The Transmission of Interpretive Renderings in the Passover Law from LXX Pentateuch to LXX Chronicles

Abstract

I aim to answer the following question: How was the Chronicles’ translator guided by LXX Pentateuch in translating the Passover description? In this question, I will first explicate some of my key presuppositions on the nature of LXX Chronicles, and outline a brief history of scholarship on the issue of the influence of LXX Pentateuch to the books translated later. Second, I will show the three exceptional renderings, which appear in the Passover description of LXX Pentateuch and LXX Chronicles, but are rare or do not appear in other LXX books. Then, I will demonstrate how three interpretive renderings in LXX Pentateuch were transmitted to LXX Chronicles – jxv and θύω in Exodus 12:21 and 2 Chronicles 29 and 35, lvband ὀπτάω in Deuteronomy 16:7 and 2 Chronicles 35:13, and z[e and ἔριφος in Exodus 12:5 and 2 Chronicles 35:7. My argument is that these interpretive renderings in LXX Pentateuch and LXX Chronicles represent that the translator of the Chronicles was guided by LXX Pentateuch, and that he was thereby able to translate and deliver a more exact meaning of the law to his contemporaries. Third, I will demonstrate how this kind of transmission might have happened in regard to three hypotheses. While previous scholars understood that this transmission could have happened by the way of liturgical usage and the interlinear paradigm, I will include my suggestion that it might have happened as a result of the translator’s actual experience of participating in the temple ritual. I will point out that the purpose of building the temple of Onias in Leontopolis, Egypt may have been to keep and hold religious rituals and sacrifices. In this regard, I will argue that the translator of the Chronicles may likewise have been someone who had the identity of soldier-priest, who served at the temple in Leontopolis.BR This paper contributes to current studies of LXX Chronicles and the Septuagint by examining how the imitation of LXX Pentateuch renderings by later translators transmitted interpretations of certain texts. The reception of the exceptional and interpretative renderings in the Passover law of LXX Pentateuch demonstrates the reception of the hermeneutics of the Pentateuch’s translators. Furthermore, the translator, who dutifully served his contemporaries and later generations endeavoured to deliver and transmit what he considered to be the most traditional interpretation of the Passover sacrifice. The translator, who has received guidance in ways that I have described above may have intended to provide guidance to posterity himself. The later translator himself may have been quite conscious of these translational-interpretive transmission.