God Eating Bread or God Receiving Gifts: LXX-Leviticus and the Anthropomorphism of God's Food
(2022) SBL Annual Meeting — Location: Denver (Colorado) (18.November.2022)
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- Abstract
- Multiple Pentateuchal passages refer to offerings made to God, with these offerings figuring both as a divine ritual meal and as a direct communication between God and man (Erbele-Kuester 2021). That these offerings function as a divine meal, feeding God, is perhaps most visible in Num 28:2 (MT), where God says: “Make sure that you present to me at the appointed time my offerings and my bread/food (לחם), as an aroma pleasing/appeasing me.” A curiosity appears in the LXX translation of Num 28:2, in which God no longer asks for bread to be offered, but for “gifts to be given”. The striking absence of the bread is even more notable in LXX-Leviticus. While in LXX-Numbers, לחם is rendered by ‘gift’ (δῶρον) only in 28:2 and nowhere else, a more stringent approach is present in LXX-Leviticus, where לחם in reference to God is translated not with ἄρτος but with δῶρον (Lev 21:6.8.17.21.22;22:25), or completely missing (Lev 3:11.16). In the past, the variation in LXX has been considered as an expression of the LXX’s presumed anti-anthropomorphism (Wevers 1997). That the LXX would sometimes avoid anthropomorphisms was suggested by Fritsch (1943) and has been reexamined in the light of the recent development of a theology proper to the Septuagint (e.g. Ausloos 2020). At the same time, it has been observed in research on translation technique that LXX-Leviticus did not use fixed equivalents to render cultic terms (Voitila 2015), either because of the translator’s lack of certainty on cultic matters or his love for variation (Wevers 1997). This paper aims to analyze the rendering of the bread offering in LXX-Lev, answering the questions: Does this rendering stem from a theologically inspired anti-anthropomorphic tendency underlying the Septuagint or can it be explained with textual arguments (e.g. Vorlage, harmonization)? How does this fit the general translational character of LXX-Leviticus? What repercussions does this entail regarding God’s image in LXX-Leviticus? To answer this, other textual witnesses (DSS, SamP, Hexapla) will be taken into account, as well as the context of the variants in question.
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Citations
De Doncker, E. (2022). God Eating Bread or God Receiving Gifts: LXX-Leviticus and the Anthropomorphism of God’s Food. SBL Annual Meeting, Denver (Colorado). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/100298