Ad Fontes

Mitchell

Have you a Septuagint?

Often attributed to, Professor Ferdinand Hitzig :

“HAVE YOU A SEPTUAGINT?” Ferdinand Hitzig, eminent biblical critic and Hebraist, used to say to his class. “If not, sell all you have, and buy one.”

Danker, Frederick W. Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study. Rev. and expanded ed. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993.

‘Gentlemen, have you a Septuagint? If not, sell all you have, and buy one.’”1

https://biblicalgreek.org/translate/lxx/
1Karen H. Jobes, Invitation to the Septuagint, Baker (Grand Rapids, April 2001), 26.

the nineteenth century German biblical scholar Ferdinand Hitzig is said to have begun his class in Septuagint: “Gentlemen, have you a Septuagint? If not, sell all you have, and buy a Septuagint.

Glenny, W. Edward. “The Septuagint and Biblical Theology.” Themelios 41.2 (2016): 278.

The eminent German biblical scholar Ferdinand Hitzig is said to have begun his class in Septuagint with the remark, “Gentlemen, have you a Septuagint? If not, sell all you have, and buy a Septuagint.”

Jobes, Karen H. “When God Spoke Greek: The Place of the Greek Bible in Evangelical Scholarship.” Ed. Craig A. Evans. Bulletin for Biblical Research, Vol. 16 (2006): 236.

Interested in reading the LXX and have a least two semesters or more of Attic and/or Koine Greek? Then check out the Readers Septuagint mentioned on Abram K-J blog post on the “Words of the Word” blog: https://abramkj.com/2018/10/30/today-i-read-psalm-1-from-a-readers-septuagint/

Synonymous Parallelism

One may note that the number of stresses in synonymous parallelism (in classical Hebrew) will also often be mirrored in the colas.  A very good example of this can be found in Deuteronomy chapter 32. The Penguin book of Hebrew verse commenting on Deuteronomy 32:1-4 notes that  “There are 3 + 3 stresses in each of the first two pairs of versets, and 2 + 2 stresses in the last pair (though here the first words are long and could have been pronounced as having a secondary stress, making the lines equivalent to the previous ones)” (page 59).

When words found in parallel in a verset/cola or stanza are not 100% synonymous in meaning they might be in stress, morphological features, or redundant/repetitive in sound.

it is not immediately apparent that the paired nouns in each of the following two lines are matched in gender:

כסה שמים הודו

 His GLORY (m.) covered the HEAVENS (m.),


ותהלתו מלאה הארץ
 and the EARTH (f.) was full of his PRAISE (f.) (Hab 3:3)

Once the pattern has been noticed by analysis, the poetic device ‘gender-matched synonymous parallelism’ can be recognised. The next essential step, then, is to find out why this poetic device has been used here. Closer inspection suggests it functions as merismus (meaning that certain representative components of a larger object are mentioned instead of the whole). Another look at the couplet shows the polar word-pair ‘heavens//earth’ to be present, and, more significantly, the verb מלא, ‘to be full’. All these elements—gender-matched synonyms, the verb, and the word-pair and the verb ארץ—שמים combine to convey the idea of completeness which fits in with the meaning of the couplet. In other words, the main function of the poetic features identified is to express merismus.

Watson, Wilfred G. E. Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its Techniques. Vol. 26. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series.

Accordance 12

If, a picture is worth a thousand words how much more is a video worth? Check out the latest edition/version of the acclaimed scholarly grade (yet, incredibly intuitive and easy to use) Bible Studies research software. If, you like what you see in the video you can download the lite version to try it out.

Introducing Software for Running Torah Trope Clause/Phrase Searches

Historical note: This post was originally written in 2016. BibleWorks later ceased operation as a commercial Bible-software provider in 2018, although existing users may still maintain or reactivate installations.

There are times when one might want to find trope/accent patterns (or clauses and phrases) in the Hebrew Bible. Printed works such as James D. Price’s multivolume Concordance of the Hebrew Accents in the Hebrew Bible can be used for this purpose. Such tools tend to be expensive and hard to find unless you happen to live near a very good library. Fortunately, there are a few software programs that allow one to run precisely those types of searches.

(1) Quantified Cantillation (It’s free!):  

Quantified Cantillation is a free-to-use online cantillation/Torah-accent database with an intuitive graphical user interface. Searches are executed visually by clicking with the mouse. At the time this post was written, the database covered the Pentateuch/Torah. Archived site

(2) Accordance Bible Software (It’s intuitive, easy to use, and powerful!):  

If you own a license for Accordance and one of the Hebrew Bible modules sold on their website you can search for individual accents, accent patterns (Trope patterns), words with a particular accent, morphology, root, wildcards + accents, and so much more. Accordance allows one to do so either by typing in a search window or  visually through the construct search window selecting accents via the character palette via a click of the mouse. https://www.accordancebible.com/

(3) BibleWorks (It is powerful!)

When you purchased a license for BibleWorks, the base product included enough material to begin searching accents and accent patterns. In BibleWorks, you could search either by typing codes/tags on the command line or by using the graphical search engine. However, the searches still required the relevant accent codes. Archived BibleWorks site

If, by any chance, you are aware of software for searching Torah trope that I have overlooked, please leave a comment here or on the contact page.