Septuagint: Leviticus

Scriptural Research Institute

2020年8月 · Septuagint 第 3 本图书 · Digital Ink Productions

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The Greek name of the book of Leviticus was "το Λευιτικόν," which translates as “of Levites.” The Levites were the priestly tribe of the Israelites, who the book of Leviticus establishes as hereditary priests, with established cities to live in. The Hebrew name of the book is Vayikrá. The Hebrew name is based on the first word of the book, which translates as “and he called.” The English name is a direct copy of the Old Latin name Leviticus, which shares a common origin with the Greek. This book was not in the Samareitikon, the translation of the Samaritan Torah made at the Library of Alexandria before the Septuagint, and therefore, the book “of Levites” likely seemed like an addition to the Greek translators working at the Library of Alexandria. The Old Latin translators seemed to have viewed the book the same way and named it accordingly.

The textual differences between the Greek Leviticus and Hebrew Vayikrá are far less significant than the textual differences in the other books of the Torah, supporting the book as having been written quite recently before it was translated into Greek. The laws of the book correlate with the religious reforms of the Judahite king Josiah, who reigned between 640 and 609 BCE. This was less than 400 years before the Greek translation was made. His reforms apparently began with someone finding an “original” copy of Moses’ laws in the Temple in Jerusalem, which then became the basis of his official Torah. The laws found in Leviticus parallel his reforms as described in 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms and Masoretic Kings, and therefore the book is generally viewed as originating in his time. This is supported by the fact that neither the Samaritans nor the Egypto-Israelites accepted the book in pre-Hellenic times. The Samaritans continued to use their four-book Torah until the Hasmonean dynasty destroyed all copies in the late-2ⁿᵈ century BCE.

The Egypto-Israelites were mostly descended from Arameans and Samaritans who were driven out of Hama, Damascus, and Samaria as the Neo-Assyrian Empire expanded in the 8ᵗʰ and 7ᵗʰ centuries BCE. They generally did not use a copy of the Torah and did not think much of Moses, which was common among the Aramaean Israelites. While some Israelite literature was translated into Demotic Egyptian and later the Egyptian form of Aramaic, there are no Egypto-Aramaic copies of Leviticus, or even fragments of the book, suggesting it was not used in Egypt.

The only Israelite priesthood that appears to have ever used the book of Leviticus was the Judahite priesthood, which explains why there are so few textual differences between the Greek and Hebrew versions. Judahite, the language in which it would have been written, was the Canaanite dialect that Classical Hebrew was based on. The only change to the book that the Hasmonean dynasty appears to have made was to transcribe it into the Aramaic square script, now known as the Hebrew script.