Josephus in the Antiquities Preface considered a translation of the Hebrew Bible to Greek to make the history available

[Steven Avery]

https://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-pref.htm

Josephus: Against Apion I

Those antiquities contain the history of five thousand years; and are taken out of our sacred books: but are translated by me into the Greek tongue.

The first century Jewish historian, Josephus, states that under Ptolemy Philadelphus, only The Law (Torah) was translated (Antiquities of The Jews 12, 2, 1-4)

 

[Steven Avery]

Nerdy Biblical Language Majors
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NerdyLanguageMajors/posts/319918832351714

Gary Manning ·
Josephus says this about histories of the Jews that had been written before him. καί τινες Ἑλλήνων ἐκεῖνα τῇ πατρίῳ φωνῇ μεταβαλόντες οὐ πολὺ τῆς ἀληθείας διήμαρτον. “And some of the Greeks have translated those [historical accounts] into their own language and have not erred much.” War 1.17. Yet more works that did not survive from antiquity! At least Josephus seems to have used them for his research.

Gary Manning
He could have been referring to the works of Jason of Cyrene, who is mentioned in 2 Macc. 2:23 ὑπὸ Ἰάσωνος τοῦ Κυρηναίου δεδηλωμένα διὰ πέντε βιβλίων, set forth by Jason of Cyrene in five volumes.

Joshua Alfaro
fragments (=quoted excerpts) of Jewish historians writing in Greek before Josephus can be found in Holladay, Fragments from Jewish Hellenistic Authors, vol 1: Historians and references to Jews in non-Jewish historical sources have been collected in the three volumes by Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism.

 

[Steven Avery]

Etienne Nodet (1944-2024)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne_Nodet

Josephus and the Text of 1-2 Samuel (2007)
By Etienne Nodet
https://www.academia.edu/5697963/Josephus_and_the_Text_of_1_2_Samuel

JOSEPHUS AND THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL

In the Jewish Antiquities, the paraphrase by Josephus of 1-2 Samuel covers the end of book 5 and the whole of books 6 and 7, the latter including the beginning of 1 Kings until the death of David ; some portions of 1 Chronicles are used, too. This papers aims at dealing with Josephus’ Biblical sources, as a by-product of a French translation and extensive commentary of his narrative1. The topic is complicated by the fact that several forms of 1-2 Samuel are extant: the Massoretic text (MT), which is admittedly difficult; in Greek, there are very different versions ; the Latin and Syriac also have significant variant readings. Moreover, interesting fragments of 1-2 Samuel have been discovered in some Qumran caves, which have noteworthy contact points with 1 Chronicles, with the Greek (against the MT) and with Josephus.

Josephus himself tells us that he has “translated” (µεθηρµηνευµένην) from the Hebrew Scriptures, as stated in the prologue of the Antiquities (1:5). The same claim is sometimes made within the narrative, even more clearly. About Jonas, he feels compelled to tell of the miracles as written “in the Hebrew books” (9:208). Later he insists (10:218) : “In the beginning of this history, I have said that I intended to do no more than translate (or ‘paraphrase’ μεταφράζειν) the Hebrew books into the Greek language..., without adding to, or removing from, them anything of my own”2. In Ag. Ap. 1:54 he states : “I have translated (μετηρμηνευκα) the Archaeology from the holy books”. It is obvious, however, that he has many contacts with the Septuagint (LXX) against the MT, therefore many commentators have not taken these statements seriously, out of the assumption that the only Hebrew Bible extant in his time was the MT, supposed to have been fixed at the Yabneh academy and immediately diffused everywhere. But things have not been that easy. In a previous study of Josephus’ Pentateuch, I concluded that the best hypothesis to explain the pecularities of his text was that he had not used a Greek Bible, but paraphrased a much altered Hebrew source including marginal glosses or variant readings. In other words, this was a perused reference copy, most probably the one taken by Titus when he plundered the Temple archives in 70 CE. This is suggested by Josephus in Vita §417, but unfortunately the passage is corrupted3.

Now, in the same prologue of the Antiquities, he alludes, as a precedent to his own work, to the story of the Greek translation of the Pentateuch made in Alexandria upon a request of king Ptolemy II. Then he adds (1:12-13) : “But [the king] did not obtain all our writing at that time : those who were sent to Alexandria as translators gave him only the books of the Laws, while there are a vast number of other matters in our sacred books, for they contain the history of five thousand years”.


1. Etienne NODET, Les Antiquites juives de Josephe, livres VI et VII, Paris, Ed. du Cerf, 2001.

2. About the book of Daniel, which Josephus uses extensively, he warns his reader that should he want to know the secrets of the future, he must scrutinize the text by himself, a difficult task he has done privately (Ant. 10:210). We may surmise that he does not refer to a Greek book, which suggests that he addresses the Jews.

3. See Etienne NODET, “Josephus and the Pentateuch”, JSJ 28 (1997), p. 154-194.

 

[Steven Avery]

µεθηρµηνευµένην
Josephus himself tells us that he has “translated” (pel)r|pfxr]V£'upevr|v) from the Hebrew Scriptures

=============================================
µεθηρµήνευκα
*** μετηρμηνευκα ***

=============================================
μεταφράζειν
I have said that I intended to do no more than translate

=============================================

 

[Steven Avery]

CARM - Rick Norris

Have KJV-only claims concerning the Greek Septuagint been proven to be true?

If the LXX was a full OT circulating set up of books in AD 30, you would expect it to be circulating later in the century as well. You might. I would not. I respectfully suggest you examine your own presuppositions AND those of the sources teaching that assumption. Begin by considering the...

forums.carm.org

The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus (2019)
Eugene Charles Ulrich
https://books.google.com/books?id=WgD1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA223

he evidence seems to be clear that Josephus had a Greek translation of the books of Samuel, showing that more than just the five books of the Pentateuch had been translated into Greek in his day. Check out the evidence yourself in the book entitled The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus.

S. R. Driver wrote: “Josephus, though he by no means agrees always with Lucian’s readings, affords evidence that readings of Lucian were current in the 1st century A. D.” (Notes on Hebrew Text of Samuel, p. l).

Eugene Charles Ulrich, Jr. wrote: “The present study intends to demonstrate anew that the bible which lay before Josephus as he compiled the Samuel portion of his Jewish Antiquities was a Greek bible of an Old Greek/proto-Lucianic nature” (Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus, p. 223). Eugene Ulrich wrote: “Finally, singling out the books of Samuel, [Henry] Thackeray stated that Josephus made use of a text ‘uniformly of this Lucianic type’” (p. 28). Eugene Ulrich quoted Henry Thackeray as stating: “With the books of Samuel …, Josephus becomes a witness of first-rate importance for the text of the Greek Bible” (p. 2). Eugene Ulrich noted: “The text of Josephus is recognized as an important touchstone for the proto-Lucianic text” (p. 15). Eugene Ulrich asserted: “L [Lucian] is the solitary text tradition that could consistently ground J’s [Josephus’] readings” (p. 26). Eugene Ulrich noted: Adam “Mez [1869-1917] has demonstrated that this earlier, form of the Lucianic text was the textform of Josephus, thus proto-Lucianic” (p. 37). Eugene Ulrich concluded: “Finally, Josephus clearly employed a bible of the 4QSam tradition as his basis for the Samuel portion of the Jewish Antiquities, and he clearly used a Greek form of it” (p. 259).