Abstract

COOK, Johann. Researching the Septuagint in South Africa. Herv. teol. stud. [online]. 2021, vol.77, n.1, pp.1-3. ISSN 2072-8050.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v77i1.6963.

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.

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