Mike Aubrey March 10, 2009 Books, English, Greek

An LXX Diglot

I was thinking about it yesterday and I really not entirely sure how feasible it would b to have a Greek-English LXX Diglot.

Now it would be absolutely fantastic to have the NETS on the page beside Rahlfs, but look at the page count of both of them. The volume would break 2000 pages and the page size of Rahlfs would either need to be enlarged or the NETS would need to be reduced.

I do really hope it could happen. But I’m not confident about it.

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1

Nick Norelli on March 10, 2009 at 1:01 pm
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Brenton’s LXX is a diglot so I don’t see why it couldn’t be done with more up-to-date versions. The question becomes one of maintaining Rahlf’s apparatus and the NETS book introductions. Besides, 2000+ pages isn’t so bad when you consider that most popular study Bibles have over 2000 pages. And I’d advocate enlarging the Rahlf’s pages.

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Mike Aubrey on March 10, 2009 at 1:23 pm
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I suppose you’re right. And going back and looking at my compact BHS, they’ve squeezed 1500 pages into an extremely small space.

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Thomas on March 10, 2009 at 4:53 pm
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You might want to check out this if you haven’t already. http://apostolicbible.com/print.htm. It’s not NETS or Rahlf’s but it’s all LXX with English.

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Mike Aubrey on March 10, 2009 at 5:33 pm
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Yeah, Sue pointed it out to me a couple weeks ago.

But I don’t want an interlinear (sorry about the “actually book” thing here previously, that was a brain fart). My preference is to keep the Greek separate from the English as much as possible.

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- 5
  
  Carl Conrad on March 11, 2009 at 4:16 am
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  But if we assume that Al Pietersma is right and the LXX is in fact a schoolboy sort of interlinear version of the Hebrew text — a quality intentionally preserved in the NETS version (to the dismay of those who don’t appreciate what this means), then I would think that an interlinear combo of Rahlfs’ would be more helpful than a version that attempts to clean up and restate the sense of the LXX text in good style — as if the LXX had ever been intended as a “literary” version in Greek.
  
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    Mike Aubrey on March 11, 2009 at 7:39 am
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    From what I understand, it depends on what part of the LXX we’re talking about. The Psalms are rather “interlinear,” but Thackeray described the Pentateuch and a few other portions as rather good Greek and then there’s the originally Greek compositions in the LXX like 4 Macc, which, well, is extremely good and highly stylized Greek.
    
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7

Sue on March 10, 2009 at 9:49 pm
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I have never used an interlinear myself, but I do like to report on any resource that I find for free on the internet. Sometimes the quirky ones fascinate me the most. I think the great thing about the Apostolic Bible is that the plan for it was revealed in a dream on Vancouver Island. I read that story somewhere, but I could be simply misremembering. Look out for it on that site.

Having said that, I would love an LXX – NETS diglot.

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Sue on March 10, 2009 at 10:16 pm
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Not a dream – just a spontaneous idea while visiting Victoria.

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- 9
  
  Mike Aubrey on March 11, 2009 at 7:40 am
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  I’ve really wanted to visit Victoria – hopefully this summer after classes are done…
  
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10

J. K. Gayle on March 11, 2009 at 3:06 am
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If you manipulate digital texts a bit, if you could have the NETS published .pdf sit onscreen with your downloaded version of Ralph’s Greek (in Word format at the Tyndale website), then you’d have it.

PIngram’s done that nicely at KATA-Pi, combining Brenton’s English with Ralph’s Greek (and showing RSV and BHS, again from Tyndale). “The LXX cross references to the Hebrew Bible have been extensively revised using those set out in Swete’s ‘Old Testament in Greek’ publications between 1894 and 1909, amended in part to agree with verses as printed in the Biblia Hebraica (1937 publication). . . Passage headings are generally as printed in the Bible Society’s ‘Good News Bible’, 1976.”

It’s printable too (which NETS people / publishing house may not be too happy with if you do something similar). But even on screen it’s wonderfully readable with just a few glitches.

Here’s Psalm 23/22:

http://www.katapi.org.uk/katapiNSBunix/Lxx/LxxHBByBC.php?GB=19&GC=22

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- 11
  
  Mike Aubrey on March 11, 2009 at 7:43 am
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  Kurk, thanks for this. This is really cool.
  
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