Interpretive Spins in the Ψαλμοὶ: pt 5, Mother Zion

This post continues a series on “interpretive spins” and “literary sparks” in the Septuagint Psalms.  As noted in the earlier posts, Albert Pietersma, NETS Septuagint translator and project editor, has described how literally faithful to the Hebrew language the LXX translators of the Psalms are; their Greek is nearly like a gloss of the Semitic language — and yet there seems to be a few digressions, a few spins and sparks.  Pietersma doesn’t much identify these sparks and spins.  That’s why this series.

We will look here at a Greeked Psalm that references Egypt in the veiled way the Hebrew seems to; but it’s a Hellene version of the Psalm that references Zion – very unlike the original language does – with the added Greek metaphor μήτηρ, or “mother.”  “Zion is mother.”  That’s the spin and the literary spark.

Before we come to the language of this particular Psalm, let’s do two other things.  First, let’s just clear up some assumptions.  Second, let’s look back at the Septuagint through the lenses of Jewish-Studies historian Sylvie Honigman.  Or, if you’d prefer to skip the assumptions and the historiography of Honigman now, you can find the Greek-language Psalm and its discussion further below.  The preliminary discussion is between the dashes here.

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First, let’s clear up assumptions.  We can only assume that the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint Psalms we have today are neither necessarily the original Hebrew that was translated nor the Hellene that resulted from the translating in Alexandria, Egypt sometime during the 3rd through 1st centuries BCE.  Given what we have now as the MT and the LXX, we must assume these to be more or less close the more ancient versions.  Robert Alter and Ann Nyland, respective translators of the Psalms, use not only the Hebrew MT but also the Greek LXX to help make decisions about how to render the collection of ancient Semitic lyrical, musical poetry into contemporary English.  There are layers, then, to how and to what we understand to be the Hebrew and the Greek of the Psalms.  I’m not wanting us to be platonic in our view; that is, I’m not wishing for us to imagine the ideal Hebrew or the prototypical Greek original versions.  Rather, we assume that the Hebrew and the Greek available to us today is the basis for our comparisons between the two languages, the one presumably the source for the other.  We assume that there may be differences between what are available to us now and what was there in Alexandria; and yet, until archeological discoveries provide us with more certain originals, we imagine what we have is close enough.

Second, we should find Honigman’s work pertinent to the Greek spun and sparked Psalm we will look at in this post.  In her book, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the ‘Letter of Aristeas’, Honigman allows us to look at the Septuagint from various perspectives.  Again, we assume that the LXX comes to us today in variant texts that more or less reproduce what must have been produced in Alexandria.  Likewise, Honigman’s lenses into the LXX are reproductions, layers of perspectives, of secondary sources. of Jewish secondary sources living in Egypt and / or living in Alexander’s empire.  In this post, we are interested in what some of these sources might tell us about Jerusalem and Alexandria and the Greek “polis” and Jerusalem as the sources might have looked at the Psalm we will look at.

In her book’s introduction, Honigman describes the author of the Letter of Aristeas, as different from the author’s narrator.  She starts by describing things that “are certain about our author, [certainties] derived from internal analysis of the text.”  Let’s list these:

• “To begin with, the content makes it clear that the author was Jewish.”
• “Second, there can be no doubt that the author lived after the period of Ptolemy II… [sometime] under Ptolemy III (246-222) or IV (222/1-205) at the earliest, but [this] does not preclude a later date.”
• “Third, the place of composition must be Alexandria.”
• “[T]he description of Jerusalem is idealized and broadly fictional.  Our author was clearly more familiar with Alexandria than with Jerusalem.”

Next, Honigman sketches the narrator as authored in the Letter of Aristeas:  “The narrator…, as distinct from the author, is a court official of Ptolemy II Philadephus (282/2 – 246 BCE)….  He was allegedly sent there by Ptolemy… in order to bring back an authoritative scroll of the Law of the Jews from Jerusalem to Alexandria.  The King wished to have a translation into Greek based on a reliable version” (page 2).

So, we have Honigman’s initial facts about the author, and then her brief description of the author’s narrator.  And then we get Honigman’s outlines of information about the Letter of Aristeas.  The Letter “is thus one of the oldest – in fact probably the oldest – source that tells us about the origins of the LXX” (page 2).  She adds:

The degree of innovation displayed by [the Letter] is easy to pin down; the form is Greek, but the thematic material is Jewish.  This is true especially of the digressions.  Incidentally, how much of this material is due to the author … himself, and how much to Jewish predecessors from whom he borrowed or at least took inspiration, is hard for us to judge.  However, the fact remains that [it] provides evidence for the existence of a Jewish literary tradition in Alexandria which was eager to blend Greek forms and Jewish topics and, thus, to demonstrate that Jewish culture was an integral part of Greek culture.  One chapter … can be taken as symptomatic of this Jewish aspiration to be recognized as part of Greek culture.  [Honigman quotes from that chapter here, and then she summarizes.]  In other words, for all their peculiarities, [this chapter of the Letter would suggest that] the Jews are no more peculiar than any other Greek people.  Their specificity is pare of the multifarious diversity of the Greek world, and the Jews form just one polis among others. [pages 16-17]

Let’s look at another statement, one more layer in Honigman’s sources, before we state the implications of these layered Jewish sources for the earliest history of the LXX.  The additional layer is Aristotle himself:

The most interesting digression [in the Letter], as far as the blending together of Jewish and Greek topics is concerned, is the Travelogue, the Journey to Jerusalem (chs 83- 120).  In fact, this passage breaks down into five consecutive sections, each one modeled on a different literary form; the description of Jerusalem, which is an elaborate paraphrase of Aristotle, Politics, 7.11 (chs 83- 106); the comparison between Alexandria and Jerusalem (chs 107 – 9); paraphrases of a royal Ptolemaic decree (ch 110), and then of Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 16 (ch 111) which will be analysed elsewhere [in Honigman’s book] and, last, the description of Judaea (chs 112 – 20), which is reminiscent of the genre (or sub-genre) of utopian geography.  The first and last sections of the Travelogue digression are closely related, both topically and generically, so that the digression keeps its unity as a whole.

The section dealing with the description of the city of Jerusalem, chs 83 – 106, is directly inspired by Aristotle’s depiction of the ideal polis in Book vii of his Politics, with biblical allusions sewn into the text.  The use of Aristotle in this passage is an excellent illustration of the skill of [the Letter’s] author in creative re-writing.  The description of Jerusalem in [the Letter] introduces a systematic shift in emphasis as compared to the source used:  prescriptions which, in Aristotle’s text, apply to the polis as a whole, are shifted in [the Letter] on to the Temple….  The key for a correct understanding of this passage is again to be found in Aristotle, who establishes a direct link between the politeia or political regime prevailing in a particular polis and the corresponding arrangement of the defensive system…. [page 23]

Now, we need to be very clear about Honigman’s project for her historiography of The Letter (as we consider a final source of hers).  She writes:  “The contention of the present book is that the role and purpose of [the Letter of Aristeas] was to turn the story of the origins of the LXX into a myth.”  And she continues:  “This was achieved basically through configuring the story on specific literary patterns” (page 41).

The final Honigman historical source – as we start to consider the LXX Psalm of this post – is what she hypothesizes as the “Homeric paradigm.”  Against the myth of the LXX origin that the Letter (i.e., its author, its narrator, its “Alexandrian paradigm” found in literary allusions to Aristotelian texts) would establish is the history of the LXX that Honigman attempts to reconstruct if not recover.  She writes (with my emphasis):

[In] the Exodus paradigm a tiny kernel of historical reality is traceable; there were slaves and former prisoners of war among the Egyptian Jews, even if not to the extent suggested by [the Letter].  This last remark suggests and alternative possibility in the Alexandrian paradigm; its superimposition onto the story of the LXX may genuinely reflect the fact that, in the mind of Alexandrian Jews, the fate of the LXX was comparable to that of the Homeric epics edited by the Alexandrian grammarians.  This shift in stress, from a strictly literal, i.e. artificial, construct to a genuine echo of a mental reality, would shed new light on the fact that the translation of the LXX is presented in [the Letter] in terms of a textual edition.

We may perhaps go even further.  It is not impossible – in fact, it would be natural – that the conceptual approach and working methods that characterized the grammarians from the library who carried out the edition of Homer influenced the way the Jews proceeded with the LXX concretely.  This surmise is particularly worth exploring for the time [the Letter] was composed.  However, the following pages will take as a working hypothesis that it is also relevant for the early genesis of the LXX at the beginning of the third century BCE.  In other words, the working hypothesis proposes that the early history of the LXX should be read against the background of te history of the editing of the Homeric epics in Alexandria, across a time span ranging from the early third to the middle or later part of the second century BCE.  Needless to say, the assumption implied by such a working premise is that the LXX was primarily translated not for pragmatic needs, but for the sake of prestige. [page 120]

Let’s summarize.  Honigman provides us with lenses through which the LXX text of the Psalms might be viewed.  There is the view of the author of the Letter of Aristeas, who is establishing the Hellene translation myth as a myth.  There is the view of his narrator, who is establishing the Septuagint as a work in the Alexandrian paradigm, the literary constructs of Aristotle’s treatises.  And there is the non-mythic history that Honigman herself posits (against the layered perspectives of the Letter):  the LXX translation, she hypothesizes, worked in the ways of the editing of Homeric texts in Alexandria, a translation that for all its failings also was a rendering for literary prestige.  Here is then where we begin to speculate about the literary sparks and the interpretive spins that NETS translator Pietersma says he notices in the LXX Psalms.

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Now, here’s the Psalm. In Hebrew it’s number 87. In the Greek translation it’s 86. After the Greek, line by line, is my translation of this Hellene into English with some discussion.

1 τοῖς υἱοῖς Κορε ψαλμὸς ᾠδῆς
To [the rendition of] those sons of Korah. A strumming, A song.

οἱ θεμέλιοι αὐτοῦ ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσιν τοῖς ἁγίοις
Those foundations of His [are] of the mountains, of the holies.

2 ἀγαπᾷ κύριος τὰς πύλας Σιων ὑπὲρ πάντα τὰ σκηνώματα Ιακωβ
Master loves the gates of Zion more than all of the tents of Jakob.

3 δεδοξασμένα ἐλαλήθη περὶ σοῦ ἡ πόλις τοῦ θεοῦ
Glories were spoken concerning You, O Polis, Ms. City-State of God:

διάψαλμα
strum on

4 μνησθήσομαι Ρααβ καὶ Βαβυλῶνος τοῖς γινώσκουσίν με
“I will remember Rahab and Babylon to those who know Me,

καὶ ἰδοὺ ἀλλόφυλοι καὶ Τύρος καὶ λαὸς Αἰθιόπων οὗτοι ἐγενήθησαν ἐκεῖ
and look [there are the] other-dears and Tyre and people of Ethiopians who’re born there.”

5 μήτηρ Σιων ἐρεῖ ἄνθρωπος
“Mother Zion [is there]” says a human

καὶ ἄνθρωπος ἐγενήθη ἐν αὐτῇ
“and a human [is] born of Her.”

καὶ αὐτὸς ἐθεμελίωσεν αὐτὴν ὁ ὕψιστος
And He founded Her, the Most High did.

6 κύριος διηγήσεται ἐν γραφῇ λαῶν
Master will give a diegesis, a narration, in the writing of the people

καὶ ἀρχόντων τούτων τῶν γεγενημένων ἐν αὐτῇ
and of the chiefs of them, those born of Her,

διάψαλμα
strum on

7 ὡς εὐφραινομένων πάντων ἡ κατοικία ἐν σοί
as blessed merriment [for] all the ones living in that household of Yours.

This Greeked Psalm speaks of the written records of the people in a way suggestive of historiography.  The use of the technical, rhetorical term διηγήσεται (or diegesis, or “narration”) suggests that the translators are bringing out if not inventing a frame for considering this song.  The locations mentioned in the Psalm seems to be vague references to places that the Alexandrian Jews would have known well.  In particular “Ρααβ” is the transliteration of רהב (or “Rahab”), which is an allusion to Egypt, the very place where the LXX translators are translating.

And then there’s  ציון or in Greek letters Σιων (for “Zion”).  Insiders to the culture, to the text, would know the suggestion of Jerusalem.  Honigman says the author (and perhaps even the narrator) of the Letter of Aristeas, narrating the myth of the LXX translation, “idealized and broadly” fictionalized Jerusalem.  Do the LXX translators themselves do this?

They do give a repetition of “οἱ θεμέλιοι” (or “the foundations”) and “ἐθεμελίωσεν” (or “founded”) as something attributed to God.  And this particular repetition is stronger, a more direct lexical repetition than is in the Hebrew.

The most fascinating literary spark and interpretive spin is the feminization of Zion.  Of course, in the first mention of the City, as a Polis, as a City-State as the Letter of Aristeas describes her (looking back at this Psalm no doubt); but at this point in the Greek translation, there’s the gender of Grammar only.  My English brings out explicitly, nonetheless, what is implicit.  Mine is not an unreasonable translation there because in the second mention of Σιων, there’s something more explicit.  There’s a metaphor.  Zion is Mother.  She is the birth mother of the people of God, She the City-State of God.  God founded Her as He founded the mountains, the holy mountains.  And the Greek translation, in light of how the Letter of Aristeas might have us read it, in light of how Honigman’s Homeric paradigm hypothesis might read it, adds much political and rhetorical.  These additions seem to be literary sparks and interpretive spins in what is more usually in the Greek Psalms a fairly tight gloss of the Hebrew.