Nevin the LXX
James Dodson
THE SEPTUAGINT.
Much stress is laid on Septuagint readings in reference to this point. Some contributors (Stanley, Selwyn, Bevan) to Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible have, in their contributed articles, shown a remarkable disposition, as if by concert, to give a preference to the Septuagint translation over the original Hebrew, where the one differs from the other, in every instance in which they can do so without the most palpable absurdity. This they do on the plea that the Alexandrian translators must have had more correct manuscripts of the Hebrew to translate from than any now extant. In the British and Foreign Evangelical Review for October, 1864, there appeared a most able and satisfactory article on Smith’s Dictionary, taking up this one point, and dealing with it in a way that should make the critics referred to blush. After testing the matter by a searching examination of some other passages, the writer takes up two chapters, the 13th and 14th of 1 Samuel, simply because two of the contributors named above had drawn his attention more particularly to them. In the 75 verses contained in these two chapters the writer exhibits a list of no less than 135 errors, of greater or less magnitude, in the Greek translation; and he says of the translator, “first, that if he had good Hebrew manuscripts before him he made an indifferent use of them, though it is more probable that the manuscripts he had were faulty; and, second, that he had not a competent knowledge of either Greek or Hebrew to warrant him in undertaking the work of translation”—conclusions, established by evidence, which we think it impossible to controvert. The Septuagint has its own value and importance, though that may be certainly overrated. This is not the place to enter on a general estimate of it. But any one who has consulted it will not be surprised at meeting rather frequently sentences which defy alike grammatical construction and translation into any other language.
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The writer of the article in the Review enumerates 12 “unintelligible translations” in his list of errors in the two chapters he examines, and we would commend a careful study of the whole article to those who think that in a single instance where the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew it is “probably correct,” even in the lowest degree of probability.
In musical matters particularly the Alexandrian translators were either exceedingly inexact and careless or else exceedingly incompetent. Thus the Hebrew ugab (pipe or reed), which occurs only in four places, has three different renderings in the Septuagint. In the first place where it occurs, Gen. iv. 21, it is translated kithara, an instrument of a different class. The ugab was undoubtedly a wind instrument, and the kithara (harp) as unquestionably a stringed instrument. The Hebrew nebel (a kind of lyre or harp) is rendered at one time nablia (an imitation of the Hebrew name), at another psalterion; while psalterion also appears as the translation of the Hebrew kinnor. But the psalterion was probably a Greek instrument, more or less differing from either, as is manifest from Dan. iii. 5, 7, 10, 15, where it is introduced by an imitation of the sound of the name in Hebrew characters—pesanterin. In verses 5, 10, 15, of this chapter, moreover, there occurs the name sumphoneah, rendered dulcimer in our English Version (bagpipes by Gesenius), which has no corresponding word in the Septuagint—omitted from the translation altogether. The translators would seem to have been in ignorance of the particular instrument so denominated, and accordingly left it out, probably thinking themselves completely justified in this by the phrase which follows, “and all kinds of music.” Surely after such specimens we need not regard the Septuagint as anything approaching to the rank of an authority where music is concerned.
In order to elucidate the subject a little, we must come to some first principles in philology. There is a distinction between the meaning of a word, properly so called, and its application. The general meaning may be one, the applications many and varied. An analogous distinction, not exactly the same, is that between the primary meaning of a word and the secondary meaning or meanings, for here again there may be several secondary. Lexicographers are not in the habit of always marking these distinctions but often present what are only, strictly speaking, applications as so many significations. Thus, for example, the English word board primarily denotes a flat piece of wood; and bench signifies a long seat generally of timber. But, when we speak of a board of Aldermen, Poor Law Guardians, Railway or Missionary Directors; or when we speak of a bench of judges or bishops, it would be a strange kind of criticism which would insist that the use of these terms
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necessarily implies that the said Aldermen, Guardians, or Directors, and the wearers of the ermine or lawn sleeves were all so many wooden things. Again, it is no uncommon thing for words to change their meaning in the course of time, sometimes to the very opposite of that which they formerly had. Our Authorized Translation of the Scriptures, as is well known, has contributed to give to the English a greater fixedness than perhaps any other language ever had, and yet there are in it words now obsolete, and others that are now used in a different sense. The word let is now restricted to the sense allow, permit, but at the time our translation was made it was sometimes used in the sense of to restrain, to hinder, as in the often-quoted passage, 2 Thess. ii. 7—“only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way”—that is, that which restrains or hinders the development of the man of sin, the mystery of iniquity, will continue to do so until itself is removed out of the way. The word prevent is now uniformly employed in the sense of to obstruct, to hinder; then it was used to signify to come before another in doing anything, to anticipate, and that is the meaning in every instance where the word occurs in our Bible. The word nephew has now the definite sense of a brother’s or sister’s son; then it signified a grandson, as appears from Jud. xii. 14, where it is said of Abdon that “he had forty sons and thirty nephews,” in the Hebrew sons’ sons.*
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* We have sometimes asked the question, What is the meaning of that word earing (not ear-ring) which we sometimes meet in the Bible in connection with harvest? The answer, even from persons of education, has uniformly been to the effect that it means the time when the grain is forming into ear. But what of that expression, Isai. xxx. 24, “The oxen likewise and the young asses that ear the ground, &c.?” The truth is, the word, as thus used, is an old English one, derived from the Latin aro, and signifying to plough. So “earing time and harvest” means ploughing or seed time and harvest.