A New English Translation of the Septuagint
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: October 31, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 1027
ISBN-13: 9780195289756
Subjects: Christianity - History - General; Judaism - Sacred Writings; Other Translations - General; Religion / Bibles / Other; Bibles - Other; Religion; Religion - Judaism; Bibles
Description: "A New English Translation of the Septuagint" (NETS) because ... LXX experts had been hard at work to give us a long overdue scholarly translation that would supersede the older, widely-familiar translation of Sir Lancelot C.L. Brenton. ... A satisfactory translation ... [with] brief-but-helpful introductions to each individual book of the LXX in which the history, background, Greek text used, and translation techniques / difficulties of the particular book are addressed. A bonus is that the translations of the Book of Daniel, as well as the apocryphal additions of 'Susanna' and 'Bel and the Dragon', contain both the Old Greek version and the later translation by Theodotion in parallel columns; other books which also have two distinctly different Greek texts, such as Judges and Esther, receive the same treatment ... The translators had used the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) as the base text for NETS. Editors Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G.^

Wright use a considerable percentage of their foreword to the reader to explain the rationale for this decision, and they admit that it 'perhaps needs some justification.' They believe that using the NRSV as a base text was 'the more practical and economical' approach and assert that NETS is 'not intended to be the-NRSV-once-over-lightly but rather a genuine representation of the Greek.' The purpose behind this decision was so that the user of NETS 'should be able to utilize it to the greatest degree achievable (within set parameters) in a comparative study of the Hebrew and Greek texts, albeit in English translation.' ... The translators used the Goettingen Septuagint editions for those books in the LXX for which a Goettingen editon is available (they did use Rahlfs' edition for the remaining books). ...^

The books of the Goettingen Septuagint are the foremost critical editions available today; however, they are not widely available (and, therefore, not likely to be affordable for the average lay reader/scholar who could track down copies of the books) ... The foreword states that NETS is intended for 'a biblically well-educated audience' which 'has a more than passing interest in traditions of biblical literature other than their own.' The translation approach makes this English version of the LXX 'more a translation of formal correspondence than one of dynamic equivalence'; this means that NETS is intended neither for liturgical use in churches, nor as an easily-accessible version for everyday reading."--Amazon.com.