Abstract
This is a study on the translation technique of the Old Greek (OG) translator (T) of Isaiah. The object of the study is to uncover what sort of choices the translator made by aligning the Masoretic Text (MT) and OG, and accounting for the pluses and minuses. When there is a textual feature in OG that is not in MT, that is considered a plus, and when there is a textual feature not in OG that is present in MT, it is called a minus.
The lion share of this study is broken into chapters that each categorise the different kinds of data which Vorm-Croughs has identified. The usual suspects emerge, such as, for example, double translation or implicitation. She especially contributes to
The work is well presented, clear and tightly argued. One is left wondering, however, how to reconcile the methodology with the work. When dealing with translational technique in Septuagintal studies it is probably no longer helpful to assume the paradigm of aligned texts. It may unwittingly instil the sense that literalism was T’s approach. The old dichotomy of literal vs. something-else seems here to have been assumed. Also, on this basis, at the end of long stretches of organised data, it was sometimes hard to see how the information better informed the study of T’s technique. The evidence should probably do more than show us what the differences are. For example, does a semantic enquiry of T’s choices, within his Hellenistic world, better help to understand those choices, which would then elucidate intention a little more, and therefore shed further light on T? In a number of places Vorm-Croughs begins to touch on this, but it does not quite emerge: T was not ‘random’, he followed certain ‘tactics and “rules”’, and his interpretation was ‘confined by “certain techniques”’ (p. 520). This sounds much like a technique centred by an interpretative tradition. And if he employed “‘Jewish exegesis’ then his word choices, for example, would have been of paramount importance.