being originally an informal group of independent translations of biblical writings, while in the NT you have Luke's polished style and John's poetic language contrasting with Mark's more rough and colloquial writing and Revelation's terrible Greek.

[Credo ergo sum]

For the Septuagint you'll need a bigger vocabulary, but there is a special Septuagint lexicon out there. You'll want to look into that one.