3 - Jewish Greek Bible versions

Summary

The story of the Jewish transmission of Greek Bible versions has never been fully told. An acute shortage of source materials, not only by comparison with the very rich Christian manuscript tradition but in absolute terms, can only be part of the explanation for this relative silence, since some of the sources in question have been known for a long time (at least since the later nineteenth century). The convergence of certain governing attitudes in the historiography of both Christianity and Judaism must also be held partly responsible.

Older scholarship

It has long been held a commonplace that the Greek-speaking, primarily Alexandrian, Jewish cultural milieu out of which the Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures first arose effectively came to an end early in the second Christian century. General works on the Greek Bible, while freely admitting that – with the exception of one or two (such as the Wisdom of Solomon) that were originally composed in Greek – the books constituting the Christian Old Testament in Greek (collectively designated in Christian usage as ‘the Septuagint’) were translated by Jews for Jewish use, have tended until recently to assert that from the early second century they were abandoned by the Jews and subsequently became the exclusive possession of the Christian church. This abandonment is often associated specifically with their adoption by the church, and more particularly with their use by Christians in polemic against Judaism.