Translating God’s Senses in LXX-Pentateuch : A Prefixed Theology?
(2024) Montreal Septuagint Colloquium — Location: Montreal (17.June.2024)
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- The translation of anthropomorphisms (and its possible avoidance) in LXX has been recently revisited in the context of the “Septuagint-theology”. The ongoing discussion suggests that the question of LXX’S stance towards anthropomorphisms entails further questions regarding the language, cultural identity and ideology of the translator. I wish to analyze the translation of the divine senses in LXX-Pentateuch: being closely associated to the body, the senses offer an outlook on how God interacts and perceives in a bodily, say, anthropomorphic manner. One detail stands out in the translation of the (modern) five senses in LXX-Pentateuch: many of the verbs referring to the divine senses are prefixed. Indeed, ἐφοράω, ἐπακούω, ἔπειμι are used for the divine sight, audition and touch; whereas verbs such as ὑπακούω sometimes refer to human audition, never to divine hearing. Rhodes (2022) remarked: “prepositions reflect the way we profile our perceptions” – can the prefixes of the sensory verbs reveal something about how the translators perceived God’s anthropomorphic, sensory actions? Should the prefixed ἐπί be understood as “malefactive/destructive” (Luraghi, 2003; Horn, 2016)? Does it imply a specific spatial orientation of God (Somolinos, 2013)? This paper has three scopes: (1) To interact with recent scholarship on senses in the Bible, focusing on the divine senses as an instance of anthropomorphisms; (2) To examine the ideological/theological stance the translator(s) adopted regarding anthropomorphisms; (3) To contribute to the recent exploration of the role of prefixes/prepositions in Koinè Greek (Ross & Rudge, 2022), examining how the prefixed sensory verbs might express certain perceptions of the translator(s).
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De Doncker, E. (2024). Translating God’s Senses in LXX-Pentateuch : A Prefixed Theology? Montreal Septuagint Colloquium, Montreal. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/213589