Читать книгу The Literature and History of New Testament Times - J. Gresham Machen - Страница 31

The name "Septuagint," derived from the Latin word for "seventy," has been applied to the Alexandrian translation of the Old Testament in reference to an ancient story about its origin. According to this story, the translation was made by seventy-two men summoned from Jerusalem by Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, in order to add the Jewish law to the royal library at Alexandria. The story is certainly not true in details, and is probably not even correct in representing the translation as destined primarily for the royal library. More probably the translation was intended for the Greek-speaking Jews of Egypt.

The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek world language of the period, and into the popular, spoken form of that language, not into the literary form. The translation differs widely in character in the different books, for many different translators had a part in it. Some of the books are translated with such slavish literalness as to be almost unintelligible to a Greek. Everywhere, indeed, the influence of the Hebrew original makes itself felt to some degree. Hebrew idioms are often copied in the translation instead of being remolded according to the peculiarities of the Greek language.

The Septuagint exerted an important influence upon the language of the New Testament. The Septuagint was the Greek Bible of the New Testament writers, and the influence of a Bible upon language is very strong. A good example is afforded by the influence of the King James Version upon the whole development of modern English. It is not surprising, therefore, that as the Septuagint was influenced by Hebrew, so the language of the New Testament also displays a Semitic coloring. That coloring was induced partly by the Septuagint, but it was also induced in other ways. Part of the New Testament, for example the words of Jesus, goes back ultimately to an Aramaic original. All the New Testament writers except one were Jews, and had spoken Aramaic as well as Greek. No wonder, then, that their Greek was influenced by the Semitic languages. This Semitic influence upon the language of the New Testament is not so great as was formerly supposed, but it cannot be ignored. The New Testament is written in the natural, non-literary form of the Greek world language. That is the main thing to be said. But upon this base is superposed an appreciable influence of Hebrew and Aramaic.

The importance of the Septuagint for the early Christian mission was inestimable. Every pioneer missionary knows how difficult it is to create the vocabulary necessary to express new religious ideas. In the case of the earliest Christian mission, that labor had already been done. It had been done by the Jews of Alexandria. By the Septuagint, the great ideas of the Old Testament—and upon these ideas Christianity was based—had already been put into a Greek form. The Christian Church needed only to develop what had been begun. The Church made good use of her opportunity. The influence of the Septuagint upon the religious vocabulary of the New Testament writers was profound. The Septuagint had provided a vocabulary which was understood already by great masses of people—by the Jews of the dispersion and by the hosts of the "God-worshipers" who attended the synagogues. Naturally the Christian missionaries used the words which people could understand.