A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch

CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
The vocabulary of the Pentateuch has many close links with
the vocabulary of contemporary vernacular Greek. It has been
shown that the translators' vocabulary includes a large number
of uses, formations, and words that had recently become current
in the language. Some instances in which an old word became
obsolete in the Koine and was replaced by a new one have also
been examined. Here too we have found agreement between the
Pentateuch and the Greek of the time.
The examples that have been studied in detail here are of
course only a section of the vocabulary. But it can hardly be
doubted that what has been shown for these examples is also
true of the greater part of it. Attention has been concentrated
on new words and uses attested in documents close in date to the
Pentateuch. But these are only the most obvious illustrations
of the connexion between the translators' vocabulary and that of
the time. As we saw in the general survey in Chapter III there
are many other new words and uses that are less well attested
but are nevertheless sure to have been normal Greek of the third
century B.C. In addition we saw that old words and uses are an
important element in the translators' vocabulary. Moreover, a
large number of these are attested in papyri of the third
century B.C. It is also clear that the translators were familiar
with many idiomatic Greek expressions and uses. Words for
'wash' (pp.36ff.) are a case in point.
Some of the examples studied give an especially good
indication of the translators' familiarity with the vocabulary
of their time. Words like τοπάρχης (p. 98), παρεπίδημος (112),
and πάροικος (60), and uses such as χρυσούς as the name of a
measure of weight and value (63ff.), απέχω 'ι have received'
(61f.), and άποτρέχω 'go free', of slaves (127), were part of
the technical terminology of the day. It seems unlikely that
speakers of an isolated form of Greek would employ such terms
at all.