TRANSLATION AND SURVIVAL This page intentionally left blank TRANSLATION AND SURVIVAL The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora TESSA RAJAK 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26dp OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork #TessaRajak2009 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2009 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby BiddlesLtd,King’sLynn,Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–955867–4 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Preface TheoriginsofthisbooklieinsixGrinfieldlecturesontheSeptuagint givenatOxfordUniversityin1995–6.Thelectureswereentitled‘The Septuagint as a Social and Cultural Artefact’. Grinfield lecturers in recentyearshavepresentedanadmirablywidevarietyofapproaches to a subject which has sometimes been at risk of becoming arcane. The lecturer in this case (or so I presumed) was chosen in the expectation ofbringing together two fields obviouslyconnected but rarelybroughttogetherinpractice:thestudyofHellenisticJudaism, flourishingsincethelastdecadesofthetwentiethcenturyasperhaps never before, and the study of the Greek Bible itself, in all its intricacies, now also beginning to enjoy a period of creative vigour. The Jewish translations were to be the focus, rather than the Chris- tianSeptuagintcollectionintowhichtheywerelatergathered.More broadly,aunionofseveralspecialistacademicdisciplineswascalled for—classics,Judaicstudies,andbiblicalstudies(withanadmixture of patristics). It transpired that something comparable had been previously attempted within the Grinfield framework, by a distin- guished classical historian, and that was in 1979–80 when Arnaldo Momigliano gave the lectures (which, like most Grinfield Lectures, were never published, except in part under other rubrics). He had asked himself, I learnt (through his literary executor Anne Marie Meyer), ‘in what sense a lecturer on the Septuagint might lecture withouttalkingaboutit’andthenhadtakenashissubject‘thenature and limits of Jewish Hellenism or Hellenistic Judaism’. While in no way aspiring to rival Momigliano’s authority, scholarship, or wit, Inonetheless,perhapsrashlyandfoolishly,soughttotakethatextra stepandtoseehowonemightconnectthosetwoareas.Ihavebeen delvingintotheSeptuaginteversince. Given the topic, the audience for my lectures was by no means composed wholly of specialist biblical scholars. I was able to learn much from a range of questions and comments. The text of the lectures has expanded greatly and they have become almost unrec- ognizable.Inalmosteveryway,ahugeamounthaschangedbetween vi Preface lectures and book. In the present book, Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 9 had precursors of one kind or another in the lectures. But in thinking aboutthepurposeofmyoriginalexercise,anditstargetedaudience, Ihavecontinuedonthesamepathasbefore,withanever-increasing sense that the Greek Bible is an important enough part of our cultural past to deserve a presentation to an audience somewhat broader thanitsusualone. ThecrudeargumentsputforwardintheGrinfieldshavenowbeen greatlyrefined.Onecentralpreoccupationhasbeenmuchdeveloped, and that is expressed in the subtitle of the book: how we might connect the early history and the character of this vast corpus of translations and texts with the Greek-speaking Jewish world which producedit.Ofcourse,thetranslationswerebynomeansdissociated from Jerusalem and the land of Israel, as emerges already from the traditionthattheyoriginatedwithtranslatorswhomtheHighPriest himself selected; and some of the translations may even have their originintheLandofIsrael.Buttheenterpriseasawholeisinareal sense the product of a diaspora—the original ‘diaspora’ indeed, where that word originated. They were the foundations of life for a highly text-centred ethnic and religious minority, in Alexandria but also in the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, subjected to the impact of powerful imperial cultures, those of Greece and Rome, andofadominant,‘colonial’language—HellenisticGreek,thecom- monlanguage,or‘koine’.Yet,forthemostpart,eitherthebookshave been studied apart from their users or the users without their pri- marybooks.AndusersbeyondPalestineandAlexandriahavesimply droppedoutofthepicture. The timespan of this study is long, since the translations were a ‘workinprogress’fornearlyfourcenturies,fromperhapsthemiddle of the third century bce to probably the mid-second century ce. Towards the end, a new player enters the scene, the early Christian movement,growingoutofJudaismitselfandthereforeinpossession ofthesamebodyofliteratureinGreek,whichturnedtheGreekBible intotheSeptuagint,acollectionmadebyChristiansforChristians. A thread woven through the chapters is the theme of cultural adaptation in diaspora Jewry. In the Septuagint, we can observethe evolution of Judaism itself in relation to the dominant culture and to successive imperial powers. These developments emerge in the Preface vii origins and nature of the entire enterprise; in the language of the Septuagint; in thecontent of the corpus as awhole, especially when theadditionalmaterialofthe‘Apocrypha’andvariouskindsofsmall, apparentlydeliberate,changestotheHebreworiginalaretakeninto account; and, last but not least, in the uses to which the texts were put. It became clear, as I followed this thread, that this largely successful adaptation was achieved more by quiet subversion of norms and of impositions than by forms of collaboration. Scholars studying Hellenistic Jewish communities in the cities of the Greek East concluded some thirty years ago that, far from being the iso- lated, inward-looking entities of earlier stereotype and caricature, these Jews (and Judaizers), though they had their difficulties, could function as members of the cities in which they lived. From there, somehavemovedon,correctlyIbelieve,toanevennewerapprecia- tionofthepotentiallimitsofintegrationandofthecostofpreserving acommunalidentity.Thus,insteadoffocusingontheseJewsexclu- sively as practitioners of accommodation, we are now better placed to consider the methods available to them forexpressing resistance, subversion or at least reserve. Theory, too, has made a difference to the questions we can ask and the hypothetical answers we give, and Ihavederivedusefulmodelsfromrecentwritingonbilingualismand translation theory; on book cultures and textuality; on ethnic stra- tegies and hybridity; and on the weapons and hidden transcripts of theweak. TounderstandtheGreekBible’sroleinthediasporaoftheSecond Temple period and its aftermath, we need also to grasp what was happeningtotheHebrewBibleinthosecrucialyears,andtoviewthe twotogether.TheBibleisnot,however,approachedherebythemore familiar routes of the history of textual traditions or of exegesis. While a premise behind my exploration is indeed that the long survival of canonical texts depends upon the capacity of their users continually to findnew readings andnew meanings,theapproachI havetakenisnot,onthewhole,todigdeeplyintothemechanismsof theexegeticalprocess. At the same time, readers maybe disappointed by the numberof historicalproblemsthatahistorianhasnotmanagedtosolve.Trans- lations, especially those that remain close to their source, are ex- tremely resistant to yielding up the secrets of their origins. These viii Preface ancientversionswereproducedanonymously.Theydonotgiveaway dates or geographical affiliations readily, if at all. Such obstacles became increasingly apparent to me at the time of writing of the Grinfieldlectures.Ihavebeenfortunateintheextremetohavebeen able to work in recent years on the more technical aspects of the contextualization of the Septuagint corpus with colleagues in a fundedgroupproject.Wehavebeenexploring how faritispossible to make legitimate claims about embedding the translations in spe- cifictimesandplaces.Herethehistoricaldevelopmentofthecorpus ispresumed to be understood only in the most general lines. I have avoided relying on old assumptions, whose foundations we have revealed to be extremely shaky, but I have not been able, given the timeofwriting,toanticipatenew results. Evenif,however,thisbookdoesnotfullyreflectourfinalconclu- sions, it could not have beenwrittenwithout the numerous discus- sions,andtheongoingresearchoftheArtsandHumanitiesResearch Council (AHRC) Parkes ‘Greek Bible in the Graeco-Roman World’ Project,between2000and2006.Ioweanunquantifiabledebttothe inspiration of Sarah Pearce, Jenny Dines, and James Aitken (the project’s Research Fellow). Isuspect they will disagree with some of my ideas, especially on the historicity of the Letter of Aristeas, and evenperhapsontheveryexistenceovertheperiodinquestionofan entity which we are entitled to call ‘the Jewish diaspora’. But they know that without our work together this book would have looked verydifferentindeedanditwouldundoubtedlyhavebeenmuchthe poorer. My appreciation goes also to the AHRC and to two successive Directors of the AHRC Parkes Centre for the Study of Jewish/Non- JewishRelationsattheUniversityofSouthamptonwithinwhichthe Project operated—first David Cesarani and latterly Tony Kushner, whomadetheworkoftheProjectpossible. IextendwarmthankstotheGrinfieldLecturesCommitteeandto the Faculty of Theology, Oxford University for the honour of the invitationwhichfirsttookmeintotheSeptuagintandfororganizing thelectures.Outsidethatfaculty,SebastianBrockandMartinGood- manwere instrumental in the arrangements and were great sources of support. So too were the Principal and Fellows of Somerville College, who eased the burden of writing and delivery with their Preface ix readyprovisionofaccommodationandthehospitalityoftheSenior CommonRoom. TheUniversityofReadinghastoleratedperiodsofleavewhichmy colleaguesintheClassicsDepartmenthaveendured,andtheUniver- sity’sResearchEndowmentTrustFundhasmadesignificantfinancial contributionstotheGreekBibleProjectandhasalsoassistedwiththe support of myown leave. The British Academy has granted confer- enceandtravelfundingwhichhascontributedtoworkonthebook. IoweaverygreatdebttoFergusMillar,whomostgenerouslyreadthe entiremanuscriptatalatestage,withincrediblespeedandcare. Most of this expanded study was written in three exceptionally congenialenvironments.AttheInstituteforAdvancedStudiesinthe Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Iwas a member of a productive and agreeable research group on Hellenistic Judaism and Christian Hellenism whose discussions have played a significant part in my thinking. I thank the organizers of the group, Daniel Schwartz and DavidSatran,itsotherparticipants,andtheDirectorandstaffofthe Institute. As a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, I brought the book to an advanced stage. I thank the Director and staff there too, as well as the Faculty of the School of Historical Study, and especially Glen Bowersock; they all saw to the provisionofastimulatingbutwonderfullynon-intrusiveintellectual environment. In Princeton I also benefited from the excellent facil- itiesoftheSpeerLibraryinthePrincetonTheologicalSeminary,and IthankJimCharlesworth,RossWagner,andtheLibrarianforgrant- ing me the privilege of a visiting scholar’s study. At Princeton Uni- versity, Peter Scha¨fer, Martha Himmelfarb, John Gager, and Elaine PagelsintheReligionsDepartment,andFromaZeitlinasDirectorof thePrograminJudaicStudiesandinClassics,wereforthcomingwith their friendship and interest, and with practical help too. Kevin Osterlohlentskilledassistancewithediting.Finally,duringmytime asHoraceW.GoldsmithVisitingProfessorinthePrograminJudaic Studies at Yale, the combined impact of my excellent students, my learned colleagues, and the unique resources of the Yale University Libraryalmostledmetorewritetheentirebook.Ithankinparticular theChairoftheProgram,IvanMarcus,theJudaicaLibrarian,Nanette Stahl,andtheChairofClassics,ChristinaKraus.Myparticipationin the postgraduate seminar on biblical interpretation run by Steven