A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch

not on any satisfactory evidence for it. The only argument he
can offer in its support is the improbable assertion that 'the
Greek Bible and the synagogues of the Dispersion had a great in­
fluence on the world of Hellenism, not solely in Egypt and not
47
on Jews and proselytes exclusively'.
That the LXX translators frequently reproduce Hebrew idiom
by literal rendering of their original is, as we have seen, well
known. It is natural that such Hebraisms should have been em­
phasized, since they are the most noticeable characteristics of
LXX Greek. But this is in fact only one side of the picture.
The other is that the translators also fail to reproduce the
idiom of the original in many places. I am not referring to in­
stances in which this is due to misunderstanding, interpretation,
or free paraphrase, in all of which the sense as well as the
idiom of the original is altered. The examples I mean are those
in which the translators avoid rendering a Hebrew use or expres­
sion by the obvious literal equivalent, rendering instead, but
without changing the sense, into idiomatic Greek; in other words,
examples in which they avoid using a Hebraism where one might
have been expected. The extent of this avoidance of Hebrew
idiom and its significance for our question have not, I believe,
4 8
been fully appreciated.
47. Grammatical Insights 184; similarly NTS I (1954-5) 223,
where T. adds the extravagant claim that 'the Bible has always
and everywhere exerted the greatest influence, not on thought
only, but also on language'.
48. The argument presented here has been anticipated to some
extent by Deissmann. He noted, BS 164f., that the translators
do not always imitate Hb. idioms with ·ρ , and saw that this was
a strong argument against supposing that they had a Semitic
'genius of language 1
lying behind their use of Greek. He did
not, however, observe the wide extent of the phenomenon.
Deissmann's remarks here seem to have been generally overlooked.
It has of course often been noticed that the translators
render the same Hb. word in a great variety of ways (see e.g.
Swete, Introd. 328f., Gooding, The Account of the Tabernacle 8f.,
20) , and that there is much variation between free and literal
rendering (see e.g. Gehman himself, Textus V [19661 125), but
the relevance of these features to the question of 'Jewish-Greek'
has not been brought out.
Moule, idiom Book 187f., interestingly notes some Obvious
"Semitisms"' that are not represented in the NT, but draws no
conclusion.