Search results for ""Author Eberhard Bons""

The Hebrew Bible has played an important part in the development of Western culture. However, its central ideas - such as monotheism, the demythologization of nature or the linearity of time - had to be taken out of the national and linguistic milieu in which they had developed if they were to to become fertile on a wider scale. They also needed to be rendered palatable to a mentality that had experienced the scientific, rationalist revolution prepared by the Greeks. The Septuagint - the oldest Greek translation of the Jewish Bible, produced over the third and second centuries BC - is the first important step in this process of acculturation.Over the last twenty years the Septuagint has come out of the shadow of its Hebrew source. Historians of Judaism, linguists, and biblical scholars have come to view the Septuagint as a significant document in its own right. As the discoveries in Qumran have shown, the Hebrew source text of the Septuagint was not identical to the traditional text received by the synagogue (the Masoretic Text). Also, the translators appear to have taken a degree of liberty in interpreting the text. Dominique Barthélemy used the term 'aggiornamento': the Septuagint is a kind of update of the Jewish scriptures.This large-scale collective and interdisciplinary project aims to produce a new research tool: a multi-volume dictionary providing a comprehensive article (around 500 articles in all) for each important word or word group of the Septuagint. Filling an important gap in the fields of ancient philology and religious studies, the dictionary is based on original research of the highest scientific level.The dictionary will be published in English. The first volume contains over 160 articles on words with the letters Alpha to Gamma.

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As the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament the Septuagint is probably the first great translation project of Greco-Roman antiquity. Together with the Septuagint text the religion and culture of ancient Judaism came to the fore of a Greek speaking audience, which did not have any access to the holy scriptures of the Jews in Hebrew. That translation project also manifested a transfer of religious, social, and anthropological categories and concepts of Semitic origin to another cultural world of language and science that itself was shaped by Hellenism.Over the last years the Septuagint has gradually edged closer into the interest of Biblical scholars and into the centre of historical and philological research. In the course of this main attention has not only been paid to further particulars of its origination in Alexandria but also on various linguistic specifics and distinctive features with regards to content of the Greek Bible. The question, however, which has hardly been studied so far, is to what extent the Greek translation of the Bible consists of stylistic and rhetorical elements that are not present in the Hebrew source text. Did the translators made use of their rhetoric and stylistic skills to give their translations a distinctive ornatus? Can we, according to Augustine, rightly claim that not only the authors of the Biblical texts but also the translators knew to formulate et eloquenter et sapienter, i.e. in an eloquent and wise manner? This issue, neglected in current research, is taken up in this collected volume. Seven scholars investigate into stylistic and rhetorical elements present in various books of the Bible (e.g., Psalms, Amos, and Solomon's Book of Wisdom) and establish a field of work that deserves to receive more attention in the future.Contributors are Eberhard Bons, Jennifer M. Dines, Katrin Hauspie, Jan Joosten, Thomas J. Kraus, A. Léonas, and K. Usener.

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This volume precedes the projected Historical and Theological Dictionary of the Septuagint which is to offer historical studies of Septuagint words, retracing their usage from early authors, over koine Greek and the translation itself, into Jewish-Hellenistic and early Christian literature. The earliest of these phases were the object of a several workshops held between 2013 and 2017, the proceedings of which now appear in this book. The papers focus on the following key questions: what can we say about the meaning, the usage and the semantic development of Greek words attested in the Septuagint; where and how does the Septuagint use these words, and to what extent do they correspond to their Hebrew and Aramaic equivalents? Furthermore, to what extent can papyri contribute to a better understanding of typical Septuagint words? The papers combine the analysis of selected words and word groups with considerations of method.

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The projected Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint will offer historical studies of Septuagint words, retracing their usage from early Greek authors, over koine Greek and the Septuagint translation itself, into Jewish-Hellenistic and early Christian literature. The latter two of these phases were the object of a workshop held in Bühl (Germany) on January 21 and 22, 2011. The reception of the Septuagint in Greek-speaking Judaism and Christianity raises many questions touching the lexicon, such as: How do Jewish or Christian authors writing in Greek handle the difference existing for some words between the "biblical" usage created in the Septuagint and the usual meaning in Greek? To what extent is it possible to affirm that New Testament authors borrowed their religious terminology from the Septuagint? Which words of the Septuagint continue in later writings with their specific meaning, and which ones go out of use? Is it possible to observe further semantic developments in the use of "biblical" words by Jewish or Christian authors writing in Greek?These and similar questions are of concern not only to the narrow fields of lexical semantics and philology. More often than not, they have important historical and theological implications. With help from some of the best specialists of Jewish-Hellenistic and early Christian texts, an effort will be made in this book to develop an adequate approach to the problems outlined. Papers will combine the analysis of selected words and word groups with considerations of method.

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