GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
Methodologically speaking, this dissertation has examined the Old Greek of chapters i-xxxix of the Book of Ezekiel in three distinct but interdependent ways. The enquiry has been genuine: the method was entirely dictated by the nature of the material, nor was the end foreseen in the beginning. The text has been read as Greek by a Hellenist, as translation by a Hellenist turned Hebraist and as a potential source of textual and philological illumination by a student of the Massoretic text. The resulting pyramidal structure, in which Part II rests on Part I, and Part III cannot stand without Part I and Part II together, is composed of very large amounts of detail carefully analysed. The conscientious reader might be excused at times for wondering whether some of this may not be inconsequential. It is in particular unprecedented for so much attention to be paid to every aspect of the Greek language of so long a piece of Septuagintal text simply as Greek. It is also unprecedented for anyone to describe so minutely how the work of translation was done, or to attempt to arrive at a more or less complete picture of the thought-processes behind it. In the third place, there is no precedent for the culminating stage of the work, the scrutiny of the residual apparent Massoretic-Old Greek divergences which had been isolated in this laborious way.
It should be emphasized that if the method and approach had been different certain seminal conclusions would never have emerged. Study of the language as though it were any other Greek text has made it possible to explode old theories of multiple authorship without denying the facts which had suggested them, to date the work and to identify what is `hebraic' about it. It has made possible the formulation of the concept of the "unidiom", and brought to light pivotal examples of the latter. On this foundation, study of the manner and method of the translator(s) has sharply illuminated old theories about unity. The "unidiom" which is literal in one context but not in another has led to new knowledge about relative dating and the inner history of the Septuagintal corpus. So has careful investigation of the source of idiosyncratic philology originating in or borrowed by the text. It has been demonstrated beyond doubt that i-xxxix was rendered in four distinct stages, at least two of which are connected with Egypt, and that the resultant four sections are not of the same quality or reliability. This is the evidentiary basis for the verdict in Part III that in passage after pass age, where prima facie there is a case to be made for a Vorlage different from the Massoretic text or for understanding it in a new way, the argument is too lightly rooted in the facts to be at all decisive. Lastly, it is evident that the minds of the translator(s) were saturated in the language and versional technique of the Greek Pentateuch to an extent consistent with the probability that both original and translation were, if not always perfectly understood, known by heart.
In view of the delimitation of the present study to i-xxxix, it is ironical that the weight of interest on the part of the Jewish community whose urgent practical and religious needs were to be met by the translating enterprise was almost certainly in the contents of xl-xlviii. In these later chapters we find a hopeful vision of the idealised Temple and of a people renewed. The contrast with much of the earlier material is pronounced. In the light of the firm conclusions to Part I [pp. 100-1] and Part II [pp. 180-4] on the question of unity, chapters i-xxxix are paradoxically both a linguistic unity which no trained Hellenist would think of impugning, and a renditional pastiche. The earliest Alexandrian Ezekiel included by way of preamble only those parts of i-xxxix which survived a careful process of bowdlerization. Given the highly scatological nature of extended passages involving (to a degree unequalled anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible) the development in lurid detail of the intertwined idolatry-adultery metaphor, a very negative view of the People of God, who are termed congenital idolaters from before the Exodus, and the uninhibited condemnation of Egypt and all her ways, only these selected parts of the earlier chapters were deemed acceptable in a society where the community hoped to establish and maintain a prosperous and happy life. Beginning with xvi, large amounts of text were deliberately censored out. This choice represents an attitude markedly different from the extreme scrupulosity which must have characterized the approach of the translators of the Law. Whatever the motives of those who worked in due course to repair the omissions, we must reckon among other things with a diminished degree of reverence, and as a corollary with a possibly heightened degree of carelessness, for example in the matter of smaller-scale expansion and abridgement.
Hitherto Septuagintal study has worked with two fixed dates only, that of the traditional early Third Century B.C. rendering of the Law, and the general if not wholly undisputed assumption that by the late Second Century B.C. the translator of Ecclesiasticus was looking at a completed threefold Greek Canon. It seems likely that work on the bulk of the Former Prophets would not have been delayed more than a century after the Law was rendered; but until the present study no concentrated effort has been made, using modern methods and modern knowledge of the history of post-Classical Greek, to date or place geographically any of these non-Pentateuchal canonical books. The deductions concerning the date and provenance of i-xxxix in Part I [pp. 101-3] and Part II [pp. 185- 6] (given the tendency for scribal interference to make documents look if anything somewhat later than they are) establish incontrovertibly two facts. In the first place, wherever and however the work was actually done, the demand for it and the point of view that informed it continued to be Egyptian. Secondly, there were at least two and possibly three bouts of activity in the rendering of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. If there were only two, Ezekiel xl-xlviii, with i-xv and xxv- xxx.19 as extended introduction, occupied something of a middle position in the second bout. It came later in the sequence than most if not all of the Former Prophets (showing knowledge of Canticles but influencing Joshua) but certainly served as something of a trail-blazer for such overwhelmingly hazardous enterprises as the rendering of Isaiah and Jeremiah (and possibly of parts of Psalms and Proverbs). If on the other hand there were three such bouts of activity, the original Alexandrian Ezekiel was even more signally a pioneering work, marking the earliest engagement on the part of would-be translators with the Latter Prophets and virtually all the Writings, with their textual and philological pitfalls. It is tempting to suggest that whether there were two such post-Pentateuchal `pushes' or three, relatively early acquaintance, perhaps as an honorary `Former Prophet', with Canticles served as a powerful disincentive to any translator who might think himself equal to any of the Writings. In any case it is interesting that the linguistic evidence so rigorously assessed in Part I leads to a date (c. 150-50 B.C.) reasonably consistent with the completion of the Greek Bible by the late Second Century B.C. There is attraction in an hypothesis that the author of a Greek book which is so complete a tissue of biblical allusion to both Hebrew and Greek texts, and whose Greek is so good that he was perhaps less than first-rate as a Semitist, had formed part of the translating team, and that his is the voice of experience in more than the demands of the limited task of which he writes.
A tentative reconstruction of the inner history of the last stage, or last two stages, of translation work produces the following sequence. Samuel, Kings, I Chronicles, Ruth and Canticles were certainly available to those who made Ezekiel A. Ezekiel A was available to those who made versions of parts at least of Joshua, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Psalms. Ezekiel xvii-xx, or B, is later than part at least of the Psalms version, but earlier than part at least of the Twelve. Ezekiel xvi with xxi-xxiv, or C, is later than yet more of the Psalms version, and, significantly, later than several parts of the Twelve. It shows no sign that the Isaiah version existed, but was plainly known to the Jeremiah translator(s) at two points. It picks up a striking "unidiom" from Proverbs xxxi, providing a clear back-allusion to what may have been a `floating' or `purple passage' piece of selective translation of that very difficult book. It is plausible that in this case the more connected matter in xxv-xxxi had already been rendered into Greek, but it is difficult to believe, not least because of the notoriously poor quality of the work, that the collection was attempted at all early in its entirety. Ezekiel xxx.20 to xxxix, or D, was made later than parts at least of Psalms, the Twelve, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations. Thus we arrive at Samuel, Kings, I Chronicles, Ruth and Canticles; Ezekiel A; Joshua and Psalms; Ezekiel B; parts at least of the Twelve, Proverbs (xxv to) xxxi; Ezekiel C; Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations; Ezekiel D; possibly the bulk of Proverbs; and Ecclesiasticus. It is not possible to say more about the place in this sequence of Job and Ecclesiastes than that they are at least as unlikely as Proverbs to have been attempted early as complete books. Much more in the way of firm dating, both relative and absolute, would emerge if the methods employed in the present study were applied with similar precision to these and other Old Greek books. Daniel is a case in point. Meanwhile Hebraists may note that those who rendered Ezekiel A to D were using texts constituted by a date which can be fixed with some exactitude.
It is clear from the conclusions to Part I on the question of hebraism [pp. 103-6] and to Part II on the quality of the version [pp. 187-8] that our text is written in a dialect of Canaanite. The Greek is profoundly un-Greek, not so much in its vocabulary or its idiom, usage and semantics, as in its fundamental structure. With the Septuagint proper, the collection of Old Greek versions constitutes the largest surviving body of Greek prose dating from the Hellenistic period; yet much of it has a foreign ring, and is opaque to the pagan reader. These characteristics are rooted in the fact that the language is translationese', and in the case of our text heavily derivative. The dependence is most obviously upon the Law in its Alexandrian Greek dress. Many locutions and renderings can be understood only as traditional formulae that were not always completely understood or appropriately applied by those who took them up. The version is unapologetically of the `stained glass' variety, exemplifying an equation of fidelity with literalism. Moreover much of the glass has been moved into place from older structures. Perhaps because the models were virtually uniformly prose renderings of prose works, i-xxxix appears to be innocent of lexical refinements of the kind which mark the difference between a high poetic or rhetorical Greek style and plain prose. There are many indications that the Vorlage was imperfectly understood, some that Greek itself may have been imperfectly known, or perhaps considered in the context of Bible translation to be somewhat malleable. It is legitimate to wonder of what language those who rendered i-xxxix into Greek were true native speakers. This does not mean that there is substance to the notion that anyone ever spoke Greek like this, except that conceivably in the context of prayer, public worship and personal religion a certain stylistic penumbra may well develop about the sacred scriptures.
Even given the fact that dynamic equivalence was clearly not the aim, the quality of the rendering cannot be termed high. It probably reflects an unfortunate coincidence between a decline in knowledge of Biblical Hebrew (without which there would have been no demand for written translation on any scale) and a bruising encounter with a long and difficult original. It seems likely that the production of the Old Greek as a whole was characterized by a steadily widening gulf between the standard demanded by the difficulty of the origin al and the standard attainable by the grasp of those who sought to render it. Ezekiel A and B are somewhat less unreliable than C and D. All, however, are weak and to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt by the serious Hebraist. Probably for completely unavoidable mechanical reasons the method was atomistic, and did not lend itself to reflection, let alone correction. One may hazard a guess that commercial pressures were involved; but whatever the cause, no part of the version, if we discount the major editorial decision made, one must believe, when Ezekiel A was excerpted, was done at sufficient leisure for a Tendenz or Tendenzen to develop: there is an abundance of misinterpreted detail, but nothing that might suggest a sustained interpretative effort. Even the use of the Greek Torah cannot be shown in more than one place to have been theologically informed. The work of the present writer may nevertheless have gone some way towards identifying the community which commissioned or at least requested a version of Ezekiel i-xxxix, and its reasons for doing so: namely, Jewish people in exile from the Jerusalem Temple, and needing their devotion to and hope in God to be reinforced with vision but with minimal offence to their pagan neighbours in Egypt. A case could perhaps be made for a desire on the part of that community to distance and dissociate itself from the idolatrous pollutions and compromises of the Palestinian past.
This study was originally intended to expose the manner and method of the Old Greek version of chapters i-xxxix of the Book of Ezekiel, with a view to a cautious assessment of its value for Old Testament philology and textual criticism. It was soon clear, however, that the enterprise could not go for ward without considerable work upon the Greek language, the results of which turned out to be more relevant, as well as bulkier, than had been expected. It is hoped that where the detail of Part I is not directly relevant to the rest of the work, it may at least serve as some contribution to the neglected field of Septuagint grammar and lexicography. The Hebraist's interest is different; but the present writer, herself an Hebraist who originally expected the Old Greek to lead to much in the way of fruitful emendation and suggestive philological insight, and who never lost sight of that origin al aim, urges her fellow-students to come to terms with the whole of the argument. In the pyramidal structure, Part III [pp. 189 ff.] is the apex. Here the outstanding apparent divergences between the Massoretic text and our version are scrutinised in the light of the work embodied in Parts I and II. It was disappointing to find no unequivocal cases of the version's yielding new Hebrew text or interpretation. It may be that the results appear somewhat negative, as though much shaking and sifting has served to pan out very few grains of gold; yet it remains the case that in this study methods for the application of the Old Greek have been pioneered. If some lasting methodological principles have emerged the work will perhaps have been worthwhile, for if anything has characterized the use of the earliest version it has been a lack of method. Let the days of light-hearted and light-minded retroversion be gone. It is surely better to go shopping and come home empty-handed than to buy a pig in a poke. The present writer believes that wherever and whenever in the future materials for genuine textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible come to hand, this approach will be abundantly vindicated.