Septuagint - 1ˢᵗ Paralipomenon

By Scriptural Research Institute

In the mid 3ʳᵈ century BC, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt ordered a translation of the ancient Hebrew scriptures for the Library of Alexandria. The creation of the Septuagint resulted from this order. It is generally accepted that there were several versions of the ancient Hebrew and Samaritan scriptures before the translation of the Sept

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digital Ink Productions
• Release date: Oct 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781989604236

Book preview

Septuagint: 1st Paralipomenon

Septuagint, Volume 13

SCRIPTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Published by Digital Ink Productions, 2023

COPYRIGHT

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Septuagint: 1st Paralipomenon

Digital edition. September 20, 2023

Copyright © 2023 Scriptural Research Institute.

ISBN: 978-1989604236

The Septuagint was translated into Greek at the Library of Alexandria between 250 and 132 BC.

This English translation was created by the Scriptural Research Institute in 2019 through 2023, primarily from the Codex Vaticanus. Additionally, the Leningrad Codex of the Masoretic Text, and the Targum of Chronicles was used for comparative analysis.

The image used for the cover is an artistic reinterpretation of ‘Davide e Golia’ by Orazio Gentilesch, painted between 1605 and 1607.

Note: The notes for this book include multiple ancient scripts. For your convenience, fonts correctly depicting these scripts are embedded in the ebook. If your reader does not support embedded fonts, you will need to install Unicode fonts that cover the ranges for Arabic, Cuneiform, Armenian, Coptic, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek, Hebrew, Imperial Aramaic, Linear B, Old Italic, Old Persian, Old South Arabian, Phoenician, Syriac, Tifinagh, and Ugaritic on your reader manually, or you may see blank areas, question marks, or squares where the scripts are used. The Noto fonts from Google cover most of the scripts used, however, will not depict demotic Egyptian, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Neo-Assyrian cuneiform, Neo-Babylonian cuneiform, Neshite (Hittite) cuneiform, or Old Phrygian correctly due to current limitations in Unicode.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Forward

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Septuagint Manuscripts

Alternative Translations

Available Digitally

Available in Print

FORWARD

In the mid-3rd century BC, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt ordered a translation of the ancient Israelite scriptures for the Library of Alexandria, which resulted in the translation of the Septuagint. It is accepted that there were several versions of the ancient Aramaic and Canaanite scriptures before the translation of the Septuagint. The two books of the Paralipomena were translated into Greek and added to the Septuagint around 180 BC, after many refugees fled from the war in Judea and settled in Egypt. The two books of the Paralipomena were one book in the Masoretic text: the book of Divrei-hayyamim. Subsequent Latin translations were renamed 1st and 2nd Chronikon by Jerome in the 5th-century AD. Subsequent English translations of the Old Testament labeled these books as 1st and 2nd Chronicles.

The term Paralipomena (Παραλειπομένα), which means ‘things left out,’ is similar to the Hebrew name Divrei-hayyamim (דִּבְרֵי־הַיָּמִים), which means ‘things in the days.’ The books are a collection of texts from various eras of Israelite history, spanning the era of the old Israelite Kingdoms, circa 1000 BC, through the Persian conquest, of circa 550 BC. Scholars have debated the origin of the books throughout their history, and there is no consensus within Rabbinical literature, Christian literature, or modern scholarship.

The general Rabbinical view is that the two books of Paralipomena were written by one author, as Divrei-hayyamim, and then translated into Greek. The dominant early-Christian view was that the books were written by Ezra the Scribe, circa 350 BC, however, this view was generally abandoned in Western Europe during the Protestant Reformation. Modern scholarly analysis has no consensus, however, the books do themselves indicate the eras when they were compiled, nevertheless, the authors remain unknown.

Based on the references within 1st Paralipomenon, sections of the book were compiled sometime after 732 BC, when Tiglath-Pileser III deported the Reubenites, Gadites, and the people of Manasseh to other regions of the Assyrian Empire. The surviving Hebrew text of Divrei-hayyamim does, however, contain a reference to the Temple in Jerusalem as the ‘Temple of the Gods’ (בֵּ֥ית הָאֱלֹהִֽים), which means an Aramaic translation was likely made shortly after the Assyrian conquest of Samaria, before King Josiah’s reforms in Judah circa 625 BC. Josiah is recorded as removing the idols of the gods from the temple, which had by all accounts been in the temple since it was built by King Solomon, other than during the reign of Josiah’s grandfather Hezekiah.

1st Paralipomenon begins with the generations of the princes of Edom, indicating the text was complied in Edom. It largely repeats the genealogy of nations found in Cosmic Genesis (Masoretic Bereshít) chapter 10, however, skips the genealogical lines that were not ancestral to the princes of Edom, indicating it was copied from Cosmic Genesis, and not a source for Cosmic Genesis. Like Bereshít, the Masoretic version of Divrei-hayyamim includes Aramaic terms, supporting it being an Edomite version of the genealogy, which had been written in Aramaic between 715 and 706 BC. Based on the Edom focused genealogy, the text of 1st Paralipomenon likely dates to the Edomite rule of Judea, which was reported as happening early in the Persian era in the books of Ezra, sometime between 539 and 421 BC.

In 200 BC, the Greek Kingdom of Syria under the Seleucid Dynasty took Judea from Egypt, and began an effort to Hellenize the Judeans, and effectively banned traditional Judaism. This Hellenizing activity was partially successful, creating the Sadducee faction of Judaism, however, it also led to the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BC, which itself created the independent Kingdom of Judea. This kingdom had a tenuous alliance with the Roman Republic until General Pompey conquered Syria into the Roman Republic in 69 BC. Pompey’s goal was to liberate Greek-speaking communities in the Middle East that had fallen under the rule of non-Greeks when the Seleucids Syrian Empire had collapsed, and he carved up Judea, and Edom to the east, placing Greek-speaking cities under the protection of the Roman province of Syria. He also liberated several smaller communities that Judea had occupied, granting them self-government, including Ashdod, Yavne, Jaffa, Dora, Marissa, and Samaria.

A series of wars, including both Julius Caesar’s campaigns and a Parthian invasion, led to the weakening of the Hasmonean dynasty, and in 37 AD, the Roman Senate appointed Herod the Great as King of the Jews. Herod’s rule wasn’t particularly popular, as he allowed the Romans to establish themselves within Judea, however, he did expand Judea, reintegrating the Greek and Samaritan cities, and annexing Galilee and Edom. When he died, his kingdom was divided between four successors, a situation that ended in 66 AD when the Romans conquered the region. An uprising in 120 AD led to the Jews being exiled from Judea, and the region became a Greco-Roman colony. In the wake of the Jews, the Samaritans rose in numbers, along with the Christians, once Christianity was legalized. Between 529 and 555 AD, the Samaritans revolted and were effectively annihilated by the Byzantine Empire.

The ancient documents found in the Caves in Qumran, more commonly called the Dead Sea Scrolls, span all of Judean history. Fragments of 2nd Paralipomenon have been found in Hebrew, but not Greek, Samaritan (Paleo-Hebrew), or Aramaic, implying that this book was primarily used by the Pharisee sect of Judaism at the time. These fragments date to between 37 BC and 44 AD, meaning the Septuagint contains the oldest surviving version of Paralipomena.

Outside of Judea, the Septuagint was the dominant form of Jewish scriptures across the Greek-speaking world, which by the beginning of the Christian era, extended from the Roman Empire in the west to the Indo-Greek Kingdom in the east. Jewish traders had established small colonies along the trade routes of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, reaching as far south as Yemen, and as far east as southern India, and these Jews spoke Greek and used the Septuagint.

The earliest Christian Bibles all used the Septuagint, however, by the 4th century some Christian scholars were debating whether they should retranslate the Old Testament from the Hebrew translation the Jews were using, and some even suggested using the Samaritan version. Both suggestions were generally dismissed as heretical, as Jesus and the Apostles had quoted from the Septuagint, even though they had access to the Hebrew version then in use. This argument held in the west until the Middle Ages, when Catholic Bibles switched to the Masoretic Text. In the east, Orthodox Bibles continued to use the Septuagint, as they do today. To the south, the Ethiopian Tewahedo Church continued to use the Septuagint, and across Asia, the Thomas Christians and Nestorians continued to use the Septuagint. Only in Western Europe were the later Masoretic Text adopted, abandoning the more ancient Septuagint, on the assumption that the Jews had copied their texts more faithfully than the Greeks had translated them. This assumption carried forward into the Protestant Churches that broke off from the Catholic Church, and therefore almost all Protestant Bibles use the Masoretic Text for the basis of the Old Testament.

Unfortunately, this means that the earliest Christian writing is generally confusing and ignored by Protestants and Catholics. The earliest Christians of the first and second centuries quoted books that are no longer in the Bible, and as such, their writings are not always understood. Septuagint: 1st Paralipomenon is a 21st-century translation aimed at correcting this problem.

One of the problems with academic translations of the Septuagint is the use of unfamiliar names or terms, as the Septuagint was in Greek, and therefore many names are unrecognizable to modern readers. This project uses the more commonly understood Hebrew-derived names instead of their Greek translations, such as Canaan instead of Chanaan, and Melchizedek instead of Melchisedec. Common modern names are also used instead of either Greek or Hebrew terms when geographical locations are known, such as the archaeological name Uruk instead of the Greek Orech, or the Hebrew Erech, and the archaeological term Sumer instead of Shinar or Senar. While this could be argued as not being a correct academic procedure, it does fulfill the goal of making the translation easy to read and understand.

CHAPTER 1

Adam,¹ Seth,² Enosh,³ Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah (the sons of Noah were)⁴ Shem, Ham, and Japheth.⁵

The descendants of Japheth were Cimmerians,⁶ Magi,⁷ Medes,⁸ Ionians,⁹