A Comment on “The Dictionary Objection”:
An objection might be raised that Hebrew dictionaries allow עצם to have a meaning of “self,” and that a reading of the LXX translations might find a similar meaning, even absent a Greek term directly parallel to the Hebrew עצם. There are Hebrew sources that support such a meaning, e.g., Mishnah Pirke Avot 1:15, where לעצמי is understood to mean ”for myself.” Jastrow gives several examples from the Talmud, theTosefta, and the early halachic midrashim to further illustrate such uses.11Jastrow, Marcus. Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Bavli, Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature . The Judaica Press. New York. 1996 But where we find עצמי in the biblical text, the word is understood to have its common meaning of bone . In Gen 29:14 and in several other instances, for example, עצמי ובשרי is understood as “my bone and my flesh” (NRSV) or in other versions sometimes idiomatically as “my flesh and blood.” Vocalized differently it is understood as a plural possessive in several instances, e.g., Hab 3:16 or Psalm 31:11, or as all the bones together as in Psalm 139:15, where it is understood as “my frame,” meaning the complex of bones comprising the skeleton. Similarly, instances that later Hebrew might understand as an inflected form of a pronoun or noun such as עצמו or עצמך are not understood in that way in the biblical text. They are understood as referring to actual bones as opposed to either actual or metaphorical selves . There are a few unusual uses of forms of עצם in the Hebrew text, besides those that are our subject, e.g., Exod 24:10 וכעצם השמים which is understood to mean “very,” as in “like the very heaven.” In that specific case, as we found in Table 2, there is no direct parallel to עצם in the LXX. Or, in Job 21:23 where בעצם תמו is understood by NRSV to mean “full prosperity” or by NJPS as “robust health.” But ideas of עצם as meaning “self” in Hebrew dictionaries seem to derive from two sources: 1) usage that is later than the biblical texts,22Of the texts found in the Judean Desert, only the Temple Scroll (11QT) contains our subject phrase. At Col 25:12 the phrase is found in text that parallels Lev 23:29, which deals with observance of Yom Kippur. At Col 18:3 it includes a parallel to the variant of the phrase found in Lev 23:14 marking the beginning of the period of counting the omer , leading to Shavuot. which does not provide evidence for earlier use, or 2) attempts to support a meaning using our subject instances as examples. In that case the argument becomes circular.
Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)33Brown, F, Driver, S., and Briggs, C.The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon . Hendrickson; Peabody, MA Seventh Printing. Reprinted from 1906 edition by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. p 782, for example, cites our subject phrase to support the definition “self” as used in “this selfsame day.” But that phrase comes from the first translation of the Hebrew to English by John Tyndale in 1530. And Tyndale, as he searched for a way to render the unusual phrase, might have found it in Chaucer’s use of “selfsame” in The Canterbury Tales .44TheOxford English Dictionary cites lines 1037–1040 of Chaucer’s 1386 work, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, as the earliest use of self-same. Some editions of Chaucer lack the word self-same in that passage but include it in The Knight’s Tale , The Nun’s Tale , or The Man of Law’s Tale . The example given in the OED entry supports an understanding of the word as meaning “exactly.” BDB built on the work of Wilhelm Gesenius whose German version of theHebrew Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures was translated into English by Samuel Tregelles in 1857.55Gesenius, Wilhelm. Hebrew Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures . Samuel Tregelles, trans . S. Bagster. London. 1857 Gesenius allowed the Hebrew עצם the meaning, “itself … but only used of things, e.g., בעצם היום הזה.” That is contrary to the personal use in Pirke Avot , but similar to the approach taken by The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT),66Koehler, Baumgartner, et al. Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament . Leiden. Brill. 2000 which finds that עצם in our phrases functions as ”an expression of complete agreement,” finding it to mean “this day exactly.” The understandings of both Gesenius and HALOT are consistent with the way Chaucer used the word “selfsame” and the idea that Tyndale might have wanted to convey in his translation. Cline’sDictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH)77Clines, David J. A.Dictionary of Classical Hebrew . 7 vols. Sheffield Academic Press. Sheffield. 1993-2001 provides a meaning of עצם as “self, substance,” citing “עצם היום הזה, this selfsame day, this very day, lit. ‘bone of this day.”’ DCH, then, acknowledges both the literal meaning and the renderings found in prior translation history. “This selfsame day” and “this very day” are both common English translations. But using a translation to support a definition is not the same as finding independent support in the text itself or in other contemporaneous sources.
There is no question that forms of עצם came to be used in reflexive senses by the time of the early midrashim and of the Mishnah , but we do not find עצם having the meaning of “self” in the MT, certainly not in the simple singular form. Later understandings found in both Hebrew and Aramaic dictionaries have been influenced by the uses in the early rabbinic period and by the early English translation history. But that is not evidence of the approach the translators of the LXX would have taken. It seems far more likely that the LXX translators, or at least one of them, would have approached the problem as the Targum translators did, finding a specific Greek word to occupy the place of עצם in association with the Greek equivalent of יום. What purpose might have been served by a deliberate and systematic decision to avoid providing a literal translation or at least an unambiguous parallel to a common Hebrew word in the eighteen cases of interest to us? The dictionary objection does not seem persuasive.
Summary :
  1. In eighteen instances, the text of the MT associates the Hebrew word for “day” with the Hebrew word for “bone.” In one case the LXX has no parallel to the MT. In the seventeen cases where the LXX does have a parallel, none contains the Greek for the word “bone;” that is, no form of the Greek οστεων parallels the Hebrew עצם (see Table 1).
  2. It is clear, however, that the LXX translators understood quite well the common meanings of עצם. In the biblical books in which the instances we are studying appear, we can find many other cases in which forms of עצם are used and in essentially all of those cases the LXX translators provide clear Greek equivalents. Our eighteen instances are notable as exceptions. It is the association of “bone” and “day” that defines those exceptions as a class (See Table 2).
  3. Analysis of the LXX translations of other MT instances of the word יום finds that the same Greek translations that parallel our eighteen instances are often used to translate Hebrew phrases that do not include the word עצם. That is, in some cases a Hebrew instance as simple as היום or היום הזה is translated in the LXX in the same way as the more complex בעצם היום הזה. (See Cases 1–6, above). One obvious explanation for the lack of a reflection of עצם in the Greek is that it was not present in the Hebrew.
  4. Frank Polak and Galen Marquis produced a comprehensive study of the cases in which the LXX does not contain material that is found in the MT, which they term “minuses.” Their study found that the LXX had no parallel for the MT instance at Exodus 12:41, confirming other approaches detailed above. It also identified five of our instances as specific “minuses;” that is, cases in which the LXX does not reflect a Hebrew source text that contained the word עצם. The Polak-Marquis study was only of the Pentateuch, but we can see by direct examination that the instances in both Joshua and Ezekiel would fit the pattern of “minuses” produced by their study. There are other instances in which Polak-Marquis found a given more complex Greek translation of a phrase to exhibit a minus, which suggests thatless complex Greek phrases among our eighteen are also likely to be minuses. The Polak-Marquis study provides support to the argument that the Hebrew text from which the LXX was translated lacked the עצם term in the instances we are studying.
  5. The Aramaic Targum translations render our subject Hebrew phrases into parallel Aramaic phrases. Both Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan consistently use the unique word, כרן, to translate the Hebrew עצם. That word is used nowhere else in the Aramaic except as a proper name. Both the Hebrew words for “bone” and for “day” are clearly paralleled in the Aramaic phrase. The Hebrew is directly paralleled also in Targum Neofiti . In that version, the translator varied the Aramaic parallel text somewhat, but in all cases provided a direct parallel for the word עצם using the Aramaic זמן. We would expect that, among the multiple translators of the LXX texts, at least one would have taken an approach similar to that of the Targum translators, providing a directly parallel Greek word to render the Hebrew עצם if, in fact, עצם were present in their Hebrew source.
  6. The “dictionary objection” can be answered. The understanding of the word עצם as “self” is not found in the biblical texts. The fact that it came to have such a meaning later cannot be used to argue that the LXX translators would have found it to have that meaning. Nor can the use of English translations of our phrase that include the word “selfsame” to render עצם be used as evidence of such a meaning.
Conclusion: There is no evidence that the Hebrew text from which the LXX was translated included the Hebrew word עצם in the eighteen instances under study. We can conclude that the Hebrew source of the LXX did not include עצם in those eighteen locations.
Bibliography
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Brooke, Alan England, and McLean, Norman, eds . The Old Testament in Greek . Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1906 (Facsimile copy accessed at archive.org)
Brown, Francis, Driver, S.R. and Briggs, Charles A. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Seventh Printing . Peabody, MA. Hendrickson Publishers. 2003 Reprinted from Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston. 1906
Clines, David J. A. Dictionary of Classical Hebrew . 7 vols. Sheffield, UK. Sheffield Academic Press. 1993-2001
Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon . Hebrew Union College. http://cal.huc.edu
Jastrow, Marcus. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature . New York. The Judaica Press. 1971
JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Second Edition . Philadelphia. The Jewish Publication Society. 1999
Kim, H. Multiple Authorship of the Septuagint Pentateuch . Leiden. Brill. 2020
Koehler, Baumgartner, et al . Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament . Leiden. Brill. 2000
Lamsa, George trans . Holy Bible from the Ancient Eastern Text . Philadelphia. Holman. 1933. EPub Version. HarperCollins. NY 2013
Lust, Johan, Eynikel, Erik, and Hauspie, Katrin. A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint. Revised Edition . Stuttgart. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. 2003
Muraoka, Takamitsu, Classical Syriac: A Basic Grammar with Chrestomathy. 2nd Edition. Wiesbaden. Harrassowitz. 2005
Penner, Ken M., ed. The Lexham English Septuagint . Bellingham, WA. Lexham Press. 2019
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Polak, F. and Marquis, G. A Classified Index of the Minuses of the Septuagint: Part 1: Introduction . Tov, E. ed. Cape Town. Stellenbosch. 2002
Polak, F. and Marquis, G. A Classified Index of the Minuses of the Septuagint: Part II: The Pentateuch . Tov, E. ed. Cape Town. Stellenbosch. 2002
Smith, R. Payne. A Compendious Syriac Dictionary . Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1903
Strong, James. A Complete Bible Reference Study Library . Bestbooks. 2015. Kindle Edition
Thackeray, Henry St. John. A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek . Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1909. (Facsimile copy accessed at archive.org.)
The Peshitta Institute Leiden. The Old Testament in Syriac . Leiden. Brill. 1977–2019
Thompson, Charles. The Old Covenant Commonly Called The Old Testament Translated from The Septuagint . 2 vols. Philadelphia. Jane Aitken.1808. (Facsimile copy accessed at archive.org)
Tov, E. and Kraft, R. Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint Studies (CATSS): A computerized data base for Septuagint studies: the parallel aligned text of the Greek and Hebrew bible . Atlanta. Scholars Press. 1986
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Online text resources :
Greek, English, and Hebrew Texts of the bible were accessed at https://www.academic-bible.com/en/online-bibles, which uses the Septuagint edited by Alfred Ralfs in the Second Revised Edition of Robert Hanhart. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. Stuttgart. 2006 andThe Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia edition by Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. Stuttgart. 1967/77.
Texts of rabbinic sources were accessed at www.sefaria.org
Greek and English Texts of The Apostolic Polyglot were accessed at https://www.biblehub.com/interlinear/apostolic/
Greek and English Texts of the LXX were accessed at www.ellopos.net, which uses the Brenton translation of (Primarily) Codex Vaticanus
Greek and English Texts were accessed at Tyndale House STEP bible at www.stepbible.org, which uses a morphologically tagged Ralfs Version of the LXX.
Greek and English Texts were accessed at www.studylight.com