Exploring Translational History: Septuagint to Tiberias - Essay Sample

Introduction

Views on transition and interpretation have until recently been largely one-sided, promoted by western scholarship and following classical Greek and Roman tradition. The historical transition of the Septuagint can be traced in other cultures that had learned the elements of translation. The earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible were collected from oral narrations and carefully gathered from annotated biblical scrolls. In the 10th century C.E, Tiberias produced the first manuscript for Judaism culture. The script is still used in most Catholic Church today because it is believed to most accurate translation. The Septuagint was later translated to other cultural languages such as the Aramaic and Syriac (Pietersma & Wright, 2007).

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The Septuagint was translated to Aramaic to reach the Jews who lived in Palestine. The translation of the Aramaic language occurred during the final process of assembling the texts. For instance, some sections of the Aramaic conversion of the Torah, called Targum Onkelos, probably is dated back in 100 B.C.E while the Targum Psalm is dated back in 600C.E (Weeks et al., 2004). The Aramaic translations are frequently referred to as targums, which an Aramaic word that means "translation." Some translations are more literal, expansive, and resourceful than the earlier Greek translation. However, Van der Louw, (2004), analyses problems associated, with Aramaic language from Greek. Andre Lefevere, a proficient scholar state that Jesus could not have mentioned his body as a representation of bread in Aramaic. The original meaning of the event was lost during translation who concentrated on the linguistic details rather than the ideological objective. Lefevere links a translational concern with the primitive disagreement about the nature of Christ's existence in the Eucharist, to determine ideology in translation (Van der Louw, 2004).

The Jews in northern Syria spoke the Syriac language; hence they translated the Bible into Syriac. The style and quality of the project differ in different areas because multiple translators were involved. The Peshitta, a translated manuscript was first prepared for the Jews and early Christians. Eventually, the Christian included the Peshitta in the New Testament. Tatian compiled all the four canonical Greek books and translated them into Syriac in the second century C.E (Breed, 2020). Tatian rewrote the Gospels after they demonstrated significant discrepancies. The second draft removed the conflict and was accepted by many believers. Tatian's translation and the organization were the most popular in the East until the fifth-century C.E when Irenaeus and other Christian interpreters advised Christians to maintain the canonical books separately (Polotsky, 1964).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Greek and western scholars are often associated with traditional translation because they complied with the pieces of the bible into Hebrew and Greek languages. They are credited for writing the first bible drafts, but they were not the only scholars that participated in the project. The Septuagint was written into Arabic and Syriac cultures. The Christian also added various pieces to what Jewish scholars had written to make the Septuagint meet their liturgy. The version has been translated to numerous languages such as Latin, Asian, African American, and Arabic over time.

References

Breed, B. (2020). What Are the Earliest Versions and Translations of the Bible? https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/bible-basics/what-are-the-earliest-versions-and-translations-of-the-bible

Pietersma, A., & Wright, B. G. (Eds.). (2007). A new English translation of the Septuagint. Oxford University Press.Polotsky, H. J. (1964). Aramaic, Syriac, and Ge'ez. Journal of Semitic Studies, 9(1), 1-10.

Van der Louw, T. A. (2004). Approaches in Translation Studies and Their Use for the Study of the Septuagint. In MKH Peters, XII Congress of the international organization for Septuagint and cognate studies, Leiden (pp. 17-28). http://www.academia.edu/download/33318240/IOSCS_2004_Contribution_TvdL.pdf

Weeks, S., Gathercole, S. J., & Stuckenbruck, L. T. (Eds.). (2004). The Book of Tobit: Texts from the principal ancient and medieval traditions: with synopsis, concordances, and annotated texts in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac (Vol. 3). Walter de Gruyter.