For anyone interested in linguistics and the Septuagint (and even a bit of Neo-Aramaic), this article was just published in Tyndale Bulletin. And it’s open access! Here’s the abstract:

This article argues that at least one case of literalism in the Septuagint is actually an epiphenomenon of crosslinguistic symmetry between biblical Hebrew and postclassical Greek. I examine translation of the Left Dislocation construction in the Greek Pentateuch and demonstrate that the translators were aware of its discourse-pragmatic meaning. I argue the best explanation for its distribution in the Pentateuch is that the translators licensed crosslinguistic symmetry in order to produce a direct translation that interpretively resembled the source.

The example I use in (3) was an inside joke between me and my supervisor, James Aitken. One of Jim’s first students was…well, strange. He came to Cambridge and began a PhD in numismatics, but announced shortly thereafter that he was leaving to sail the world. Rest assured. He promised to return and complete the PhD. Of course Jim never heard from him again. I used to update Jim on my thesis and claim I was ‘at sea.’

I was extremely impressed by the professionalism and editorial attention of Tyndale Bulletin during the review process. Tyndale Bulletin has an excellent process, and it was an outstanding experience. Highly recommend.