MetaCatholic

I confess myself slightly baffled by this post of Iyov’s on the Septuagint. In particular, I found these two statements highly confusing:

I do not regard the Septuagint as a Jewish book — it has been thoroughly rejected by mainstream Judaism, and enough doubt has been raised about the validity of it as a textual witness to reject reliance of it from a Jewish point of view. It is somewhat offensive to read statements by some Christians asserting the “Jewishness” of a translation that is so reviled by Judaism.

Third, although we cannot read Jewish beliefs directly from the Septuagint, the textual witness of books not in the Hebrew canon at least suggests the outlines of former Jewish stories.

I follow his argument that mainstream rabbinic Judaism came to reject the Septuagint for varied reasons, not least its Christian appropriation. But I don’t fully grasp his point here. In what sense do scholars assert the Jewishness of the LXX except in so far as they insist it provides evidence for Second Temple Judaism, and especially for (at least parts of) the Diaspora. The parts of the LXX that translate the texts of what became the Jewish canon provide evidence both of (at least Hellenistic) Jewish readings, and the textual history of those books. Iyov seems to acknowledge this when he says “it provides a source for helping to interpret obscure passages in Hebrew”. The texts of the LXX which did not get gathered into the rabbinic canon provide evidence of the kind of literature which was read and heard among some Jews of the period, and which, at least in some parts of the Diaspora, and possibly among some groups living in Israel, were probably regarded in some sense as holy. This is far more than suggesting “the outlines of former Jewish stories”. I am not aware of any serious argument that any of these books were produced outside Jewish circles. In what sense, then, is it offensive to say that they were Jewish books?

Saying they were Jewish books is not the same as saying that they are Jewish in the sense of being Judaism’s books today, and I’m intrigued as to what sort of statements Iyov has in mind. He suggests that “One could analogously ask if Protestants are willing to accept all of Luther’s statements as being representative of “Christianity.” Well, I for one am not, but I do not therefore say Luther was not a Christian. It is, however, a false analogy. The LXX’s pre-Christian existence is testimony not only to the work of individual Jewish writers, but to the existence of groups of Jews who valued it as religious literature, if not holy writing, at a time when the bounds of the Scripture were not fully fixed. It is the value placed on them by groups that makes them more than an individual testimony and helps broaden understanding of second Temple Judaism. In that sense, a better analogy might be drawn from those early books that did not make it into the Christian canon, although some groups treated them as canonical for a time – the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas or the apocryphal gospels. These are Christian literature, even if some of them later came to be rejected as either non-canonical or even heretical. The later judgement of the Church doesn’t alter the appropriateness of calling them Christian literature, or lessen their value for constructing the history of early Christianity.

Yes, I agree with Iyov that the LXX is (for almost all of the Common Era) seen more appropriately as a Christian book, but I don’t think that alters the appropriateness of calling it Jewish in its historical context. Nor do I think that doing so should be taken in any way as usurping Judaism’s prerogatives of defining its own holy books. So I really don’t get whatever it is that upsets Iyov or what he actually finds offensive. Calling the LXX Jewish seems to me to be a sound historical location of these books in a diverse Second Temple Judaism in which the significant strand that emerged as Rabbinic Judaism was not the only one.