Septuagint 3 Kingdoms

The Septuagint's 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms tells the history of the kingdoms of Samaria and Judah from circa 850 BC until the Babylonians conquered Judah circa 600 BC. This era of history is well documented in the historical records of the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Babylonians, and unlike the earlier books of the Kingdoms, is generally accepted by historians. This era included the rise and fall of the Aramean Empire based in Damascus, the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire farther north, the Assyrian wars against Egypt, and the sack of Thebes, and ultimately the rise of the Babylonian Empire. During this tumultuous time, the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, and Aram, which also appears to have been considered an Israelite kingdom by the prophet Ezekiel, struggled for survival and fell one by one to the expanding empires around them. Before the era of 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms, Samara had established an empire, occupying the Aramean kingdoms of Damascus and Hama in modern Syria, which had ended suddenly when an earthquake had leveled Samaria. The earthquake was mentioned in the Book of Amos, and archaeological evidence of it is found throughout modern northern Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. It is estimated to have been between 7.8 and 8.2 on the Richter Scale, and aftershocks likely lasted around 6 months. In the aftermath, Damascus rose to form its own Aramean empire, occupying Hama, and northern Samaria, as well as Gilead in southern modern Syria, which had been part of Samaria since the division of Israel into Samaria and Judah. However, as Assyria began to expand to the north, Samaria and Aram formed an anti-Assyria alliance, and the Samarian forces were stationed in Aram to help defend the northern border from the Assyrians. Judah was invited to join the alliance, but instead formed an alliance with the Assyrians and invaded and pillaged Samaria and southern Aram. Judah continued to be an ally of Assyria as the Assyrians conquered Aram, Samaria, and Sidon which had also allied with them. Fortunately, as Samaria finally fell to the Assyrians after a three-year campaign, the king of Assyria died, sparking a civil war between rival heirs. This civil war provided Judah with almost twenty years to build up defenses, and King Hezekiah built extensively across his kingdom. Archaeological evidence of Hezekiah's construction projects is common in the region around Jerusalem, and the southern region of the Palestinian West Bank, including the Broad Wall in Jerusalem, and the Siloam Tunnel, which connected Jerusalem with a water source outside the walls of the city. Ancient records of anti-siege artillery on the walls of Jerusalem also exist, likely ballistas or catapults, so, it is clear the Judahites knew they would be next. While the Assyrians did lay siege to Jerusalem according to 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms, they were not able to conquer the city. The Assyrian Annals record the campaign against Judah and record the cities they captured, which did not include Jerusalem, and so historians accept the general account of what happened found in 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms.

The Septuagint’s 1st Kingdoms retells the story of the unification of Israel under the Benjamite King Saul in the aftermath of the collapse of the Egyptian New Kingdom. The events of 1st Kingdoms continues the history of the Hebrews told in the book of Judges, as the era of the Judges ended with Samuel, who anointed Saul, the tallest man in the land, to rule over the Israelites. Saul fought a series of wars to establish his kingdom, based in Samaria and Gilead, but alienated his family military leaders, and the general population of the land, and was ultimately killed in battle. The Septuagint’s 2nd and 3rd Kingdoms continues the history of Israel, with the lives of King David, and his son King Solomon. David was another warrior king, and expanded the kingdom in every direction, ultimately leaving a kingdom surrounded by allies and subject states to his son Solomon. King Solomon’s reign was considered by many later generations to have been the golden age of Israelite history. Unfortunately, the reign of his son Rehoboam was less popular, and the kingdom split into the kingdoms of Judah in the south, and Samaria, including Gilead in the north. As the archaeological record was yet to prove the existence of the kingdom of Israel, archaeologists consider the original three books of the Kingdoms to possibly be fiction, however, nothing contrary has been found either, and so the history recorded in the first three books of the Kingdoms cannot be disproved either. The Septuagint’s 4th Kingdoms tells the history of the kingdoms of Samaria and Judah from circa 850 BC until the Babylonians conquered Judah circa 600 BC. This era of history is well documented in the historical records of the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Babylonians, and unlike the earlier books of the Kingdoms, is generally accepted by historians. This era included the rise and fall of the Aramean Empire based in Damascus, the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire farther north, the Assyrian wars against Egypt, and the sack of Thebes, and ultimately the rise of the Babylonian Empire. During this tumultuous time, the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, and Aram, which appears to have been considered an Israelite kingdom by the prophet Ezekiel, struggled for survival and fell one by one to the expanding empires around them. Before the era of 4th Kingdoms, Samara had established an empire, occupying the Aramean kingdoms of Damascus and Hama in modern Syria, which had ended suddenly when an earthquake had leveled Samaria. The earthquake was mentioned in the Book of Amos, and archaeological evidence of it is found throughout modern northern Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. It is estimated to have been between 7.8 and 8.2 on the Richter Scale, and aftershocks likely lasted around 6 months. In the aftermath, Damascus rose to form its own Aramean empire, occupying Hama, and northern Samaria, as well Gilead in southern modern Syria, which had been part of Samaria since the division of Israel into Samaria and Judah. However, as Assyria began to expand to the north, Samaria and Aram formed an anti-Assyria alliance, and the Samarian forces were stationed in Aram to help defend the northern border from the Assyrians. Judah was invited to join the alliance, but instead formed an alliance with the Assyrians and invaded and pillaged Samaria and southern Aram.

The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and the scriptures read by early Christians. Septuagint studies have been a growth field in the past twenty years. It has become an area of interest not only for textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible but as a product of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman world. It is even being utilized occasionally by scholars of Greek religion. At the same time renewed interest in the daughter versions (Syriac, Vulgate, Ethiopic, Coptic etc.) has thrown new attention onto the Septuagint. This Companion provides a cutting-edge survey of scholarly opinion on the Septuagint text of each biblical book. It covers the characteristics of each Septuagint book, its translation features, origins, text-critical problems and history. As such it provides a comprehensive companion to the Septuagint, featuring contributions from experts in the field.

The Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of Jewish sacred writings) is of great importance in the history of both Judaism and Christianity. The first translation of the books of the Hebrew Bible (plus additions) into the common language of the ancient Mediterranean world made the Jewish scriptures accessible to many outside Judaism. Not only did the Septuagint become Holy Writ to Greek speaking Jews but it was also the Bible of the early Christian communities: the scripture they cited and the textual foundation of the early Christian movement. Translated from Hebrew (and Aramaic) originals in the two centuries before Jesus, the Septuagint provides important information about the history of the text of the Bible. For centuries, scholars have looked to the Septuagint for information about the nature of the text and of how passages and specific words were understood. For students of the Bible, the New Testament in particular, the study of the Septuagint's influence is a vital part of the history of interpretation. But until now, the Septuagint has not been available to English readers in a modern and accurate translation. The New English Translation of the Septuagint fills this gap.

The five books of Enoch are a collection of books written in Semitic languages, and often grouped together as the 'Book of Enoch,' or '1st Enoch.' The books were likely written at different points in time and different Semitic languages. The first book was the Book of the Watchers, which is generally considered to be the oldest book in the collection, however, the age of the book is debated. The book is now known to have originated long before Christianity since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, was lost for well over a thousand years to Europeans, and assumed to be a Christian-era work when the Europeans rediscovered it in Ethiopia. The five books of Enoch only survive in Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia, however, do not survive intact, and some sections of text do not survive. The Astronomical Book explains a very different version of reality from the one that most people believe in today: a flat world with a physical sky above it. In this other world, the sun, moon, and stars all enter the space under the sky through portals at the east edge of the world and exit through the portals at the western edge of the world. The Astronomical Book attempts to explain the movement of the sun, moon, and winds, and is sometimes referred to as the Enochian Calendar, as it tried to explain the way the days, months, and years pass over time, and how the winds changed through the year. The world described is similar to the ancient Babylonian world view, which many ancient cultures inherited and used until the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes proposed the alternate concept that the world was spherical around 240 BC. The two world-systems were debated until the Imperial Church of Rome officially endorsed the flat Earth, which became the standard European world-view until the time of Copernicus. The Astronomical Book does not have many unique terms or descriptions of events to date it by like the other books of Enoch. There are many unique names found in the Astronomical Book but most cannot be traced back to a specific language or culture, and are therefore not useful for dating the text. The surviving fragments found among the Dead Sea scrolls are accepted as dating back to the 3rd-century BC, however, the book could be significantly older. The names of the sun in chapter 7 could indicate that some of the text originated in the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The names are listed as Orjares and Tomas are possibly based on the Egyptian terms Her-ur and Atum, which were pronounced as herwer and tmw respectively, and were both solar gods. Her-ur was the national god in the first few dynasties of the Old Kingdom, however, had been replaced by the sun-god Ra by the 5th Dynasty. By the Middle Kingdom, Her-ur was replaced by Osiris as the husband of Isis and the father of Horus the younger. If the name Orjares is a corruption of Her-ur, the date of the original text would most-likely date back to before the 5th-Dynasty, and almost certainly before the Middle Kingdom. On the other hand, Atum continued to be worshiped until the New Kingdom, and based on the Letter of Aristeas and the Pithom Stele, was believed to have been Moses' original god by some Jews and Greeks at the time the Septuagint was translated at the Library of Alexandria.

Text-critical and Hermeneutical Studies in the Septuagint is the title of a bilateral research project conducted from 2009 to 2011 by scholars from the universities of Munich (Germany) and Stellenbosch (South Africa). The joint research enterprise was rounded off by a conference that took place from 31st of August – 2nd of September 2011 in Stellenbosch. It was held in cooperation with the Association for the Study of the Septuagint in South Africa (LXXSA). Scholars from Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, France, Canada and the USA, as well as South Africa, delivered papers focusing on the history of the LXX; translation technique and text history; textual criticism, and the reception of the Septuagint.

"Examines the origins, language, textual history, and reception of the Greek Old Testament"--

Ce volume est Ia suite de S. P. Brock, C.T. Fritsch et S. Jellicoe, A Classified Bibliography of the Septuagint (Brill, Leiden 1973) pour les publications parues sur la Septante entre 1970 et 1993. Cette bibliographie regroupe d'abord les études sur le texte grec proprement dit- éditions, langue des traducteurs, techniques de traduction, critique textuelle, manuscrits de Ia Septante trouvés à Qumrân, réception dans le judaïsme hellénistique (Philon, Flavius Josèphe) et le christianisme ancien (Nouveau Testament et Pères). Viennent ensuite les études particulières, classées par livre biblique, suivies des études sur les versions, orientales et latines, issues de la Septante. Le volume s'achève sur les travaux consacrés aux illustrations de la Septante. Cet instrument de travail s'adresse à tous ceux qui s'intéressent à la Bible, au judaïsme et au christianisme de l'Antiquité. This volume is a successor to A Classified Bibliography of the Septuagint (Brill, Leiden 1973), by S.P. Brock, C.T. Fritsch and S. Jellicoe, for the literature on the Septuagint published between 1970 and 1993. It includes general publications on the Greek text — editions, language, translators' techniques, textual criticism, Septuagint manuscripts from Qumran and the use of the Septuagint in Ancient Judaism (Philon, Josephus) and Christianity (New Testament and Patristica). Particular studies are then classified by the individual books of the Bible, followed by literature on Oriental and Latin versions derived from the Septuagint. The studies on the illustrations of the Septuagint are included at the end. This reference tool will be indispensable for scholars or students interested in Bible, Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity.