Psalms of Lament (for “Scalding Tears”)

Psalms of Lament is a heartbreakingly beautiful collection of poetry. Weems alarmingly yet assuringly gets right down to business in her Preface:

This book is not for everyone. It is for those who weep and for those who weep with those who weep. It is for those whose souls struggle with the dailiness of faithkeeping in the midst of life’s assaults and obscenities. This book is for those who are living with scalding tears running down their cheeks.

Her Psalms are for those whose experiences are “painful, too painful for any of us to try fitting our souls into ten correct steps of grieving.” They come from experience: Weems unexpectedly lost her son (“the stars fell from my sky”) just after his 21st birthday.

Drawing on the great biblical lament tradition, Weems writes lament psalms of her own. David’s familiar structure of

“How can you leave me like this, God?”–>”Yet I will trust you”

is on display throughout the collection. As personal as Weems’s psalms are, like David’s and Jeremiah’s laments, they are universal and could be prayed by anyone who is lamenting.

If you read with an open heart, Weems’s laments can evoke tears at nearly every line. And it’s a profound Godward lament in which she engages: “Anger and alleluias careen around within me, sometimes colliding.” There’s no bitterness here, but neither is there a naïve attempt to placate reality (as if we could!) with boring pseudo-truths like, “Everything happens for a reason,” or, “God took her away because he needed her for his heavenly choir.” Here is Lament Psalm Twelve, one of the starker and more personal psalms, in its entirety:

O God, what am I going to do?
He’s gone–and I’m left
with an empty pit in my life.
I can’t think.
I can’t work.
I can’t eat.
I can’t talk.
I can’t see anyone.
I can’t leave my house.
Nothing makes any sense.
Nothing seems worth doing.

How could you have allowed this to happen?
I thought you protected your own!
You are the power:
Why didn’t you use it?
You are the glory,
but there was no glory in his death.
You are justice and mercy,
yet there was no justice, no mercy for him.
In his death there is no justice for me.

O God, what am I going to do?
I’m begging you to help me.
At least you could be merciful.
O God, I don’t remember a time
when you were not my God.
Turn back to me;
you promised.
Be merciful to me;
you promised.
Heal me;
you promised.
My heart is broken.
My mind is broken.
My body is broken.
Nothing works anymore.
Unless you help me
nothing will ever work again.

O Holy One, I am confident
that you will save me.
You are the one
who heals the brokenhearted
and binds their wounds.
You are the power
and the glory;
you are the justice
and mercy.
You are my God forever.

The six “I can’t” statements (“I can’t think. I can’t work. I can’t eat. I can’t talk. I can’t see anyone. I can’t leave my house.) evoke the monotony and hopelessness that the grieving one feels. Yet three times: you promised… you promised… you promised. Given the way the poem begins, the last stanza seems almost out of place. But it’s a move David made (forced himself to make) in his Psalms.

I only wonder if those who grieve will be ready to pray along to the end of each psalm with Weems, as her laments so often end with an affirmation of God’s promises. For those whose grief is acute, fresh, and numbing, such prayers may at the moment be impossible.

Yet Weems gives us language for when we need it most, for when words of any kind are impossible. A person in the throes of grief not yet be able to say, “Alleluias spin in my heart!” But she or he may want to be able to make such affirmations, if not now, then eventually. Weems offers wording for the griever to attempt that journey. In so doing she provides a pattern for lament that is true to the biblical tradition, true to life.

Psalms of Lament is a gift to the Church and to those who grieve. Pastors, campus ministers, youth ministers, and worship leaders would all do well to have copies on hand. While Weems seems to have composed her laments with the individual in view, I’m intrigued by the possibility of reading and praying these psalms in corporate worship settings. A funeral or a Sunday after a tragedy would be particularly appropriate times. Yet if we consider, as Weems notes, the possibility of weeping with those who weep, those who pray would do well not to wait until a tragedy to employ these psalms.

Weems’s prayers floored me. I had turned to her before. As I read her again I never made it very far without choking back tears. (In my better moments, I gave up on trying to choke them back.) The tears Weems evokes, though, are not just tears of sadness, but tears of hope in the God who “will put the stars back in the sky.”

Thanks to Westminster John Knox Press for the review copy. I am confident I’ll want to pick up additional copies of Psalms of Lament for others. You can preview a good deal of the book at Google Books here.

Göttingen in Logos is On Sale Friday

$369.95 for the Göttingen Septuagint in Logos Bible Software. It’s on sale for International Septuagint Day, all day Friday (midnight to midnight). If you click here, it adds to your cart, and you can purchase from there–whether you already have the academic discount or not. Marked down from $700.

I reviewed the Göttingen Septuagint in Logos here. Its product page is here.

The Göttingen Septuagint in Logos Bible software

Göttingen. Not just a city in Germany, but a word that instills awe and fear in the hearts of every student of the Septuagint who must eventually consult the set of Old Greek editions by that name.

Okay, that’s maybe a bit dramatic. I do suspect, however, that if one finds it challenging to learn how to read the leading critical edition of the Hebrew Bible–the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia or BHS–the Göttingen Septuagint will prove even more difficult to decipher.

Not impossible, though.

In celebration of International Septuagint Day Friday, here I review the Göttingen Septuagint in Logos Bible Software. The full name is Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum. It’s published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen, Germany. The Göttingen Septuagint has published over 20 volumes covering some 40 biblical books (counting the minor prophets as 12). Publication of additional volumes, while slow-going, is in progress.

The typical contents of a volume include:

The introduction (“Einleitung”)
The reconstructed Greek critical text (“Der kritische Text”)
The Source List (“Kopfleiste”) (not every Göttingen volume has this)
The First Critical Apparatus (“Apparat I”)
The Second Critical Apparatus (“Apparat II”)

In two previous posts I wrote a primer on how to read and understand the Göttingen Septuagint. In part 1 I wrote about the reconstructed Greek critical text and the source list (full post is here). In part 2 I explained how to understand the first critical apparatus, here. Each of those posts contains additional explication of Göttingen, so the one who is new to it may want to pause here to read more there. Having written at length about numbers 2-4 above, a future post will cover 1 (the introduction) and 5 (the second critical apparatus).

Logos is the only Bible software that has available all of the published volumes of the Göttingen Septuagint. Though Logos offers the set in 67 volumes, that corresponds to the 24 existing print volumes. This includes the 2004 Supplementum, which offers a “list of Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament,” sorted by date, region, writing material, and more, and which also cross-references various editors’ classifications of manuscripts against each other, so that differing systems can easily be compared.

There is, of course, the question of which Bible software to use in general. I’ve written about issues like layout, functionality, cost, and so on here, which includes both praises and critiques of Logos, Accordance, and BibleWorks. So what about Göttingen in Logos?

From what I’ve seen, the text of Göttingen in Logos is the most accurate digital text available. I am aware of others who have found typos in Göttingen for Logos, but based on a verse-by-verse read of Isaiah 1-11, I found just one error in Logos compared to the print text. The Accordance text of Göttingen for Isaiah, by contrast, had 14 spelling mistakes, misplaced words, or wrong inflections in that same span. This was a surprise to me, since Accordance aims to produce “research-grade” texts, a goal which sometimes means their texts take longer to complete than other software companies. (Accordance currently has some, but not all, of the Göttingen volumes that exist in print.) As of right now, as far as the actual critical text of Göttingen, Logos seems to be the best bet for consistent correspondence to the print text.

It’s easy to set up the critical text and both apparatuses in three separate areas in Logos, syncing them to scroll together. One can also easily add a tab with an English translation, Hebrew Masoretic text, and more, so as to use Göttingen in conjunction with other resources. Here’s how I use Göttingen in Logos (click for larger):

Assuming you have other versions of the Septuagint available in Logos (Rahlfs, Swete, etc.) you can use the Text Comparison feature (top right in the shot above) to see where the critical text of Göttingen differs from another Septuagint text. I’ve found this to be a useful and time-saving feature. (One can do the same with the Compare tool in Accordance, though there’s an unresolved issue with that tool that impacts use of Göttingen. [UPDATE: It’s now resolved.] Accordance’s comparison tool is, however, a bit more versatile with its “List Text Differences” feature.)

You can use the critical text as any other text in Logos–double-click on a word to look it up in a lexicon (I have LEH open at bottom center above), right-click to do a variety of other searches, word study, etc. It doesn’t take long to see how many times the Göttingen text uses a given word.

As to the critical apparatuses, you can mouse over blue hyperlinked abbreviations to find out what they stand for. Or you can have an Information window open, as here (click to enlarge):

The apparatus abbreviates Latin and German, which is what the Information tab shows. (The Göttingen introductions are in German.) Miles Van Pelt’s short chart (in English) is helpful with the Latin (pdf here). And there is an English translation of the Pentateuch introductions available here (with Exodus being the most complete one). But there is no mechanism in Logos to translate the German or to decipher the apparatus. Accordance is the same here, and neither Logos nor Accordance offer a German-English dictionary, so one couldn’t even link to that. The general academic assumption, of course, is that by the time someone is using Göttingen in their study of the Septuagint, they are already learning (or have learned) German. (Ah, but academic assumptions….) I’m not sure it’s fair to fault Logos (or Accordance) for this lack, but a German-English dictionary as a future module would help a lot of users.

Speaking of the introduction, the introductions to each volume are nicely laid out with plenty of hyperlinks for easy reference:

You’ll have to know German to get very far in the introduction, but note the link above to English translations for some of the introductions. Also, though one ought not to rely too much on it, Google Translate takes the user surprisingly far if she or he simply copies from Logos and pastes here.

One thing lacking in the Logos Göttingen is the Kopfleiste (Source List). Not every print volume has it, but the five Pentateuch volumes, Ruth, Esther, and others do. Accordance, by contrast, includes this feature for the Göttingen volumes that have it. The Kopfleiste makes the most sense in a print edition (since it is a list of manuscripts cited on a given page), but someone doing serious textual research using Göttingen in Logos would still feel its lack. No word yet from Logos on if/when that will come available.

What about searching the apparatuses? Less than ideal here, though not unmanageable. If I want to see every time the First Critical Apparatus in Isaiah cites the Minuscule manuscript 301, I right click to “Search this resource,” but the results are grouped as follows (click to enlarge):

To my knowledge it is not possible to expand these results in this screen (pane) to see every use of MS 301, which is what I really want to be able to do. (If I am mistaken and find a way, I’ll post here again.) The shortcut command+F (in Mac) or control+F (in Windows) is an alternate way to search a text in Logos. The apparatuses are searchable using this keyboard shortcut; in this case all the instances of MS 301 are highlighted as you scroll through the apparatus, so you can still see all its occurrences.

Accordance, by contrast, offers multiple ways of searching an apparatus: by references, titles, manuscripts (most helpful), Hebrew, Greek, or Latin content, and more. This makes Accordance’s apparatuses really usable and easy to navigate in multiple ways.

The price for the Logos Göttingen is a bargain. I mean, $700 is not cheap, but considering that the same sum would get you just a few volumes of the print edition, it’s a great deal. The academic program gives you a significant discount in this case, too.

By the way, a tip for using Göttingen efficiently in Logos: Brian Davidson of LXXI has a neat way to set up a Logos layout to include multiple Göttingen books. (They list in the Logos library all as separate volumes, not as one Septuagint.) His suggestion (here) is a good way to go.

All in all, the Logos Göttingen is a worthwhile investment, especially if you primarily want Göttingen for the critical text itself, and for the chance to compare it with other Septuagint editions. The lack of a Kopfleiste is not an immense loss, but the inability to search apparatuses by multiple search fields (and with expandable results) is a drawback. So the potential purchaser will just have to consider what his or her needs are. Accordance nails it in apparatus searching, but their critical text in Isaiah had more mistakes than one who needs an accurate text would like.

Logos has a fully digitized Göttingen Septuagint, so if you need access to everything that exists in print, know that this is the only Bible software where you can get it. Accordance continues production on their volumes and, as far as I know, will see the project through to completion. (Though see here and here, a project of Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint Studies.)

In Logos it’s convenient to be able to scroll through all of the Göttingen Septuagint with additional resources open and a click away. The electronic availability (and affordability) of Göttingen is a significant step forward in text criticism and Septuagint studies.

Many thanks to Logos Bible Software for the review copy of the Göttingen Septuagint, given to me for the purposes of review, but with no expectation as to the content of my review. Accordance provided me with their Göttingen Isaiah for purposes of comparison.

New Mark Kozelek track (Sun Kil Moon+Album Leaf)

Like the rest of the entire human race, I have trouble waiting for things I want. I especially have trouble waiting for new music I know has been recorded but not yet released to said human race. This morning I checked the Caldo Verde Records site in hopes of hearing some new Mark Kozelek. I was not disappointed.

If you click on the image above you can listen to a new track from the Koz’s collaboration with The Album Leaf. (Language warning for last portion of song: much as I love the man’s music and most of his words, there are the occasional, less-than-edifying lyrics.)

I reacted here to the idea of a Sun Kil Moon collaboration with The Album Leaf. I like this track better than the first (to which I linked in my earlier post). Still not much by way of guitar, but that will come with Koz’s February release of a covers album.

This new track had me going until the end (see comment on lyrics above). I’ll try to post a cute baby picture later as recompense.

Review of Zondervan’s Theologian Trading Cards

They’re a real thing, and they’re the best conversation starter I’ve brought into my office in a long time.

Creator Norman Jeune III came up with the idea of Theologian Trading Cards in seminary. It’s a good one. I remember, as a kid, memorizing and quoting statistics and quizzing friends with the back of baseball cards. I could tell you how many home runs and runs batted in Andrew Dawson of the Chicago Cubs had had for the last five years. It’s a good size for a learning tool.

The product description from Zondervan reads:

Patterned after the all-American baseball card, Theologian Trading Cards provide essential information about the major teachers, leaders, and trouble-makers throughout the history of the Church. At a glance you will have access to information regarding 288 important figures in church history, including when and where they lived, their contribution to the church, and enduring significance.

Jeune has organized the cards into 15 teams, each grouped by chronological or historical or theological commonality. The “Orthodoxy Dodgers” (great name) are the church’s heretics. Marcion (85-160), for example, “created his own canon [of Scripture], exlcuding the Old Testament and introducing numerous edits, compilations, and omissions to the New Testament.” The “St. James Padres” team consists of early church fathers: Ambrose, Augustine, Cyril, Justin, and so on.

The cards aren’t really “trading cards,” since there’s no trading to be done–you can only buy it as a complete set. But they’re just as fun as the baseball cards I collected as a kid… well, if you think theology is fun. (Which, of course, it is!) Jeune introduces a creative medium in a field that can be challenging for students. There are a lot of facts, figures, and beliefs to keep straight in a basic church history course.

The front of the card consists of a photo (except where none is available; see below), the name of the figure, and his or her team. The back of each card has dates and two sections: biographical and significance. Of course it would be impossible to cover everything (even all the significant things) in each figure’s life on just the back of a card. But Jeune does a good job of hitting the main points.

And the cards are fun. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything on my office coffee table picked up as much as these cards. Folks want to leaf through and see who’s there, what is written about them, etc. I’d imagine that they aid exam preparation, too. The handy size makes them easy to stuff in backpack, or put a small stack in a purse for on-the-go quizzing.

Of course a set like this is prone to criticism–which figures Jeune includes, which ones he doesn’t, how much detail he includes, what detail he leaves out. There is somewhat decent representation of more than just white males–users of this set will find cards for Amy Carmichael, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Teresa of Avila… though still one wants for more. There is James Cone, but no MLK? Julian of Norwich, but no Perpetua? This must be impossible to get right in a set like this, but those omissions are noticeable. I’m holding out for a “booster pack” to add to the set.

Another quibble I have is that while each of the 15 teams has a checklist, there is no comprehensive checklist for the set. Even if spread out over a few cards, it would be useful to be able to quickly see all the persons that Jeune includes in the set. (Perhaps he will upload a list online in the future? If so, I’ll post here.)

A distraction in the set is the number of cards that have a blank silhouette with a question mark on it. For these the publisher was not able to procure an image. There is a good reason for this, and it’s worth reading Jeune’s explanation here. All the same, an original sketch, however basic, would have been preferred. (Remember those Facebook friends who joined but didn’t add a profile pic for months? It looks like that, only with the super-imposed question mark.)

The idea of Theologian Trading Cards is a great one, though. The cards aim to be “a fun way to learn church history and theology.” They are that, but I hope future editions or additional sets/booster packs will be more thorough in covering all the areas and players in church history and theology. Until then, this is still a set worth having. Jeune’s layout makes it easy to fill in the gaps in one’s knowledge of church history and theologians.

Thanks to Zondervan for the opportunity to review the cards gratis. Find the cards here at Amazon or at their Zondervan product page. See here for a few sample cards.

3 Great Off-the-Beaten Path Books about Romans

Over the past couple of months I’ve spent a good deal of time in Romans 4. The more I study Paul’s magnum opus, the more amazed I am by all that he packed in and the way he did it.

In my reading and writing on Romans, I’ve come across some great monographs. Here are three, with a sample quote from each. I’ll do three more tomorrow.

Pablo T. Gadenz, Called from the Jews and from the Gentiles: Pauline Ecclesiology in Romans 9-11. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009.)

In sum, Christians in the Church, stemming from Jewish and Gentile origins, can rejoice together in the salvation available by faith in Christ to all without distinction. “Rejoice, O nations, with his people!” (Rom 15:10). With humility, they can marvel at God’s plan for Israel, of which the Gentile-Christians in particular are beneficiaries. “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!” (Rom 11:33) (p. 328)

Israel Kamudzandu, ‪Abraham As Spiritual Ancestor: ‪A Postcolonial Zimbabwean Reading of Romans 4. (Leiden: Brill, 2010.)

In Romans 4, Paul elevates Abraham as an ancestor of a new Israel, which includes Jews and Gentiles. …In this new situation, Paul gives a new meaning to the Torah as an integrator of all nations of the world. (p. 98)

Philip Francis Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009.) I love this assessment. Before reading Esler, this is just how I had begun to understood Paul’s use of Abraham in Romans 4. Though he expresses it more eloquently than I could:

Above all, [the account of Abraham in Romans 4] carries forward Paul’s aim of recategorizing Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers in Rome into the new ingroup identity and does so by mobilizing collective memories to explain how both subgroups claim ancestry from Abraham in the same way—righteousness credited to them through faith. Abraham thus becomes the prototype of the new identity, portrayed by Paul in a manner peculiar to the needs of this communication and in the face of many rival construals of this patriarch that were possible in the ongoing processing of the past to serve the needs of the present. (p. 194)

Three more recommendations tomorrow.

Romans: Not Really about Justification by Faith?

Romans…is not a theological tractate on justification by faith. It is not a pastoral letter dealing with the specific problems in Rome, as the Corinthian correspondence is with respect to Corinth. …Romans is Paul’s account of how his mission to the Gentiles was grounded not only in his call to be Apostle to the Gentiles but also in Scripture, the only Scripture the first Christians had, that is, the Old Testament.

–Krister Stendahl, Final Account: Paul’s Letter to the Romans

I didn’t need much convincing of the first sentence above. To be sure, Romans is a “theological tractate on justification by faith,” but it is not merely that. To read Romans as only about justification is to miss much of what Paul was about. But perhaps more on my own views about that later. For now, I offer here a review of Krister Stendahl’s Final Account: Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Fortress Press, 1995).

Final Account is a collection of Stendahl’s “notes and musings rescued from tapes.” That the five chapters contained here are based on lectures makes for engaging reading. Stendahl goes through Romans in more or less chapter order. Conspicuous is the absence of any treatment of Romans 16. At one point Stendahl speaks of “Romans 1-15” as a “think-piece epistle,” suggesting perhaps that he–along with other scholars–thinks chapter 16 does not really belong in the book.

The “final account” in Stendahl’s title is “Paul’s account of how his mission to the Gentiles fit into God’s total mission to the world, the tikkun, the mending of the creation…and hence particularly the redemption of Israel.” This account ends up being “final,” because Stendahl understands Paul’s execution at Rome as happening before he could write any more letters. Stendahl adds:

Consequently, Romans is central to our understanding of Paul, not because of its doctrine of justification, but because the doctrine of justification is here in its original and authentic setting: as an argument for the status of Paul’s Gentile converts on the model of Abraham (Romans 4).

In chapter 1, “Paul and Israel,” Stendahl notes Israel and its response to the Messiah as a primary concern of Paul: “How could it be that, while his mission to the Gentiles on the specific orders of Messiah grew spectacularly, Israel itself did not respond?” Chapter 2, “A Particular Letter and Sin Universal” covers Romans 1:1-3:20 and 15. Here Stendahl pushes harder against Lutherans who see only justification by faith in Romans, and against Calvinists who see it as just the breeding grounds for “the proper doctrine of predestination.” Instead, he contends, Romans addresses how Gentiles and Jews in that community are to relate to one another. Abraham is a key figure in the issue of Jew-Gentile relations, and “Paul’s Exegetical Find” of Stendahl’s chapter 3 is that Abraham was an uncircumcised Gentile in Genesis 15 when God “reckoned [his faith] to him as righteousness.”

Chapter 4 of Final Account addresses “Missiological Reflections by a Former Zealot,” covering the key section of Romans 9-11. Paul “thinks and feels and worries with his mind” about “his fellow Jews.” He wants them to “come toward salvation.” Stendahl highlights that Paul both identifies with Gentiles in Rome, including them in the salvation story, yet also warns them to not become arrogant–they are, after all, grafted in. Imperialism in missions today, by extension, should be avoided. Chapter 5 covers Romans 12-14: “Intellectual Worship and Respect for Conviction.” Here Stendahl looks at the “ethical admonitions” that Paul gives, which follow on the heels of the “great theological thought” Paul had had about justification.

Stendahl is to be lauded for situating justification by faith in a larger context. He compellingly provides evidence that Paul was concerned about the salvation of Israel, the place of the Gentiles, and his mission–and concerned about justification by faith as just a subset of those larger concerns.

On the other hand, Stendahl occasionally goes too far with his thesis:

In any case, Paul is moving West. He has plans to go to Spain, and on the way he hopes to visit Rome. That is clearly the reason for his writing.

It’s a reason for his writing, perhaps even the occasion. But to say that Paul wrote Romans with the sole purpose of explicating his Gentile mission goes too far, in my view. It’s all of the above.

Stendahl quotes Scripture rather loosely at times. He acknowledges as much: “Most of the references to the text are my rather free translations and paraphrases.” And the short book comes with the entirety of Romans 1-16 in the RSV, printed at back. Being able to look up verses handily is a great feature here. But the reader quickly finds that she or he will want to double-check such “free translations” against a relatively literal translation like the RSV.

One can easily, then, seek to corroborate Stendahl’s notion that in chapter 15, “[Paul] stressed with words upon words that he had no interest in telling the Romans anything–how to live, or how to think or what to do.” The “urge” or “appeal” (RSV) of Romans 12:1 and the “I have written to you very boldly” (RSV) of 15:15 are just two of a number of places that make the reader wonder how Stendahl came up with that read of the text. He rightly notes that Rome was not a church planted by Paul, and that he wrote to give a “final account” of his mission to the Gentiles. But this does not preclude Paul’s telling the Romans at times “how to live, or how to think or what to do.”

The reader of Final Account will have to read it with caution. But Stendahl offers a refreshing read of Romans, that at least intends to stay close to the biblical text (even if it doesn’t always). His exploration of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles and concern for Israel’s salvation help the student of Paul to more fully appreciate Romans. And his insistence on setting the doctrine of justification by faith in a larger context will be a good challenge to many who so appreciate Paul’s magnum opus.

My thanks to the folks at Fortress Press for the review copy. Find Final Account at Amazon here, or at its product page on the Fortress Press site here.

How to Read and Understand the Göttingen Septuagint: A Short Primer, part 2 (Apparatus)

The one who is serious about getting at the earliest attainable text of the Hebrew Bible will eventually find herself or himself face-to-face with a page like this:

Genesis 1 in Göttingen LXX — Genesis 1 in the Göttingen Septuagint

The Göttingen Septuagint is the largest scholarly edition of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Its full title is Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen,

Septuaginta.band 1

Germany publishes the series, which includes more than 20 volumes covering some 40 biblical books (counting the minor prophets as 12). Various editors are working toward the publication of additional volumes.

But if good coffee, fine wine, or well-aged cheese requires work on the part of the one taking it in, the Göttingen LXX makes its own demands of the reader who would use it. The critical apparatuses on each page have Greek, abbreviated Greek, abbreviated Latin, and other potentially unfamiliar sigla. The introductions in each volume are in German.

How to read and understand the Göttingen Septuagint, then? To begin, here is the sample page from above:

Genesis 1 in Göttingen LXX_key — Genesis 1:4-9, reprinted with publisher’s permission

There are four main parts to the page, marked in the image above by the numbers 1 through 4.

The reconstructed Greek critical text (“Der kritische Text”)
The Source List (“Kopfleiste”) (note: not every Göttingen volume has this)
The First Critical Apparatus (“Apparat I”)
The Second Critical Apparatus (“Apparat II”)

In part 1 of my primer, I covered numbers 1 and 2 above. To summarize a bit:

1. With verse references in both the margin and in the body of the text, the top portion of each page of the Göttingen Septuagint is the editorially reconstructed text of each biblical book.

2. The Kopfleiste comes just below the text and above the apparatuses. Wevers notes it as a list of all manuscripts and versions used, listed in the order that they appear in the apparatus on that page. A fragmentary textual witness is enclosed in parenthesis.

Next are the two critical apparatuses. In his introduction to Genesis (conveniently translated into English here, from which I quote), editor John William Wevers speaks of the critically reconstructed text as an “approximation of the original” and “hopefully the best which could be reconstructed.” I previously noted:

[Göttingen] editors have viewed and listed the readings of many manuscripts and versions. The critical apparatuses are where they list those readings, so the user of Göttingen can see other readings as they compare with the critically reconstructed text. (Because the Göttingen editions are critical/eclectic texts, no single manuscript will match the text of the Göttingen Septuagint.)

The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) notes (from here):

The Göttingen Septuagint features two apparatuses (as does the Larger Cambridge Septuagint), the first for LXX/OG textual evidence proper and the second for so-called hexaplaric evidence, i.e. “rival” translations/revisions of the translated LXX/OG (such as circulated under the labels “Theodotion,” “Aquila,” and “Symmachus”), preserved largely through the influence of Origen’s Hexapla. For LXX/OG research the importance of both apparatuses is second only to the critical text itself.

The challenge, of course, is that to make sense of the apparatuses and their abbreviations.

3. The First Critical Apparatus (“Apparat I”)

The “textual evidence proper” consists of any readings that the editor deems as variant to the reconstructed text. The editors follow a consistent order in the witnesses they cite. (There is minor variation, volume to volume.) In Genesis Wevers writes:

The witnesses for a variant are always arranged in a set order: a) the uncial texts in alphabetic order; b) the papyri in numerical order; c) the witnesses of the O‘ mss [AKJ: the “hexaplaric group”]; d) the witnesses of the C‘’ mss [AKJ: the “Catena group”]; e) the remaining text families (comp Section B I above) in alphabetical order; f) the rest of the Greek evidence in the following order: N.T. witnesses, Ios [AKJ: Josephus], Phil [AKJ: Philo], followed by the rest of the Greek writers in alphabetic order; g) La (or the sub-groups, for ex. La^I La^s, etc.) [AKJ: Old Latin versions], followed by the other versions in alphabetic order; h) citations of the Latin Fathers, introduced by the sign Lat (these witnesses always stand in opposition to La or a sub-group of La); i) other witnesses or commentaries.

To look at an example of the first critical apparatus, Deuteronomy 6:5 in the Göttingen edition reads:

καὶ ἀγαπήσεις κύριον τὸν θεόν σου ἐξ ὅλης τῆς διανοίας σου καὶ ἐξ ὅλης τῆς ψυχῆς σου καὶ ἐξ ὅλης τῆς δυνάμεώς σου.

(And you shall love the Lord your God with all your mind and with all your soul and with all your strength.)

The apparatus for that verse, in part, has:

om καί 1° Arab Sa¹⁷ | αγαπησης 30; αγαπη σε 527 | κύριον τόν] bis scr 120* | om σου 1° Tht Dt^ap | ἐξ 1°—διανοίας] εν ολη τη καρδια Matth 22:37 |

With each unit broken up by line here, the apparatus gives this information about its manuscripts:

Arab and Sa¹⁷ omit (om) the first (1°) use of καί
30 has αγαπησης; 527 has αγαπη σε
120* has κύριον τόν written (scr) twice (bis)
Tht Dt^apomits (om) the first (1°) use of σου
From the first use (1°) of ἐξ through (—) the word διανοίας, Matthew 22:37 has rather (]) εν ολη τη καρδια

One has to go to the introduction for information about the manuscripts “Arab” (Arabic version), ” Sa¹⁷” (from the Sahidic version), “30” and “527” (minuscule manuscripts), “120*” (also a minuscule manuscript, where the asterisk * refers to “the original reading of a ms,” as opposed to a “correction”), and “Tht Dt^ap” (Tht=Theodoretus (“Cyrensis=Cyrrhensis”); Dt=his Quaestiones in Deuteronomium; ^ap refers, Wevers notes, “to readings (variants) in the apparatus of editions”).

Miles Van Pelt has produced a concise two-page summary of sigla and abbreviations. I offer appreciation and gratitude to Miles that I can link to that pdf here. That offers further instruction as to deciphering the apparatuses (both the first and second) in the Göttingen volumes. The introductions to given volumes contain the signs/symbols and abbreviations (“Zeichen und Abkürzungen”), as well.

Boromir had it right:

One Does Not Simply

So I’ll write about the Second Critical Apparatus (“Apparat II”) in a future post. Until then….

Thanks to Brian Davidson of LXXI for his helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this post and the part 1 that preceded it. He is not to be blamed for the inclusion of Boromir in this post.

Review of Beale’s Handbook at The Blog of the Twelve

I’ve just recently learned about The Blog of the Twelve. Based on what I’ve seen so far, it’s recommended reading, especially for folks with an interest in the Minor Prophets.

There is a good book review from that blog of G.K. Beale’s Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. (That book was a text for one of my classes this semester.) An excerpt:

The usefulness of this book can hardly be stated for those seeking to rightly handle the Scripture, whether student, pastor, or laity. Beale’s clear writing style, in addition to the uncharacteristic conciseness of the book, makes the method accessible to a wide audience. Furthermore, Beale, while emphasizing the indispensable value of learning the biblical languages, formats the book in such a way that those not familiar with Hebrew and Greek are able to profit just as well from the work.

Read the whole thing here.

Creating your own commentary in Accordance 10 (or just taking notes)

I’ve just this week gotten into a particular feature of Accordance Bible Software: the User Notes. As I’m doing some research and writing in the book of Romans right now, recording and storing my notes in Accordance itself is very easy–and fun.

I didn’t write about User Notes when I reviewed Accordance 10. It’s a standout feature, though, and very elegantly and smoothly produced by the developers.

In short, you can use User Notes to essentially create your own running commentary on the Bible–whether this is notes about various translations, insights into the original language, or thoughts about how a given text applies to you and the people with whom you are in community.

You can have the User Notes set up as a parallel text (i.e., in the image below, I can replace “GNT-T Notes” with my own notes) or as a tool in a different zone altogether. You can tie the tool to a text so that everything scrolls together verse-by-verse. This latter setup is how I prefer to work, as here (open image in new tab to see at full size):

User Notes Mark 1.2

Edit mode allows you to take notes on any verse. You simply go to a verse in the text, press the shortcut (command key + U), add your note, then click on update, and you’ve got a note. To edit an existing note, go to your notes that are in display mode, click and start typing. The edit window then opens.

You can automatically hyperlink any verse reference you list in a note. So in the “AKJV notes” that are in “display mode” above for Mark 1:2, I simply have to highlight Exodus 23:20, then click on “Make Link” for it to become hyperlinked. And as with other tools, it is easy to search notes by reference or content.

At present it is not possible to hyperlink to anything else in a note besides a verse. (So you can’t hyperlink to a Website, for example, though this would take you outside of the Accordance program anyway.) And live editing does not currently exist in User Notes (see here for more). But the ease with which I’ve been able to begin using and continue to make extensive use of the User Notes is commendable. I really like what Accordance has done here.

More details about User Notes can be found here in the Accordance online help files. And you can watch this video tutorial about the User Notes, too.

My full Accordance review is here.

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