Spear or Lance, Sword or Dagger? Septuagint as a Source for Military Vocabulary of the Hellenistic Age
Spear or Lance, Sword or Dagger? Septuagint as a Source for Military Vocabulary of the Hellenistic Age

Summary/Abstract: Our knowledge of the social and educational background of the translators of the Septuagint is still hazy at best. The Letter of Aristeas states that the translation was conducted by elders of the Jewish tribes in a project initiated by the king of Egypt (possibly Ptolemy II Philadelphus). The letter is widely accepted not to depict the actual developments of the translation process, however. In many cases, the choice to use vernacular Koine vocabulary, and clear occasions where the translator did not completely understand the Hebrew original, seem to indicate that some of the translators did not represent the educated and eloquent strata of their society. Alternatively, this phenomenon could have been motivated by some other reason, such as the need for the wider and less educated social group to understand the translated scripture. Although the actual process of translating and editing all the books that finally would compose the Septuagint took few hundreds of years – perhaps even almost four centuries –3 some traits of the used lexicon remain consistent. Choice of the words for weapons is one of them.

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