Tag: Septuagint

Greek Isaiah in a Year, Week 2=Isaiah 1:26-2:15 (with text)

Isaiah 2:1-2

We had an active set of discussions during the first week of Greek Isaiah in a Year. We’re now up to 163 members in the Facebook group, which anyone can still join. A few folks have blogged about their reading, too (links forthcoming). Scroll through the Facebook group to see the kinds of things we’re talking about. Lots of great questions and comments already.

Tomorrow (Monday) begins week 2. Below is the schedule and text for the week, using again R.R. Ottley’s Book of Isaiah According to the Septuagint. (Find Ottley here on Amazon, here in Logos, and here as a free, downloadable pdf, since it’s public domain.)

Note that this week has a light day, with just two verses on Tuesday.

Monday, December 10: Isaiah 1:26-31

26 καὶ ἐπιστήσω τοὺς κριτάς σου ὡς τὸ πρότερον, καὶ τοὺς συμβούλους σου ὡς τὸ ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς· καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα κληθήσῃ Πόλις δικαιοσύνης, μητρόπολις πιστὴ Σιών. 27 μετὰ γὰρ κρίματος σωθήσεται ἡ αἰχμαλωσία αὐτῆς καὶ μετὰ ἐλεημοσύνης. 28 καὶ συντριβήσονται οἱ ἄνομοι καὶ οἱ ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἅμα, καὶ οἱ ἐγκαταλιπόντες τὸν κύριον συντελεσθήσονται· 29 διότι καταισχυνθήσονται ἐπὶ τοῖς εἰδώλοις αὐτῶν ἃ αὐτοὶ ἠβούλοντο, καὶ ἐπαισχυνθήσονται ἐπὶ τοῖς κήποις αὐτῶν ἃ ἐπεθύμησαν. 30 ἔσονται γὰρ ὡς τερέβινθος ἀποβεβληκυῖα τὰ φύλλα, καὶ ὡς παράδεισος ὕδωρ μὴ ἔχων· 31 καὶ ἔσται ἡ ἰσχὺς αὐτῶν ὡς καλάμη στιππύου, καὶ αἱ ἐργασίαι αὐτῶν ὡς σπινθῆρες πυρός, καὶ κατακαυθήσονται οἱ ἄνομοι καὶ οἱ ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἅμα, καὶ οὐκ ἔσται ὁ σβέσων.

Tuesday, December 11: Isaiah 2:1-2

2 1 Ὁ λόγος ὁ γενόμενος παρὰ Κυρίου πρὸς Ἠσαίαν υἱὸν Ἀμὼς περὶ τῆς Ἰουδαίας καὶ περὶ Ἰερουσαλήμ.

2 Ὅτι ἔσται ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις ἐμφανὲς τὸ ὄρος τοῦ Κυρίου, καὶ ὁ οἶκος τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπʼ ἄκρων τῶν ὀρέων, καὶ ὑψωθήσεται ὑπεράνω τῶν βουνῶν, καὶ ἥξουσιν ἐπʼ αὐτὸ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη.

Wednesday, December 12: Isaiah 2:3-5

3 καὶ πορεύσονται ἔθνη πολλὰ καὶ ἐροῦσιν Δεῦτε ἀναβῶμεν εἰς τὸ ὄρος τοῦ Κυρίου καὶ εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ Ἰακώβ, καὶ ἀναγγελεῖ ἡμῖν τὴν ὁδὸν αὐτοῦ, καὶ πορευσόμεθα ἐν αὐτῇ. ἐκ γὰρ Σειὼν ἐξελεύσεται νόμος, καὶ λόγος Κυρίου ἐξ Ἰερουσαλήμ· 4 καὶ κρινεῖ ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν ἐθνῶν, καὶ ἐλέγξει λαὸν πολύν· καὶ συγκόψουσιν τὰς μαχαίρας αὐτῶν εἰς ἄροτρα καὶ τὰς ζιβύνας αὐτῶν εἰς δρέπανα, καὶ οὐ λήμψεται ἔτι ἔθνος ἐπʼ ἔθνος μάχαιραν, καὶ οὐ μὴ μάθωσιν ἔτι πολεμεῖν. 5 Καὶ νῦν, ὁ οἶκος τοῦ Ἰακώβ, δεῦτε πορευθῶμεν τῷ φωτὶ Κυρίου.

Thursday, December 13: Isaiah 2:6-10

6 ἀνῆκεν γὰρ τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν οἶκον τοῦ Ἰσραήλ· ὅτι ἐνεπλήσθη ὡς τὸ ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς ἡ χώρα αὐτῶν κληδονισμῶν, ὡς ἡ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων, καὶ τέκνα πολλὰ ἀλλόφυλα ἐγενήθη αὐτοῖς. 7 ἐνεπλήσθη γὰρ ἡ χώρα αὐτῶν ἀργυρίου καὶ χρυσίου, καὶ οὐκ ἦν ἀριθμὸς τῶν θησαυρῶν αὐτῶν· καὶ ἐνεπλήσθη ἡ γῆ αὐτῶν ἵππων, καὶ οὐκ ἦν ἀριθμὸς τῶν ἁρμάτων αὐτῶν· 8 καὶ ἐνεπλήσθη ἡ γῆ βδελυγμάτων τῶν ἔργων τῶν χειρῶν αὐτῶν, καὶ προσεκύνησαν οἷς ἐποίησαν οἱ δάκτυλοι αὐτῶν· 9 καὶ ἔκυψεν ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἐταπεινώθη ἀνήρ, καὶ οὐ μὴ ἀνήσω αὐτούς. 10 καὶ νῦν εἰσέλθατε εἰς τὰς πέτρας καὶ κρύπτεσθε εἰς τὴν γῆν ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ φόβου Κυρίου καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς δόξης τῆς ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ, ὅταν ἀναστῇ θραῦσαι τὴν γῆν.

Friday, December 14: Isaiah 2:11-15

11 οἱ γὰρ ὀφθαλμοὶ Κυρίου ὑψηλοί, ὁ δὲ ἄνθρωπος ταπεινός· καὶ ταπεινωθήσεται τὸ ὕψος τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ ὑψωθήσεται Κύριος μόνος ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ. 12 ἡμέρα γὰρ Κυρίου σαβαὼθ ἐπὶ πάντα ὑβριστὴν καὶ ὑπερήφανον καὶ ἐπὶ πάντα ὑψηλὸν καὶ μετέωρον, καὶ ταπεινωθήσονται, 13 καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσαν κέδρον τοῦ Λιβάνου τῶν ὑψηλῶν καὶ μετεώρων, καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶν δένδρον βαλάνου Βασάν, 14 καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶν ὄρος, καὶ ἐπὶ πάντα βουνὸν ὑψηλόν, 15 καὶ ἐπὶ πάντα πύργον ὑψηλόν, καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶν τεῖχος ὑψηλόν,

And… we’ll have to wait for that sentence in 2:15 to finish next week.

See here for more resources and links to texts for Greek Isaiah. Readings from week 1 are here.

Greek Isaiah in a Year, Week 1=Isaiah 1:1-25 (with Ottley text)

It is now Week 1 of Greek Isaiah in a Year. Here, for ease of reference, is the schedule for this week along with screenshots of the public domain R.R. Ottley text. (Download all of Ottley’s Book of Isaiah According to the Septuagint as a pdf here.) Sunday, December 2 could perhaps be spent reading all of the week’s text one time, then each day could go more in depth.

Monday, December 3: Isaiah 1:1-5

Isa 1.1-5

Tuesday, December 4: Isaiah 1:6–10

Isa 1.6-10

Wednesday, December 5: Isaiah 1:11–15

Isa 1.11_tempIsa 1.12-15_temp

Thursday, December 6: Isaiah 1:16–20

Isa 1.16-20

Friday, December 7: Isaiah 1:21–25

Isa 1.20-25a_tempIsa 1.25b_temp

See here for more resources and links to texts for Greek Isaiah.

Greek Isaiah in a Year: the reading plan, free online LXX texts, and more resources

Isaiah

The beginning of Greek Isaiah in a Year is nigh upon us. There are more than 100 people participating via Facebook, and others besides. This post compiles the reading plan, some texts of Greek Isaiah, and other resources. I’ll be adding to this post as often as I can.

The reading plan

Here it is. 5 verses a day (give or take), 5 days a week (Monday through Friday). 12/20/13 update: Here is the reading plan for the 2014 Greek Isaiah in a Year, the Sequel.

Texts of Greek Isaiah

Folks in the group will be reading whatever Greek texts they have available. My initial foray into Greek Isaiah has suggested that Codex Alexandrinus (A) is a better text than Codex Vaticanus (B) for this particular book. Moisés Silva writes, “While this important manuscript [Vaticanus=B] preserves an excellent text for most books of the LXX, it is less trustworthy in the case of Esaias [Isaiah].” R.R. Ottley and Ken M. Penner, both linked below, agree. Ottley bases his work on Alexandrinus, writing, “In the Book of Isaiah… it is thus quite allowable to suggest that B falls below its usual standard, relative or absolute.”

Without further ado, then, some texts to consider, and where to find them:

Rahlfs LXXIsaiah in Rahlfs LXX (German Bible Society, eclectic/critical text). Find it free, legal, and online here. Note that due to copyright restrictions I cannot post the Rahlfs text myself publicly, but you can access the whole thing from the site above. The Rahlfs edition has been called “semi-critical,” so that the textual notes in his apparatus are not extensive. But he does not base his text only on one manuscript.

Isaiah LXX OttleyR.R. Ottley’s Book of Isaiah According to the Septuagint (based on Codex Alexandrinus). See the archive.org site with description here. Or download a compressed pdf (17 MB instead of 57 MB) here from my site. (Thanks to Jim Darlack for combining both volumes 1 and 2 into a single pdf!) Volume 2 has the full Greek text with Ottley’s notes in an apparatus. This commentary is a gold mine of information about the Greek text, the Hebrew it translated, and more.

Isaiah in Swete’s edition (based on Codex Vaticanus). That’s here.

Isaiah in the NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint), with an introduction by Moisés Silva. This is the leading English translation of the Septuagint. Find the pdf of Isaiah with intro here.

Isaiah by ZieglerThe Göttingen edition of Isaiah. Whereas everything above is available for free online, Göttingen is not. It’s here on Amazon (affiliate link) and here at the publisher’s site. It’s not cheap, but you may be able to find a used edition somewhere. This edition, edited by Joseph Ziegler, is also available from Accordance Bible Software as a single volume here, and from Logos Bible Software as part of a larger collection here. (If it’s Göttingen you’re using, I’ve begun a short primer on how to read and understand the Göttingen editions, their apparatuses, etc.)

More resources for Greek Isaiah

Ken M. Penner, who is writing the Isaiah volume for the Brill Septuagint Commentary series, graciously shared some of his notes with the Biblical Greek Forum last year. See here and here for detailed notes and discussion.

Do you like vocabulary? Like it or not, Septuagint vocabulary is more expansive than New Testament vocabulary. Here is a list (pdf) of all the words in Isaiah that occur 100 times or less in the Septuagint, sorted by frequency. Here is that same list sorted alphabetically. My friend, co-worker, and fellow churchgoer M. Ryan has put the vocabulary list into Quizlet.

The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) from the Dead Sea Scrolls is available online for viewing. When you hover over a part of the scroll, an English translation pops up. The scroll is in Hebrew, and is close to the Masoretic Text (MT) of Isaiah, which you can access here, if you want to look at the Hebrew of Isaiah at any point.

Did I miss anything? Please let me know in the comments, and I’ll keep this page updated. Happy reading! Before Monday I will post again with the coming week’s schedule and text.

Resources for reading through Greek Isaiah

One more week until more than 50 folks and I start a read-through of Greek Isaiah! There’s an already active Facebook group page for the endeavor.

One of the readers has been working on the Isaiah volume in the Brill Septuagint Commentary Series. He’s graciously shared links with the group to some of his notes on Greek Isaiah, which he posted in the “B-Greek” Biblical Greek group last year.

Look here and here to see what Ken Penner has compiled. I’m really looking forward to his input and guidance as we work through Isaiah.

Greek Isaiah in a Year: Facebook group to join

I plan to read through the Greek version of Isaiah this coming year, starting December 2. (Here’s a vocab list I’ll use to help.)

If you want to join along, Greek Isaiah in a Year on Facebook is the central place for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc. Come join in!

Vocabulary list for Greek Isaiah (via Accordance 10)

I’ve already gotten some good response to my last post about reading through Greek Isaiah in a year. More on that again soon.

For now, to whet all our appetites, I’ve just been able to use Accordance Bible software to generate this list.

VOCABULARY IN LXX ISAIAH (Rahlfs) (PDF)

It lists all the words in Isaiah, with their glosses (brief “definitions”), that occur 100 times or less in the Septuagint (Rahlfs). It also shows how many times that word occurs in Isaiah itself.

I used a multi-step process to compile this from Accordance. I’m sure there’s a more elegant way to do what I did, but I am happy to have this list, and know I’ll use it for less than frequently occurring LXX vocabulary when reading through Isaiah, starting December 2.

UPDATE: If you want to join along, here’s the central place on Facebook for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc.

Reading through the Greek of Isaiah in a year

Here is a well put together reading plan for going through the Greek (“Septuagint”) of Isaiah in a year. I like that, as blog author John Meade writes, “The key is working a little each day for many days.”

So this (PDF) is the plan I want to start using, beginning with the new year. (UPDATE: This is the plan we’ll use (PDF download), with slightly different versification than Meade’s plan.) And by “new year,” of course I mean when Advent begins (the start of the church calendar year), December 2.

If anyone wants to join me… let me know in the comments or by emailing me through this form.

UPDATE: Go here for a vocabulary list to aid reading in the LXX of Isaiah.

UPDATE 2: If you want to join along, here’s the central place on Facebook for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc.

Which Bible software program should I buy? Comparison of BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos

 

Which Bible software program should I buy? It’s an important question for the student of the Bible, especially if she or he is on a limited budget. Having now reviewed BibleWorks 9 (here), Accordance 10 (here) and Logos 4 (here) and now 5 (here), I want to compare the three programs and offer some suggestions for moving forward with Bible software.

There are some free programs available for download (E-Sword, for example), but my sense has been that if you want to have something in-depth, you’ll probably want to consider BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos.

If you’re in the market to buy Bible software, then, here’s how I recommend proceeding.

 

1. Think through why you want the Bible software.

 

I don’t mean in an existential sense; I mean: for what do you want to use Bible software? Personal Bible study? As a means to access electronic commentaries for sermon preparation? To do in-depth word studies in the original languages? To compare the Greek and the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament? For complex syntactical searches? To help generate graphics and handouts for a Sunday School class you teach? Some or all of the above?

Similarly, are there things you know you don’t need? Are you interested only in studying the Bible in English (or Spanish, or French…) but not necessarily in Greek and Hebrew? Are maps and graphics something you can easily access elsewhere? Is having a large library of electronic commentaries not a value?

I highlight these considerations because the answer to the question, “Which Bible software program should I buy?” is: It depends. It depends on why and for what you want Bible software. More on that below.

 

2. Explore BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos on their own merits.

 

Get a sense of what each can do by visiting their respective Websites (BibleWorks here, Accordance here, and Logos here). Look through those sites for videos which will let you see the programs in action. You can also look through the full reviews I’ve done of BibleWorks here, Accordance here, and Logos here (v.4) and here (just-released v. 5). In these reviews I look at multiple features and resources in each program.

BibleWorks is a PC program. You can run it on a Mac, though. This either requires a separate Windows license (= more $$), where it runs nicely in Parallels, etc., or you can use a “native” Mac version of it. The former option is costly and requires a lot of your Mac machine (though you get a fully-functinoing BibleWorks on a Mac that way). I can’t yet recommend the latter option, where it is in “Public Preview,” since the “native” Mac version looks only native to about two Mac operating systems ago… I expect BibleWorks will make improvements here, but I haven’t found BibleWorks on my Mac to be as functional as I’d like. It’s excellent on a PC, though.

Accordance is a Mac program. They have announced that they’ll introduce Accordance for Windows in 2013, and they have said that they are previewing that at SBL/AAR this week. (I understand that you can run Accordance on Windows now via an emulator, per the above link, but that it’s not 100% functional in the same way Accordance on Mac is.) Accordance is silky smooth–if I may call a Bible software program that. It is very Mac-like, which is a goal and priority of Accordance. Using it is truly enjoyable. Accordance also has an iOS app, which I haven’t used, as I do not own an iPhone, iPad, iOverbrain, etc. It looks like a stripped-down version of Accordance, but it’s free. If I had an iPhone, that would definitely be on there.

Logos works on PC and Macs. It’s also cloud-based, so that you can sync your work in Logos across computers, platforms, mobile devices, on the Internet using Biblia, and so on. Logos for the Mac feels fairly Mac-like, but not to the extent that Accordance does. However, being able to switch between a PC and a Mac in Logos and have everything sync via the cloud is a great feature. I noted in a Logos review recently how I was working in Logos 5 on a PC, then the next day opened Logos on my Mac to the exact same window I had just closed on a PC the day before.

 

3. Think about what your budget is.

 

You should actually probably do this before you check out the individual programs a whole lot–just to make sure you don’t end up spending money you don’t really have! Sometimes you’ll see a price tag associated with how much a base package would cost you if you bought all the resources in print. But this really doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t buy many of those resources in the first place (per point #1 above).

BibleWorks does not have packages, per se–it’s just the program and all its contents for $359. You can also purchase add-on modules in BibleWorks. Accordance has various collections (beginning with the basic Starter Collection at $49.99), which you can compare here. They sell various other products, as well. These base packages had been a little difficult to wade through and make sense of in Accordance 9, but the August release of Accordance 10 greatly simplified things. Logos also sells various base packages, starting at $294.95 retail price for their Starter package, and many other products. Note also that Accordance and Logos both offer discounts to academicians, ministers, etc.

 

4. Compare.

 

Keep firmly in mind the purposes for which you want Bible software as you read the below. But I will offer some general insights.

 
Speed

BibleWorks (PC) and Accordance (Mac) take the cake here. I wrote here about the sluggishness of Logos 4 for searching. That’s improved somewhat in Logos 5. Where BibleWorks stands out is in its Use tab, new in BibleWorks 9. Via the Use tab, you can instantaneously see all the uses of a given word in an open version just by hovering over that word. I’m not aware of anything comparable in Accordance or Logos, and it’s a mind-blowing feature. Accordance, however, returns search results as quickly as BibleWorks, and starts up faster. I continue to be impressed with the speed of both BibleWorks and Accordance. I’m glad for the improvements in Logos, but hope they’ll continue to improve search speed.

 
Package for the Price

Had I written this post six months ago, the no-brainer answer would be that BibleWorks is best. For $359 you get everything listed here.

Comparable in Accordance is the Original Languages Collection for $299 (full contents compared here). This collection six months ago was not really comparable to BibleWorks, but with the release of Accordance 10, Accordance significantly improved on and expanded what’s available in its Original Languages Collection. Someone wanting Bible software for detailed original languages work could get a lot of what they need in Accordance for under $300. However, it remains true that you get more in BibleWorks that you have to pay extra for in Accordance (like the Center for NT Textual Studies apparatus and images, Philo, Josephus, Church Fathers, the Tov-Polak MT-LXX Parallel, etc.). That’s true compared with Logos, too.

Logos 5 is a little more difficult for me to size up here. In Logos 4 there was an Original Languages Library for $400 or so that was at least comparable to BibleWorks and Accordance (and included the 10-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament). Based just on package for the price, I still would have picked BibleWorks over Logos, but the release of Logos 5 has seen a restructuring of base packages that seems less than ideal for something like original language study. They do now have the Theological Lexicon of the OT and of the NT in the “Bronze” package, but the nearly $300 Logos Starter package doesn’t include the necessary and basic lexica for studying the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, and the Greek New Testament.

This is where what you want out of a Bible software program should dictate which way you go. Are you a seminarian with a primary interest in original language exegesis, with a preference for commentaries in print? If so, I recommend Accordance on Mac or BibleWorks on PC. Accordance also has good commentaries as add-ons (not much here for BibleWorks), but Logos has a large amount of digitized books, and tends on the balance (though not always) to run cheaper than Accordance for the same modules. (The cheapest BDAG/HALOT lexicon bundle is in BibleWorks.) But the larger library in Logos is perhaps at the expense of program speed, so you’ll want to weigh options here. If you preach weekly and don’t make much reference to Greek and Hebrew, wanting extensive commentaries instead, Logos could be the way to go for you.

 
Customizability and Usability

Here I favor Accordance of the three. BibleWorks is probably the least configurable. There are four columns in BibleWorks 9, but you can’t move things around much, whereas in Accordance and Logos you can put tabs/zones/resources more or less where you want them. Logos is plenty customizable, but the Workspaces feature in Accordance sets it apart from Logos. In Accordance you can save distinct Workspaces and have multiple ones open at a time. You can save “Layouts” in Logos, but from all I can see, you can only have one layout open at once. This has often slowed my study. You can detach tabs into separate windows with Logos, but for working on multiple projects at once (e.g., an NT use of the OT Workspace, an LXX Workspace, a Hebrew OT Workspace, an English Bible Study workspace, etc.), Accordance is tops.

For the record, both for my graduate studies and message preparation, Accordance is the first program I have open. Part of this is due to the fact that I prefer to use a Mac. (Within the last year I bought a cheap PC laptop just so I could keep using BibleWorks, which is still excellent.) But the multiple Workspaces option makes Accordance great for easy day-to-day use across multiple kinds of tasks. It’s been interesting to watch myself mouse over to the Accordance icon in my dock on my Mac before either Logos or BibleWorks.

 
Support

This is probably a toss-up. I’ve had positive interactions with everyone I’ve contacted in BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos. All have active and helpful user forums. All offer help files and how-to videos. (BibleWorks has the most extensive set of videos.) I was surprised to see how many how-to videos and manuals you could buy from Logos, but many of these have been produced by approved third-parties. I don’t think you should have to pay more money to learn how to use a program you already paid for.

 
Note-taking

One thing I haven’t extensively reviewed is the note-taking features, which are available in BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos. I particularly appreciate being able to highlight passages (which then stay highlighted every time I open that resource) in resources in both Accordance and Logos. Logos has an easier one-keystroke shortcut to highlight selected text, but there’s a delay in doing so; Accordance is faster here. But back when I was using only BibleWorks, I was concerned about saving notes in a file format that wouldn’t be accessible across computers and platforms, so all my notes were always just in Word or TextEdit (.rtf). I’ve continued this practice as I’ve begun using Accordance and Logos, so that any writing I generate is not confined within a given program.

 

In sum…

 

So, which Bible software program should you buy? It depends on why you want Bible software and the uses you’ll have for it. If you’re looking to build and access a large digital library, no one denies that Logos is the leader in that regard. It is also only Logos that connects to the cloud to sync across multiple devices. If you’re looking to really delve into the original languages, though, and do complex and fast searches, Accordance for Mac and BibleWorks for PC are preferable. (Logos 5 has offered significant improvement from Logos 4 in working closely with original language texts, but the search speed still needs to be improved.) BibleWorks gets you the most bang for your buck by including as many resources, versions, lexica, grammars, etc. as it does, but the interface and customizability of Accordance makes the latter more enjoyable and a little easier to use.

When it comes to the BibleWorks vs. Accordance vs. Logos question, I think at bottom each is a solid software program and good decision. You can’t go badly wrong with any of them. In fact, I now use all three on an almost daily basis. (Thanks again to each software company for the review copies.) But insofar as potential users may not want to have to purchase or learn how to use all three programs, I hope the above reflections are of use.

 

Next time…

 

I will post one more time in the near future along these same lines. In particular I plan to compare Septuagint study across BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos. I’ve covered this in each of my individual reviews already, but I’ll look at the Tov-Polak MT-LXX Parallel database in particular in each of the three, so you can see in more detail how each software program handles the same basic resource. In that post I will also write about more complex search features in BibleWorks, Accordance, and Logos, assessing how they compare.

(2015 UPDATE: That would-be blog post ended up as a published article in a journal of Septuagint studies. See more here.)

If you’ve made it this far (more than 2,000 words later), congratulations! Please feel free to leave me a comment or contact me if you are seriously considering Bible software and want to ask any questions about anything I’ve reviewed… or haven’t covered in my reviews.

January 2014 UPDATE: I have begun reviewing the Bible Study app from Olive Tree. You can see those reviews gathered here.

Review of T. Muraoka’s Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint

In studying the Septuagint, I’m regularly curious about how often the LXX translators used the same Greek word to translate a given Hebrew word. How often, for example, does καρδία translate the Hebrew לבב? And what other Greek words are used to translate it? Similarly, I wonder, for occurences in the Greek text of καρδία, what other Hebrew words might it be translating?

Takamitsu Muraoka has made such questions an emphasis of his scholarly writing and publishing throughout his career. His Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint is one of the standard lexicons in the field, and his Greek-Hebrew/Aramaic Two-way Index to the Septuagint is the best thing I’ve seen in print for Hebrew-Greek lexical studies in the Septuagint.

Preceding that latter work was Muraoka’s Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint: Keyed to the Hatch-Redpath Concordance. I’ve had a chance to use the work in Logos Bible software; this post contains my review.

Muraoka notes the impetus for the work in the Introduction. The Hatch-Redpath Concordance (hereafter HR), published around the turn of the 20th century, listed all Greek words used in the Septuagint with the Hebrew they were thought to have translated. At the back of the concordance was a list that basically noted the reverse, showing Hebrew words alphabetically with the Greek words used to translate them… or, rather, a key to the Greek words in question. As Muraoka notes, you would have this entry in HR:

אָמַר qal 37 c, 74 a, 109 c, 113 c, 120 a, 133 a, 222 a, 267 a, 299 b, 306 b, 313 a, 329 c, 339 b, 365 a, 384 a, 460 c, 477 a, 503 c, 505 c, 520 b, 534 c, 537 b, 538 b, 553 b, 628 b, 757 b, 841 c, 863 c, 881 c, 991 b, 1056 b, 1060 a, 1061 a, 1139 a, 1213 b, 1220 c, 1231 b, c, 1310 b, 1318 b, 1423 c, 1425 b, 69 b, 72 b, 173 a, 183 b, c, 200 a (2), 207 c, 211 b.

Whereas the Greek to Hebrew portion of HR lists the Hebrew words underlying the Greek of the LXX, the Hebrew to Greek portion at the back just has page and column reference numbers, as above. So the user of HR would have to turn to page 37, column c, page 74, column a, etc., etc., in order to see what Greek words were in those locations. Only in that tedious way could the user of HR see all the Greek words used to translate the Hebrew אָמַר.

Muraoka’s wife (who is a true co-author of this work) tediously wrote out (yes, by hand) each Hebrew to Greek entry so that instead of page and column numbers, it contained actual Greek words. The above, then, would look more like this:

אָמַר qal αἰτεῖν (37c), ἀναγγέλλειν (74a)…

…and so on. The HR page and column numbers are retained, but now the user doesn’t have to flip back and forth, since the Greek words are all in one place.

T. Muraoka then took his wife’s data and critically examined HR’s assessments in as many places as he could, drawing on advances in the past century in textual criticism, manuscript availability (like the Dead Sea Scrolls), and adding in analysis of “apocryphal” books, which HR had not fully included. The resulting revision updates both HR’s work and his wife’s manual collation.

What results, then, is an eminently helpful work where one can look up any Hebrew word and see all the Greek words used to translate it across the Septuagint. To be able to do this is valuable, and Muraoka makes it easy.

There are two things that lack here, though neither one of them is really the goal of the work, so I don’t actually criticize it for these omissions. First, there are not frequency numbers. It could be especially helpful to know not only what Greek words translate a given Hebrew word, but how many times each does, so that the user can get a sense of the distribution of each. Muraoka doesn’t have this. Second, he doesn’t have glosses or translation equivalents for words, so there is no English in this index.

But this is an index, and marked as one, so neither of those is a flaw in Muraoka’s book. In fact, here is where using Muraoka in Logos is especially helpful: you can tie tabs together so that a simple click from Greek or Hebrew in his index takes you to a corresponding Greek or Hebrew lexicon in Logos, where you can see that word’s meaning. Logos in this way really enhances Muraoka’s tool. And, of course, frequency statistics are easy to come by in Logos.

This is a good resource, and worth owning for students and professors of the Septuagint. A question remains: with all that Logos can already do, is it superfluous to purchase Muraoka’s index? Using the Bible Word Study feature in Logos, for example, I can see all of the Hebrew words that a given Greek word is used to translate, as well as all of the Greek words used to translate a given Hebrew word, as here (click to enlarge):

This may be sufficient for what many people need, especially since you can also search for a Hebrew lemma from within the Greek Septuagint text in Logos and receive results in Greek, so that you have before you all the verses with all the various Greek words that translate that Hebrew lemma. (I just learned this today from the user forums-very cool.)

But if you’ve got the money (especially if you qualify for an academic discount), and are sitting on the fence about Muraoka’s resource, I recommend it. It’s nice to have easily at hand a listing of all Greek words used to translate a Hebrew word in the Septuagint, even if there are other ways to get that information in Logos. Here it’s consolidated.

One other nice feature is that all the abbreviations throughout the index are hyperlinked to what they stand for, which you can bring up just by mousing over them:

You can see there are no verse references given, which are useful for in-depth study of Greek translations. Muraoka’s more thorough Greek-Hebrew/Aramaic Two-way Index to the Septuagint offers more depth in this regard than this 1998 Hebrew/Aramaic (one-way) index. No Bible software currently offers the two-way index, but it would be great if Logos were able to make it available in the future.

All in all Muraoka’s Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint is a solid resource. And its digitization in Logos has been well done, too. Logos can already accomplish much of what’s in this index, but the one serious about the Septuagint may want to have any and all tools at her or his disposal. In that case, this is a worthy addition to one’s library.

Thanks to Logos for the free review copy of this work, offered without any expectation as to the positive or critical nature of my review. Muraoka’s Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint is available in Logos here.

How to Read and Understand the Göttingen Septuagint: A Short Primer, part 1

The Göttingen Septuagint is the Cadillac of Septuagint editions. It’s the largest scholarly edition of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Its full name is Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum, published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen, Germany. The Göttingen Septuagint has published more than 20 volumes spanning some 40 biblical books (counting the minor prophets as 12), and publication of additional volumes is in progress.

But the Göttingen Septuagint is not for the faint of heart, or for the reader who is unwilling to put some serious work in to understanding the layout and import of the edition and its critical apparatuses. A challenge to using Göttingen is the paucity of material available about the project, even in books about the Septuagint. An additional challenge is that the critical apparatuses contain Greek, abbreviated Greek, and abbreviated Latin. The introductions to each volume are in German, though below I cite from English translations of the introductions to the volumes of the Pentateuch.

It is my intention with this post, and a second to follow, to give a short primer or user’s guide to the Göttingen edition. Here I offer suggestions on how to read and understand the text, the apparatuses, the sigla/abbreviations, the introductions, and point to additional resources that will be of benefit to the Göttingen user.

I recently put together a basic orientation to the scholarly editions of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek translation of the same. That is here. It is worth noting again that the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) has a good, succinct article on the various editions of the Septuagint. Below, “OG” stands for “Old Greek.” They write:

The creation and propagation of a critical text of the LXX/OG has been a basic concern in modern scholarship. The two great text editions begun in the early 20th century are the Cambridge Septuagint and the Göttingen Septuagint, each with a “minor edition” (editio minor) and a “major edition” (editio maior). For Cambridge this means respectively H. B. Swete, The Old Testament in Greek (1909-1922) and the so-called “Larger Cambridge Septuagint” by A. E. Brooke, N. McLean, (and H. St. John Thackeray) (1906-). For Göttingen it denotes respectively Alfred Rahlfs’s Handausgabe (1935) and the “Larger Göttingen Septuagint” (1931-). Though Rahlfs (editio minor) can be called a semi-critical edition, the Göttingen Septuaginta (editio maior) presents a fully critical text….

In other words, rather than using a text based on an actual manuscript (as BHS, based on the Leningrad Codex, does), Göttingen utilizes a reconstructed text informed by a thorough examination of manuscript evidence. Göttingen has two critical apparatuses at the bottom of the page of most volumes. Because it is an editio maior and not an editio minor like Rahlfs, a given print page can have just a few lines of actual biblical text, with the rest being taken up by the apparatuses. Here’s a sample page from Genesis 1. Note the #s 1-4 that I’ve added to highlight the different parts of a page. Below I explain #1 and #2; the rest comes in a follow up post.

1. The reconstructed Greek critical text (“Der kritische Text”)

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. In the page from Genesis 1 above, you’ll notice that the text includes punctuation, accents, and breathing marks.

Like the NA27 (and now NA28) and UBS4 versions of the Greek New Testament, Göttingen is a critical or “eclectic” edition, which “may be described as a collection of the oldest recoverable texts, carefully restored book by book (or section by section), aiming at achieving the closest approximation to the original translations (from Hebrew or Aramaic) or compositions (in Greek), systematically reconstructed from the widest array of relevant textual data (including controlled conjecture)” (IOSCS, “Critical Editions”).

Of the critical text, John William Wevers, in his introduction to Genesis in Göttingen, writes:

Since it must be presupposed that this text will be standard for a long time, the stance taken by the editor over against the critical text was intentionally conservative. In general conjectures were avoided, even though it might be expected that future recognition would possibly confirm such conjectures.

It must be clearly evident that the critical text here offered labored under certain limitations. The mss, versions and patristic witnesses which are available to us bring us with few and small exceptions no further back than the second century of our era. Although we do know on the basis of second and third century B.C.E. papyri something about the character of every day Greek used, our knowledge of contemporary literary Greek is very limited indeed. In other words, the critical text here offered is an approximation of the original LXX text, hopefully the best which could be reconstructed on the basis of the present level of our knowledge. The editor entertains no illusion that he has restored throughout the original text of the LXX.

One cannot simply say, “The LXX says…,” because then inevitably an appropriate response is, “Which LXX? Which manuscript? Which or whose best attempt at reconstruction?” So “approximation of the original” and “hopefully the best which could be reconstructed” are key phrases here.

All the same, especially in the newer Göttingen editions, the volume 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.) And although scholarly editions of the Greek New Testament also present an eclectic text, neither the NA27 nor UBS 4 is an editio maior, as Göttingen is. (The Editio Critica Maior is just recently begun for the GNT.) Serious works in Septuagint studies, then, most often use the Göttingen text, where available, as a base.

2. The Source List (“Kopfleiste”)

Not every volume has this feature, but the five Pentateuch volumes, Ruth, Esther, and others do. 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.

In the above Kopfleiste, the parentheses around 912 mean that papyrus 912 is fragmentary. The “-” preceding it, Wevers notes, means that its text ends on the page in question. So although this particular Göttingen page has Genesis 1:4-9 reconstructed in the critical text (“Der kritische Text”), “(-912)” in the Kopfleiste indicates that the fragmentary papyrus 912 does not actually contain text for all the verses on the page. Looking up papyrus 912 in Wevers’s introduction to Genesis, in fact, confirms that this third to fourth century papyrus contains only Genesis 1:1-5.

By contrast, the “(D-)” here

indicates that the uncial manuscript D has its text beginning on the page in which it appears in Göttingen. The above shot is from the Göttingen page containing Genesis 1:9-13. The first time D has anything to offer (since it is fragmentary, indicated by its enclosure in parentheses) is at 1:13. This alerts the reader that D has no witness to Genesis 1:1-12. Wevers’s introduction then gives more information about the contents of that manuscript. So, too, with the minuscule manuscript 128 above–the introduction says of 128, “Init [=Latin initium=the beginning] – 1,10 is absent.”

Wevers adds:

Should a piece of text be lacking due to some external circumstance in a particular ms, this is noted in the Source-List. For example if ms 17 lacks the text this is shown as O-17. What this means is that the entire O except 17 (which belongs to O) has the text in question. The abbreviation al (for alia manuscripta) refers to the mss which belong to no particular group, i.e. the so-called codices mixti as well as mss which are too fragmentary to allow classification. The expression verss designates all the versions which have the complete text of Genesis. Versions such as Syh to (31,53) and Pal, whose texts are not complete, are listed at the end of the Source-List (Kopfleiste).

In terms of the order of citing Greek textual witnesses:

In the apparatus the citation of Greek sources appears in the following order: First place is occupied by the uncial texts in alphabetical order, and characterized by a capital letter. Then the papyri are cited in the order of 801 to 999. Then the hexaplaric group [AKJ: “O” above] is given as well as the Catena groups [AKJ: C‘’], with the mss groups following in order as: b d f n s t y z; then the codd mixti, followed by the mss without a Rahlfs number. Next come the NT citations, and finally, the rest of the patristic witnesses in alphabetic order.

In the next part of this Göttingen Septuagint primer, I’ll explore #3 and #4 above, the First Critical Apparatus (“Apparat I”) and the Second Critical Apparatus (“Apparat II”), as well as take a closer look at the contents of the Introductions in the Göttingen editions (“Die Einleitung”).

UPDATE: Part 2 of the primer is here, with still more to follow.

Thanks to Brian Davidson of LXXI for his helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this post.