6 - Early Versions of Isaiah as Translations and Interpretations

Summary

Some of the earliest witnesses to the Book of Isaiah are translations into Greek and Syriac. Sometimes the translators offered not simply basic equivalents to Hebrew words but shaped their translation of passages to accord with understandings of them that were current in their Jewish communities. Although this can make the window to their Hebrew text opaque, sometimes their differences from today’s standard Hebrew text preserve alternative wordings found elsewhere in early Hebrew texts, while in other cases they include wordings that have not survived in any other Hebrew witnesses. The chief question such differences raise is whether the translator tailored his version to the readers’ pre-understanding or if they reflect different Hebrew words in the manuscript he used. In “Early Versions of Isaiah as Translations and Interpretations,” Ronald L. Troxel cites examples of these conundrums, and illustrates how scholars attempt to reason about their origins.