Abstract
The Bible in Greek presents a collection of 14 articles by Siegfried Kreuzer, originally published between 2004–2014. Three of the articles are written in German.
The book is organized into four parts, dealing with certain text-critical themes and challenges of the modern Septuagint research. Chapters 1–5, sorted under the heading ‘Background and Beginnings,’ investigate the cultural, historical, and theological background of Septuagint’s origins, development, translation, and recensions— especially the so-called Hebraizing kaige-revision. Kreuzer aptly illustrates in these chapters the Jewish provenance of the Septuagint in the Hellenistic Egyptian (and particularly Alexandrian) context.
In chapters 6–11 (‘Old Greek and the Recensions’) Kreuzer moves on to discuss the main point of the volume, namely what he calls ‘the new approach’ to the textual history of Septuagint. According to Kreuzer, the current scholarly paradigm of considering the Codex Vaticanus as arguably the best textual witness to the original Septuagint translation (‘Old Greek’) in many books—and especially in Samuel-Kings—should be seriously called into question. Kreuzer argues that the Old Greek is often not to be found in Codex Vaticanus, but in the so-called Antiochian text, which in general preserves the Old Greek translation. In this he, disagreeing with Alfred Rahlfs, concurs with Dominique Barthélemy’s pioneering work on the recensions and textual history of Septuagint. Kreuzer furthermore argues that Vaticanus’ text has been corrupted by a kaige-like revision not only in the kaige-sections proper, but to a certain degree also in the non-kaige sections of Samuel and Kings, by what Kreuzer calls ‘Semi-Kaige.’
In chapter 12 (‘The Septuagint and New Testament Quotations’) Kreuzer argues that for many passages especially the quotations of Paul can help us in the search for the original text of Septuagint. In the last two chapters (‘Two Important Textual Witnesses’) Kreuzer re-evaluates the value of Papyrus 967 and Codex Vaticanus to text-criticism.
Kreuzer’s work is in many ways methodologically provocative, and will likely become challenged by most Septuagint scholars. Even though his approach may not be as new as he claims, his argument would have benefited from a wider array of examples. Reader now encounters the same examples multiple times in different chapters, and many of the chapters begin with a very similar introduction. However, since the relationship of the (proto-)Lucianic text and B-text remains one of the hardest and most debated questions in the modern Septuagint scholarship, all attempts to answer it may be lauded.