Abstract
Botanical terms in the Septuagint reveal a mass of uncertain and sometimes contradictory data, owing to the translators’ inadequate and inaccurate understanding of plants. To understand the metaphorical and symbolic meaning of plants, the new approach represented by Biblical Plant Hermeneutics places the taxonomy of flora on a strong ethnological and ethnobotanical basis by studying each plant in situ and gathering indigenous knowledge about the plant and its context in the biblical text. This article applies this methodology to the translation of the Hebrew source text term אֶרֶז [cedar] in the Septuagint as κέδρος [cedar] or κέδρινος (the adjectival form of κέδρος) and its interpretation in the light of lexicography, which lead to contradictory identifications. A complexity theoretical approach is proposed to provide a solution for the various identification choices in the light of lexicography to communicate the cultural values of the Hebrew source text and its Greek translation.
Highlights
Cultural knowledge is controlled, shaped and construed by means of the impact of designation, identification and classification assigned through the choices made in translation (Du Toit & Naudé 2005:33–58)
A similar situation obtains in ancient Egypt, where it is problematic to identify any of the pertinent Egyptian terms for plant products (ʿs, sft, mrw) with Cedrus libani, even though cedars from Lebanon were a critical feature of trade between Egypt and the Levant (Ward 1991)
The source text is lost, Sirach 24:13 makes a clear distinction between κέδρος and κυπάρισσος in terms of their ecological distribution, namely Lebanon and the mountains of Hermon, respectively
Summary
Cultural knowledge is controlled, shaped and construed by means of the impact of designation, identification and classification assigned through the choices made in translation (Du Toit & Naudé 2005:33–58). A similar situation obtains in ancient Egypt, where it is problematic to identify any of the pertinent Egyptian terms for plant products (ʿs, sft, mrw) with Cedrus libani, even though cedars from Lebanon were a critical feature of trade between Egypt and the Levant (Ward 1991) These early botanical descriptions are subsequently utilised in a variety of ways in the Hebrew and Greek dictionaries. By contrast, Köhler (1937:163– 165) employs a reductionist approach by understanding the characteristics of cedars based upon European varieties in which the trunks are branching and too short for the kind of massive building uses described in the biblical text As a result, he identified the ֶא ֶרזwith another species, Abies cilicia, which grows 10 m–25 m high and is of the genus Abies rather than Cedrus within the family Pinaceae. Natural stands of cedar occur in Cyprus, Syria and in the Taurus Mountains of Turkey, where ample moist air provides a receptive habitat (Musselman 2006:576–577)
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