The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters,by Gregory R. Lanier and William A. Ross. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021. 216 pp. $21.99.
Biblical scholars Gregory Lanier and William Ross provide an accessible, substantive introduction to the Greek Old Testament. Lanier serves as associate professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) in Orlando, Florida, while Ross serves as assistant professor of Old Testament at RTS in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are especially burdened to show how (1) clear definitions and historical awareness improve one’s understanding of the Septuagint, and (2) its influence in biblical studies and church history merit continued study in the academy and the church.
The book contains two sections. The first defines and describes the Septuagint. Chapter 1 highlights the misleading use of “Septuagint,” which has been used to designate “the Jewish Greek Scriptures in general,” the collection of books preceding the New Testament in ancient codices, or “the earliest translation of the Greek Pentateuch” (35). The authors prefer the term “Greek Old Testament” to “avoid the undesirable impression of textual uniformity or stability” and to differentiate apocryphal books and later revisions (36–37).
Chapter 2 distinguishes the origins of the Greek Pentateuch from the other books. The authors believe the former “was produced by the late second century B.C. in Egypt” (49), possibly motivated by liturgical concerns of Greek-speaking Jews and sponsorship from the Ptolemaic administration (55), and “was regarded by (at least some) Hellenistic Jews as equal in authority to the Hebrew Bible” (49). The provenance and dating of the remainder of translations remains more mysterious, given the paucity of literary and historical witnesses to their origin (56).
Chapter 3 examines translation technique, often correcting mischaracterizations of older scholarship. The Pentateuch translators often easily matched word order, resumptive pronouns, and parataxis of the Hebrew text (64–66). In other cases, the translation manifested contemporary Greek style through phonological, lexical, idiomatic, and sociocultural choices (66–70). Conversely, Greek style sometimes suffered from mimicking Hebrew word order and stereotyping lexemes such as yam (sea or westward) with thalassa (sea but not direction) (72). Outside the Pentateuch, some books “added, omitted, or relocated” material (75–76), although it is difficult to determine whether the motivation was translational or textual (76). There is thus no monolithic Septuagint translation technique, and the “translation traditions” cannot be reduced to “‘dynamic’ or ‘literal,’” labels which “fail to encapsulate all the complexities involved” (135).
Chapter 4 considers transmission and revision. Some copyists created unintentional variants. Others deliberately expanded, abridged, or rearranged the text (86). The Jewish recensions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion also influenced the reception of the Greek Old Testament (89–93), as did Origen’s Hexapla (which incorporated Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion in a painstaking effort to revise the Greek text) and the Antiochene recension (89–97).
The second section advocates the continuing relevance of Septuagint studies. Chapter 5 discusses the biblical canon, textual criticism, and historical interpretation of the Bible. The inclusion of additional Jewish Greek works alongside Old Testament translations sheds light on their acceptance as Scripture by Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions (103). Awareness of alternate readings, expansions, and abridgements in the Greek Old Testament should affect one’s view of its role in textual criticism and helps one understand textual footnotes in English Bibles (109–18). The Greek Old Testament also furnishes important evidence for historical interpretation of the Bible, “helping us understand Jewish theology at a particularly important time” (118).
Chapter 6 surveys the relationship of the Greek Old Testament to the New Testament. Although it is anachronistic to call the Septuagint “the ‘official Bible’ of the New Testament church,” given textual plurality and the lack of evidence of early, complete collections of the Greek Old Testament, New Testament authors had access to the Greek Old Testament (133). It shaped their “style and vocabulary” (141), e.g., the use of “answered and said” and “frequent use of parataxis” (142). Some passages quote “specific wording…that differs meaningfully from the known Hebrew wording” (147).
Chapter 7 evaluates the authority and use of the Septuagint for today. The authors take the Hebrew Bible as having “normative authority” (168), while arguing that the Greek Old Testament “can possess derivative authority” like a modern Old Testament translation (188). It should be consulted for its “key interpretive role” for “studying the theology of the New Testament as it engages with the Old Testament” (191). The book concludes with answers to ten important questions and a brief bibliography for further study.
Lanier and Ross aim “to distill the enormous complexity surrounding the origins, transmission, and role of the Septuagint into a brief introduction that is accessible to laypeople but still informative for scholars” (20) and have successfully hit their target. This book is well-organized, concise, and clear. Readers without training in the biblical languages should be able to follow their arguments and understand their examples. It is informed by and engages with historical and contemporary scholarship. The only comparable work available is Gallagher’s Translation of the Seventy (2021), which overlaps somewhat on issues of origins, canonical debates, and textual issues, but provides more detail on others, such as the patristic views concerning the Greek Old Testament. Treatments by others, including Dines (2004), Fernández Marcos (2009), and Jobes and Silva (2015) all expect more of their readers. Lanier and Ross provide access to foundational knowledge and tools for engaging with such intermediate works on the Septuagint, as well as a guide that would be helpful alongside their own Septuaginta: A Reader’s Edition (2018).
This book deserves a wide readership. Educated church members, college and graduate students, Bible translators, and preachers will benefit from a quality crash course in Septuagint studies, and this is the best available volume for that purpose. The book should also be considered for biblical introduction or Old Testament courses and for church and academic libraries. The book will also promote more rigorous thinking about the dynamics of Bible translation in general while providing the tools for a more accurate understanding of the transmission of the biblical text and the historic influence of the Greek Old Testament and its proper use today.
