Researching the Septuagint in South Africa
Date
2021
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Abstract
One could argue that the Septuagint is an African document. After all, Alexandria is regarded as
the birthplace of the Septuagint – at least the original LXX, namely the Pentateuch. As is well
known, the Aristeas letter, inter alia, tells the story of the translation of the Hebrew Bible into
Greek after some Jews were forcibly removed from Palestine to Egypt by Ptolemy III and others
emigrated for economic reasons (Wright 2015). But this is only one side of the story; there are a
number of books that originated elsewhere. Tov mentions the Greek translation of Isaiah (Tov
2010:7). I have identified numerous examples of Jewish exegesis in LXXProverbs and I argued that
LXXProv came into being in Palestine (Cook & Van der Kooij 2012:174). Be that as it may, what is
clear is that the Septuagint is being extensively researched throughout Africa, including South
Africa. The recent evidence of this ongoing research is the presentation of a number of international
congresses with outcomes in the publications of the proceedings. The latest example is the online
congress held on 05 and 06 September 2020. The proceedings of this conference together with the
contributions of a number of prominent researchers are being published in the international series
Vetus Testamentum Supplementum (VTS), entitled The Septuagint South of Alexandria. The volume
is edited by Johann Cook and Gideon Kotzé.
Description
CITATION: Cook, J. 2021. Researching the Septuagint in South Africa. HTS Theological Studies, 77(1):a6963, doi:10.4102/hts.v77i1.6963.
The original publication is available at https://hts.org.za
The original publication is available at https://hts.org.za
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Citation
Cook, J. 2021. Researching the Septuagint in South Africa. HTS Theological Studies, 77(1):a6963, doi:10.4102/hts.v77i1.6963.