I hope that the following material will help in the discussion concerning the dating of the Septuagint that was started by Ben Byerly in a post called, “The LXX doesn’t exist,” and Jim West’s response called “The Madness of Good King Ben.”
Utilizing Septuagintal manuscripts and citational evidence, Ulrich has argued that the Greek translation of the Torah was made by the late third century B.C.E.1 Nina Collins, on the other hand, focusing primarily on text critical and comparative analysis of the Letter of Aristeas, concludes that the Septuagint2 was translated in 281 B.C.E.3 Whether such a precise date based on the Letter of Aristeas is viable is an open question that has been debated for years.4 Recently, Frank Clancy reflects an extreme opposite opinion from that of Collins when he states:
. . . neither “The Letter” nor Demetrius should be dated to the third century or even the early second century, and neither should be used to support the claim of a third century date for the LXX. Other Jewish-Hellenistic writers who used the LXX have been placed in the late third and early second century B.C. The most significant writers, such as Eupolemus, Ezekiel the Tragedian, Aristobulus and Artapanus, have been used to support the claim of an early date for the LXX. However, in many cases, it is their use of the LXX which influences scholars to date their works so early. Without witnesses it may be possible to date the LXX no earlier than the mid second century, after the Hasmonaean rededication of the Jerusalem Temple in 164 B.C.5
Although the mainstay of scholarship would not be as pessimistic as Clancy, agreeing more with the dating of Ulrich and Collins, they generally find that the most viable aspect of the Letter of Aristeas may be the understanding that the LXX had its origin in Egypt and most probably in Alexandria.6
Vocabulary and linguistic evidence has been marshaled to support an Egyptian provenience for the translation of the Septuagint. John Lee has cautiously concluded his study of the vocabulary of the Septuagintal Pentateuch with the observation that, “our text is probably older than the middle of the second century B.C.”7 His work has supported the A. Deissmann understanding that the lexicography of the LXX should be categorized as reflecting a Koine that was used as a vernacular in Ptolemaic Egypt.8 T. V. Evans focused his study of the Greek Pentateuch on verbal syntax. He concludes that, “the features analysed in detail, as well as the general structural similarity of the Pentateuchal verbal system to that of the Attic system, are strongly suggestive of production early (probably very early) in the post-Classical period. They are thus consistent with the consensus view of a date of c. 280-250 BC.”9
The Judean Desert has provided us with a total of 9 Greek biblical manuscripts, 8 at Qumran and the important Minor Prophets scroll (8HevXIIgr) at Nahal Hever. They are as follows:
1. 4QLXXLeva [(4Q119) Rahlfs 801] - some date it no later than the 1st century BCE because of the scriptio continua writing style, although Skehan dated it to the 1st century CE.
2. 4QpapLXXLevb [(4Q120) Rahlfs 802] - 1st century BCE, n.b. with the unique Ιαω for the Tetragrammaton.
3. 4QLXXNum [(4Q121) Rahlfs 803] - 1st century BCE.
4. 4QLXXDeut [(4Q122) Rahlfs 819] - Possibly early to mid second century BCE.
5. 4QUnidentified Text gr - (4Q126) - 1st century BCE or so.
6. 4QpapParaExod gr - (4Q127) - 1st century BCE to 1st century CE.
7. 7QpapLXXExod (7Q1) - too small a fragmentary to date.
8. 7QpapEpJer gr [(7Q2) Rahlfs 804] - too small a fragmentary to date.
9. 7QpapBiblical Texts? gr (7Q3-5) & 7QpapUnclassified Text gr (7Q6-19) - ?
10. 8HevXII gr - dated 50 BCE to 50 CE.
Some of the Qumran manuscripts reflect an Old Greek textual tradition better than the later majuscules10 manuscripts, while others vary,11 while the Nahal Hever manuscript represents the kaige-Th group. The significance of these differences has been summarized by Tov:
. . . at least some of the Greek texts from Qumran probably reflect an earlier form of Greek Scripture, while 8HevXIIgr reflects a later Jewish revision deriving from proto-rabbinic Jewish circles. Both the Hebrew and Greek texts from Qumran thus reflect a community that practiced openness at the textual level, without being tied down to MT, while the other sites represent Jewish nationalistic circles that adhered to the proto-rabbinic (proto-Masoretic) text in Hebrew and the Jewish revisions of LXX towards that Hebrew text. The difference between the texts and sites derives from their different chronological background, but more so from their different socio-religious background.12
1 Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (Grand Rapids and Leiden: William B. Eerdmans Publishing and Brill Academic Publishers, 1999), 207-208. This is a reprint of “Origen’s Old Testament Text: The Transmission History of the Septuagint to the Third Century C.E.,” in Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy, edited by Charles Kannengiesser and William L. Petersen, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 1, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). It has been in large part reproduced in “The Old Testament Text of Eusebius: The Heritage of Origen.”
2 Septuagint technically refers only to the Torah/Pentateuch and actually to the “original” translation, while the “Old Greek” is the term that is used to identify each “original” translation of the books or parts of the books of Greek Bible. These were followed by transmissionaly developed “early Greek text/s.” Which were further developed as “early recensions” and the “hexaplaric recension (Origen’s fifth column, i.e., o,). The term “Septuagint” however has become generally attached to the whole Greek Bible canon.
3 Nina L. Collins, The Library in Alexandria and The Bible in Greek, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 82, (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2000), 7-57.
4 Henry Barclay Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 10-23, 533-606; Natalio Fernandez Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Versions of the Bible, trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson (Boston and Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001), 35-47; Jennifer M. Dines, The Septuagint (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004), 27-38; Erich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 206-222; Raija Sollamo, “The Letter of Aristeas and the Origin of the Septuagint,” in X Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies: Oslo, 1998, ed. Bernard A. Taylor (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2001), 329-42 argues that it was written to stress the importance of the Torah to the Alexandrian Jewish community and that it should not be interpreted literally.
5 Frank Clancy, “The Date of the LXX,” SJOT 16, no. 2 (2002), 207.
6 Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 210.
7 J. A. L. Lee, A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch, SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies Series 14 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1983), 148.
8 See the reprinted article, Adolf Deissmann, “Hellenistic Greek with Special Consideration of the Greek Bible,” in The Language of the New Testament: Classic Essays, ed. Stanley E. Porter, JSNT Supplement Series 60 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 39-59.
9 T. V. Evans, Verbal Syntax in the Greek Pentateuch: Natural Greek Usage and Hebrew Interference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 263.
10 See David C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 9 where Parker reserves the use of the more standard “uncial” for Latin manuscripts of the same.
11 See Emanuel Tov, “The Greek Biblical Texts From the Judean Desert,” in The Bible as Book: The Transmission of the Greek Text, Scot Mckendrick and Orlaith A. O’Sullivan, eds., (London: The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 2003), 97-121; Eugene Ulrich, “The Septuagint Manuscripts from Qumran: A Reappraisal of Their Value,” in Septuagint, Scrolls and Cognate Writings: Papers Presented to the International Symposium on the Septuagint and Its Relations to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Writings, G. J. Brooke and B. Lindar, eds, (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992), 49-80, reprinted in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible, 165-183.
12 Tov, “The Greek Biblical Texts From the Judean Desert,” 118.