Septuagint - Exodus: Exodus

By Scriptural Research Institute

Few books have generated as many debates about geographical features as the book of Exodus. It describes in detail a series of wonders that the Lord God of the Israelites, performed to cause them to be freed from their slavery in the country, and then their trek across the wilderness to a mountain on which God descended and gave them the Torah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digital Ink Productions
• Release date: Jul 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781989852392

Book preview

Septuagint: Exodus

Septuagint, Volume 2

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: Exodus

Digital edition. September 16, 2023

Copyright © 2023 Scriptural Research Institute

ISBN: 978-1-989852-39-2

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 2020 through 2023, primarily from the Codex Vaticanus, although other Septuagint manuscripts were also used for reference. Additionally, the Masoretic Text, Peshitta, Targums, Coptic and Armenian Bibles, and the Dead Sea Scrolls were used for comparative analysis.

The image used for the cover is an artistic reinterpretation of ‘The Third Plague’ by John Martin, painted circa 1823.

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 Cuneiform, Arabic, Coptic, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Greek, Hebrew, Imperial Aramaic, Old South Arabian, Phoenician, Syriac, 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 Egyptian hieroglyphs, or Neo-Assyrian cuneiform 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

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Egypt during the Minoan Eruption

Septuagint Manuscripts

Alternative Translations

Dead Sea Scrolls

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 creation of the Septuagint. The original version, published circa 250 BC, only included the Torah, or in Greek terms, the Pentateuch. The Torah is the five books traditionally credited to Moses, circa 1500 BC: Cosmic Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. According to Jewish tradition, the original Torah was lost when the Babylonians destroyed the Temple of Solomon, and it was then rewritten by Ezra the Scribe from memory during the Second Temple period.

It is generally accepted that there were several versions written in Aramaic or Canaanite before the translation of the Septuagint. Fragments of the Torah have been found in four languages among the dead sea scrolls, generally dated to between 200 BC and 600 AD. During this time, the land of Judea passed from the rule of the Ptolemys in Egypt to the rule of the Seleucids in Syria around 200 BC. The Seleucids attempted to Hellenize the Judeans, and effectively banned traditional Judaism. This Hellenizing activity was partially successful, creating the Sadducee faction of Judaism, however also led to the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BC, which itself created the independent Hasmonean Kingdom of Judea. This kingdom was violently xenophobic and led by a priestly monarchy that combined both the powers of the state and the church. The Hasmonean dynasty attempted to conquer all of the territory that had previously been part of the Persian Province of Judea, and either evicted or exterminated the people that were living there, depending on their ethnicity. When the Edomites were conquered they were allowed to mass-convert to Judaism as they were considered the descendants of Esau, however, most other ethnic groups were not welcome.

The Hasmoneans blamed the Greeks for all of Judea’s problems and attempted to forge an alliance with the Roman republic. The Hasmoneans appear to have promoted Yahweh Sabaoth partially in order to forge closer ties with the Romans, as Yahweh (Iaw or Iah) was pronounced very similar to Jupiter (Iove). The Romans did not respond well to this, and threw the Jews out of Rome in 139 BC, as recorded by Valerius Maximus:

Gnaeus Cornelius Hispalus, praetor peregrinus in the year of the consulate of Marcus Popilius Laenas and Lucius Calpurnius, ordered the astrologers by an edict to leave Rome and Italy within ten days, since by a fallacious interpretation of the stars they perturbed fickle and silly minds, thereby making profit out of their lies. The same praetor compelled the Jews, who attempted to infect the Roman custom with the cult of Jupiter Sabazius, to return to their homes.

While the Hasmoneans ruled Judea, they converted the national script from the old Canaanite script, today called Paleo-Hebrew, to the Assyrian ‘block script,’ today called Hebrew. As a result, almost all surviving texts found from the Hasmonean era and later are written in the Assyrian script, and it is unclear how much the Hasmoneans redacted the scriptures when they transcribed them. The scriptures the Hasmoneans left the world were later used as the basis of the Masoretic Text, which are used today by Rabbinical Jews, as well as by Catholic and Protestant Christians.

The differences between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint are both minor and startling, as the two sets of scriptures contain the same stories, but different Gods. The Masoretic Text are mostly about the actions of Yahweh, Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh Sabaoth, or Elohim, while the Septuagint contains the Greek translations of various gods’ names that appear to have been redacted by the Hasmoneans.

The God of the book of Exodus in the Septuagint is called Lord the god (Κύριοσ ὁ θεὸσ), or simplified to Lord (Κύριοσ), or God (Θεὸσ), and occasionally identified as Ôn (Ὢν) or ‘god Ôn’ (Θεὸσ Ὢν). These terms are mirrored in the Masoretic Text by Yehvah elohim (אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהֹוָה), Yehvah (יְהֹוָה), elohim (אֱלֹהִ֖ים), Asher ehyeh (אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה), or el shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי) respectively. The Aramaic sections of Masoretic Daniel that were not translated into Hebrew maintain the term adonai ha'elohim (אֲדֹנָי֙ הָֽאֱלֹהִ֔ים), meaning the ‘Lord the gods’ where the Septuagint has ‘Lord the god’ (Κύριον τὸν θεὸν), however, the Hebrew sections have Yehvah elohim (יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים) where the Septuagint has ‘Lord the god,’ suggesting the Greek more accurately reflects the Aramaic source texts than the Hebrew translation. According to records from the time, this was to repair the damage King Manasseh had done 600 years earlier when he removed the name Yahweh from the Israelite Texts, however, no evidence has survived from the era of Manasseh or earlier that proves the name was originally in the text, suggesting it was an attempt by the first Hasmonean High-Priest/King Simon the Zealot to create a national Judean religion with a god having a name similar to the Roman god Jove.

Additionally, the genealogy of nations in the book of Genesis appears to have been written in Aramaic, and is internally dated to between 706 and 715 BC. The text refers to Kahlu as the capital of Assyria, which places its authorship to before Sargon II moved the capital to Dur Sharrukin 706 BC, however, the text also mentions the Ashkenaz, who first appeared in Assyrian records around 715 BC, when they helped to defend Urartu from a Cimmerian invasion. This indicates that the Aramaic translation that removed the name of the ‘Lord’ in Exodus, was made during the era of King Hezekiah’s reforms. In 4th Kingdoms (Masoretic Kings), Hezekiah was reported as leading sweeping religious reforms in Judah, which included banning the bamahs Moses had ordered the Israelites to worship at, and destroying the serpent statue that Moses made, suggesting that Hezekiah’s reforms were anti-Mosaic, and the original name in Exodus was the name of an Egyptian serpent god, such as Atum.

One explanation for the difference between the texts is the Christian redaction of the 3rd-century AD, when the name Iaô (Ιαω) was removed from the Septuagint, replaced by Lord (Κύριοσ). Fragments of older Septuagint manuscripts still exist that contain the name Iaw, transliterated into Greek from the Aramaic Yhw (𐡉𐡄𐡅), however, none of the fragments of the Book of Exodus include the name. The name Yhwh (יהוה) is found in many of fragments of Exodus found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, only one that is believed to date back to before the Hasmonean dynasty. This Dead Sea Scroll is 4QExod-Levf which is believed to date to the Maccabean Revolt, between 165 and 140 BC, that created the Hasmonean Dynasty.

The name On is also found in the Septuagint’s Book of Hosea, which is mirrored in the Masoretic Text by the name Aven (אָ֗וֶן), meaning that this was the god of the Temple of Aven, near the Temple of El in the region where Shiloh would later be built. In the Book of Micah, the Temple of El is referred to as Jacob’s Temple of El, which confirms that the Israelites in the 8th-century BC considered the Temple of El at Shiloh to be the Temple of El that Jacob built in Genesis chapter 35. Given that the region was already called the Temple of El when Jacob’s grandfather Abraham passed through the area, and he stopped to build an altar to his god, it is plausible that the Temple of Ảāwen was either already there, or built around the altar he erected, meaning that Aven would have been Ān (𒀭), as Abraham’s family had come from the lands of Sumeria (southern Iraq) during the era of the Old Babylonian Empire. Ān (𒀭) was the Mesopotamian version of El (God), the sky-father who created everything. This would explain why the Temple of El was sometimes in the valley at Shiloh, and sometimes at the top of the mountain, as Abraham would have built his altar at the top of a mountain, as described when he attempted to sacrifice Isaac.

The Greek terms in Exodus are translations of known Canaanite gods, most especially, El, the Canaanite father-god. El translates in Canaanite and Hebrew as ‘God,’ and is the primary god worshiped in ancient Canaan in the era Abraham was reported to have passed through the area. El was also the patron god of the Temple of El, built by Jacob near the modern city of Nablus in the Palestinian West Bank, which featured in many of the early Israelite scriptures before Samaria was conquered by the Assyrian Empire. If the Greeks translated the Septuagint accurately, which everything other than the names of God indicates, then the term God (Θεὸσ) would have been Ảl (𐡀𐡋‎) in the texts they translated. Likewise, Cyrios ho theos (Κύριοσ ὁ θεὸσ) would have been ảdny hảlwhym (𐡀𐡃𐡍𐡉 𐡄𐡀𐡋𐡅𐡄𐡉𐡌‎), the title of El, which translates as ‘Father of the gods,’ and Lord (Κύριοσ) would have been ảdny (𐡀𐡃𐡍𐡉), meaning ‘my lord.’ Based on the large number of variants of these phrases found in the Dead Sea Scrolls it is clear that the terms were still in flux in the Paleo-Hebrew and Hebrew texts during the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties, between 140 BC and 6 AD.

Similar problems appear when comparing other books in the Septuagint and Masoretic Text, yet, all of these problems with the gods’ names and the words meaning ‘god’ or ‘gods’ can be easily understood in the context of the Hasmonean dynasty. Most of the differences can be explained by the Hasmoneans replacing the words adonai with Yahweh.

In this translation, the Greek term theos (Θεὸσ) is translated as God, not ‘gods’ (Elohim) which appears in the Masoretic Text. The Greek term Lord (Κύριοσ) is translated as Lord, and not replaced with the name Yahweh which appears in the Masoretic Text, as it appears to have been added to the Hebrew texts of Exodus during the Hasmonean redaction. The Greek term Lord God (Κύριοσ ὁ θεὸσ) is translated as Lord God, although ‘Lord of the gods’ would be equally applicable as in this context.

Few books have generated as many debates about geographical features as the book of Exodus. It describes in detail a series of wonders that the Lord, the God of the Israelites, performed to cause them to be freed from their slavery in the country, and then their trek across the wilderness to a mountain on which God descended and gave them the Torah. The wonders themselves have been the source of much speculation in the past 2500 years, but the trek across the wilderness and the location of the mountain of God are the real issues most commonly debated, although ironically, not generally by Jews, Samaritans, or Beta Israelites, the three groups that actually try to follow laws found in the Torah. Most of the speculation about the geography has been by Christian and Islamic scholars, who have tried to retrace the path the Israelites took out of Egypt in order to find the mountain of God, however, many mountains have been found following the places listed along the route, as most of the locations are debated. Half a dozen mountains have been identified, each with a list of locations along the route that may or may not be the original locations. This doesn’t appear to be a new problem, as even then names for the mountain in the Torah and other ancient Hebrew texts changes from one paragraph to the next. This mountain is called both Sinai and Horeb throughout the Torah, and then Seir in the book of Judges, which is widely regarded as being the oldest Hebrew text that has not been heavily redacted.

Various Jewish and Christian scholars have tried to resolve the issue of the same stories happening on two mountains. In the Middle Ages, the Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra suggested that there was only one mountain, with two peaks one called Horeb and the other Sinai, while later during the Protestant Reformation John Calvin suggested it was one mountain where the eastern side was named Sinai, while the western side was named Horeb. The question of why Deborah called it Seir has often been ignored by Christians, however, does seem to have influenced the Second-Temple-Era Jewish view of where the mountain was located, as the 1st-century AD Jewish general and historian Josephus implied it was in the southern Abarim mountains, a region the Judeans had historically called Seir. Josephus claimed to take possession of ancient scrolls when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans, which is generally considered plausible, from which he drew his information that, among other things, Kadesh Barnea was Petra, and Mount Sinai was in the Roman province of Arabia-Petra.

The 1st-century AD Christian disciple Paul (Saul) of Tarsus also reported the location of Sinai was in Arabia, meaning the Province of Arabia-Petra. As Paul had been a Pharisee before converting to Christianity and quoted several obscure Jewish texts to support his ideology, such as the Apocalypse of Moses, it is plausible that he had read whatever Josephus was quoting.

The question of the two names of this mountain is further complicated by the fact that the two names are believed to be derived from opposing gods, Horeb, meaning ‘burning,’ derived from a sun-god, and Sinai, derived from the name Sin, the ancient Semitic moon-god. Biblical scholars in the 1800s and 1900s developed the hypothesis that two names are derived from two Torah traditions, one Solar and one Lunar, which were then united into a single Torah under the rule of King Josiah or earlier. Subsequent theories have suggested the unification of the two Torahs could have taken place later, under the Persian or even Greek rule of Judea, however, it seems unlikely to have happened that late as the Samaritan Torah has virtually identical twin stories about Horeb/Sinai, and the schism between the Jews and Samaritans appears to have happened during the life of Ezra the Scribe, circa 350 BC. Textual analysis shows the name Horeb is generally associated with Moses, while Sinai is more often found in texts about Aaron, which implies that whatever the origin of the story, two versions have developed by the time of Josiah, one focused on Moses’ Solar-Snake god, and the other focused on Aaron’s Lunar-Calf god. When the two Torahs were harmonized it created several parallel statements and stories, often with different geographical locations. The Song of Deborah’s reference to Mount Seir would then be interpreted as a third version, likely derived from the prophetess Mariam’s teachings.

Josephus’ writings shed light on the issue of the mountain’s location, by identifying one of the locations along the route, Kadesh Barnea, as Petra, which he claimed was known as Rekem in ancient times. The location of Kadesh Barnea is central to identifying the location of Sinai, as the Israelites went to Kadesh Barnea after leaving Mount Sinai, and both were outside of Edomite territory, which by the 700s BC included the southern Abarim mountains. Nevertheless, Josephus reported that Petra was part of Midian during the Exodus era, meaning the Edomites were still only in the northern Abarim mountains, east of the Dead Sea. Josephus’ claims about ancient Petra being named Rekem have been confirmed by archaeology, as has the fact that the region was not Edomite until after 800 BC, meaning it could have been Midianite before that, and also could have been Kadesh Barnea.

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