The Septuagint Psalms in Their Pagan Context

The project seeks to provide a complete linguistic commentary on all 151 Septuagint psalms by analyzing their language in the context of pagan Greek literature. Thus the focus is not on comparing the translation with the Hebrew original, but on the semantic potential of the translation. This cannot be determined from a comparison with the Hebrew original, which can only be inferred hypothetically, but only from a comparison with its contemporary Greek. The Greek of the translation itself has no milieu where it ever was spoken, but it is occasionally created by the speakers of a certain milieu within the limits of their language skills for the purpose of translation. The project avoids the impossibility to differentiate between interlingual interference and intralingual language change by looking for the Psalter’s semantic potential within the Greek literature of the Hellenistic-Roman period. Only then can the semantic potential of the Greek translation be compared with that of the Hebrew original. As a translation of prayers, the Septuagint psalms break the boundaries of semiotics, communication theory, translation theory and rhetoric theory. They thus become an important test case that shows both these limits and possible approaches towards overcoming them.