OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN: SCULPTING DIVINE SPATIAL SUPERIORITY IN THE SEPTUAGINT

De Doncker, Ellen
(2026) Enoch Seminar - Nangeroni Meeting 2026 — Location: Rome (Italy) (4.June.2026)

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This paper situates the Septuagint (LXX) within the intellectual and theological world of Second Temple Judaism, arguing that it participates in a broader development in which the divine is increasingly associated with the heavens as a privileged spatial domain (Pennington 2007 ; Moore 2023). Rather than functioning merely as a mechanical translation of the Hebrew Pentateuch, the LXX reflects interpretive and theological tendencies characteristic of Jewish thought in the Hellenistic period (Ausloos & Lemmelijn 2020). As a case study, this paper examines the translation of divine sensory verbs in the Pentateuch (particularly verbs of seeing and hearing), as well as some verbs of movement (especially verbs such as yrd), where the Greek translators frequently employ preverbs or verbal constructions that suggest spatial elevation or distance. These translational choices subtly reconfigure the sensory relationship between God and the world, presenting the deity as operating from a position of spatial superiority, often aligned with heaven. By analyzing these patterns, this study argues that the LXX contributes to the conceptualization of God as a transcendent yet perceptive heavenly agent, thereby participating in evolving Jewish notions of divine location and mediation. This development provides an important backdrop for later Christological claims about heavenly authority and divine sonship, situating early Christian discourse within existing Jewish trajectories of spatialized monotheism and messianism (Knibb 2006).
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De Doncker, E. (2026, June). OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN: SCULPTING DIVINE SPATIAL SUPERIORITY IN THE SEPTUAGINT. Enoch Seminar - Nangeroni Meeting 2026, Rome (Italy). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/277307