A translated text is laced with interpretive assumptions. By focusing on the Septuagint, J. Ross Wagner highlights the creative theology hidden in translation. His model couples patient investigation of the act of translation with careful attention to the translated texts' rhetorical features. Wagner focuses upon Isaiah's opening vision, clarifying its language, elucidating its character, and contextualizing its message. Reading the Sealed Book demonstrates how such translations serve as distinctive contributions to theology and reveal the contours of Jewish identity in the Hellenistic diaspora.

Originally published in 1906, this book forms the second part of a two-volume edition of the Book of Isaiah. It contains the Greek version of the text, together with extensive notes. An introduction, list of manuscripts and indices are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in biblical studies and the Book of Isaiah.

This study analyzes the Septuagint version of Isaiah's Servant Poems (Isaiah 42:1-8; 49:1-9; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12) as a translation and unique interpretation of the Hebrew text. The Septuagint version of the Servant Poems is of interest not only because it represents one of the earliest (if not the first) interpretations of the Hebrew text and thus an important stage in the history of exegesis of these poems, but also because this translation operates a transition from Hebrew modes of thinking and expression into a Greek language and context. The Septuagint version of the Servant Poems was cited by New Testament writers, read and commented on as Sacred Scripture by the early Church Fathers and continues to be used by the Eastern Church. This study is a helpful resource to Old Testament, New Testament and Patristic scholars and theologians alike. The introduction offers a methodology for classifying Septuagint differences to determine the specific exegesis and underlying theology of a given Septuagint text. Differences with the Hebrew text are categorized according to linguistic explanations (style, the translator's difficulty determining Greek semantic equivalents for obscure Hebrew vocabulary, errors or omissions, etc.) Hebrew Vorlagen, non-linguistic explanations like contextual and intertextual exegesis and combinations of linguistic and non-linguistic factors. The author identifies over 270 differences with the Masoretic Text in a presentation of the Septuagint text of each poem side-by-side with the Masoretic Text. Qumran variants are compared with the Masoretic Text and Septuagint to help classify Septuagint differences to determine which may be signs of the Septuagint's unique exegesis and theology. The Septuagint's numerous differences are bold-faced in the English translation of each poem before the author presents a detailed verse-by-verse literary analysis of the Septuagint in the wider context of Isaiah 1-66 and the Greek Pentateuch. The author argues that the vast majority of Septuagint differences with the Masoretic Text in Isaiah's Servant Poems reflect contextual and intertextual exegesis. The Septuagint version expresses theological perspectives that are at times similar and often distinct from the Masoretic Text. In a final chapter the author draws on the exegesis of each poem in preceding chapters to present the theology visible in the Septuagint version of Isaiah's Servant Poems, concluding with an appendix that catalogues textual differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text and a biblical index.

Most readers do not know about the Bible used almost universally by early Christians, or about how that Bible was birthed, how it grew to prominence, and how it differs from the one used as the basis for most modern translations. Although it was one of the most important events in the history of our civilization, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the third century BCE is an event almost unknown outside of academia. Timothy Michael Law offers the first book to make this topic accessible to a wider audience. Retrospectively, we can hardly imagine the history of Christian thought, and the history of Christianity itself, without the Old Testament. When the Emperor Constantine adopted the Christian faith, his fusion of the Church and the State ensured that the Christian worldview (which by this time had absorbed Jewish ideals that had come to them through the Greek translation) would leave an imprint on subsequent history. This book narrates in a fresh and exciting way the story of the Septuagint, the Greek Scriptures of the ancient Jewish Diaspora that became the first Christian Old Testament.

A concise study of a large number of examples of pluses and minus providing insight into translation from Hebrew to Greek Van der Vorm-Croughs focuses this translation study on the processes leading to pluses and minuses including linguistic and stylistic aspects (i.e., cases in which elements have been added or omitted for the sake of a proper use of the Greek language), literary aspects (additions and omissions meant to embellish the Greek text), translation technical aspects (e.g., the avoidance of redundancy), and contextual and intertextual exegesis and harmonization. This work also covers the relation between the Greek Isaiah and its possible Hebrew Vorlage to try to determine which pluses and minuses may have been the result of the translator’s use of a different Hebrew text. Features: Eleven categories for the pluses and minuses of the Greek Isaiah Examination of translation techniques and translator errors Use of Joseph Ziegler’s critical edition