Jewish Reception of Greek Bible Versions: Studies in Their Use in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

348 Pages·2009·2.33 MB·English

by  Nicholas De Lange

Preface
This collection of studies was conceived and executed in the framework of
the research project ‘The Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism’, which was
funded by a research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC) and based in the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological
Studies (CARTS) within the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cam-
bridge.
Most of the studies originated as papers read to an international collo-
quium held in Wolfson College, Cambridge, from 9 to 11 July, 2007, as
part of the project. Additional funding for this colloquium was provided by
the British Academy, and administrative support was supplied by the Uni-
versity of Cambridge’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences
and Humanities (CRASSH).
A few studies were originally presented to seminars of the project. One
(Veltri) was specially written for this collection.
The main purpose of the project is to collect and publish scattered re-
mains of the Greek Bible versions used by Byzantine Jews. We also attach
great importance, however, to detailed study of these scanty relics of a
once far more extensive literature, including setting them in their context
within biblical studies, Byzantine studies, Jewish studies and indeed the
history of scholarship in these various areas. The present volume is di-
rected to this end. The contributors have been deliberately drawn from a
wide range of disciplines; several of them had not previously considered
the issues discussed, and we are particularly grateful to them for their will-
ingness to examine from a novel point of view materials with which they
were familiar.
We regret that it was not possible, for various reasons, to publish all the
papers read at the colloquium and the various seminars.
The editors would like to express their gratitude to all the institutions
mentioned above for their invaluable support. They also wish to thank the
series editor, Peter Schäfer, for accepting the volume, as well as Dr Hen-
ning Ziebritzki, the Editorial Director for Theology and Jewish Studies,
and other members of the staff of Mohr Siebeck, for their unfailing help-
fulness and courtesy.
Nicholas de Lange
Julia G. Krivoruchko
Cambridge, August 2008 Cameron Boyd-Taylor
Table of Contents
Preface .....................................................................................................V
Nicholas de Lange
Introduction ..............................................................................................1
History of Research
William Horbury
The Septuagint in Cambridge ....................................................................9
Natalio Fernández Marcos
Non placet Septuaginta: Revisions and New
Greek Versions of the Bible in Byzantium ..............................................39
The Background in Late Antiquity
James K. Aitken
The Jewish Use of Greek Proverbs .........................................................53
Philip S. Alexander
The Cultural History of the Ancient Bible Versions:
the Case of Lamentations ........................................................................78
Alison Salvesen
The Relationship of LXX and the Three in Exodus 1–24
to the Readings of Fb .............................................................................103
Silvia Cappelletti
Biblical Quotations in Greek Jewish Inscriptions
of the Diaspora ......................................................................................128
Giuseppe Veltri
The Septuagint in Disgrace: Some Notes on the Stories
on Ptolemy in Rabbinic and Medieval Judaism ....................................142
VIII Table of Contents
The Medieval Setting
David Jacoby
The Jewish Communities of the Byzantine World from the Tenth
to the Mid-Fifteenth Century: Some Aspects of Their Evolution ..........157
Ben Outhwaite
Byzantium and Byzantines in the Cairo Genizah:
New and Old Sources ............................................................................182
Testimonies and Influences
Saskia Dönitz
Sefer Yosippon and the Greek Bible ......................................................223
Patrick Andrist
The Greek Bible Used by the Jews in the Dialogues
Contra Iudaeos (Fourth-Tenth Centuries CE) .......................................235
T. M. Law
The Use of the Greek Bible in Some Byzantine Jewish
Glosses on Solomon’s Building Campaign ...........................................263
Manuscript Studies
Dries De Crom
The Book of Canticles in Codex Graecus Venetus 7 .............................287
Natalio Fernández Marcos
Greek Sources of the Complutensian Polyglot ......................................302
List of Contributors ...............................................................................317
Indexes
Biblical References ...............................................................................319
Greek Words .........................................................................................328
Manuscripts ..........................................................................................330
Modern Authors ....................................................................................331
Subjects ................................................................................................337