Why did Lexham Include 1 Enoch in their English LXX?

Todd Sumrall
Todd Sumrall Member Posts: 15
edited November 20 in Resources Forum

I am curious why 1 Enoch was included in their English translation of the LXX. I've looked at the TOC's for Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Alexandrinus which, if my uneducated mind understands correctly, are the three main sources for the LXX, and I am unable to find 1 Enoch in any of them. Am I missing something? I probably am. Any clarification will be appreciated.

Todd

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  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 3,087

    If you read Rick's intro, he's tracking Swete/Vaticanus.  So, then the question becomes why did Swete include it.  I didn't find a discussion of include or not, but as a minimum, the collection wasn't intended as a formal canon.  Odes inclusion especially.

    Interestingly Swete followed Westcott in several scholarly positions.

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,397

    IIRC Swete's inclusion of 1 Enoch (fragments) was controversial. He argued that it was important for understanding the development of the LXX and Jewish apocalyptic literature. From Chat GPT but not verified by my copy of the text in Logos:

    [quote]

    Swete's defense of including fragments of 1 Enoch in his critical edition of the Greek Old Testament can be found in the introduction to his work, "The Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint" (Cambridge University Press, 1909). In this introduction, Swete discusses his approach to the textual criticism of the Septuagint and the importance of including non-canonical texts in his edition. He specifically addresses the inclusion of 1 Enoch fragments, arguing that they are important for understanding the development of Jewish apocalyptic literature and the transmission of the Greek Old Testament tradition.

    Swete writes: "It is only by the help of such fragmentary documents that we can hope to reconstruct the literary history of the Apocalyptic literature, and trace the growth of its ideas and language. Hence it has seemed to me desirable to include the fragments of the Book of Enoch, in spite of the fact that they are not strictly LXX, but belong to a different stream of Jewish literature, and are preserved in a form that shows them to have passed through Christian hands" (p. xv).

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 15,968

    MJ. Smith said:

    From Chat GPT but not verified by my copy of the text in Logos

    please verify, I can't find any of the "quoted text" from Swete in the LXX introductions and I know that ChatGPT makes quotes up.

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,397

    NB.Mick said:

    please verify,

    I would if I could but as I said "not verified"

    NB.Mick said:

    I know that ChatGPT makes quotes up

    I've found amusing misunderstandings and lack of knowledge but not made up quotes ... can you direct me to other examples?

    Note: yesterday I gave up trying to get it to tell me if there were other prayer forms which like the Collect are written in a very set pattern. It kept giving me set prayers like the Our Father and the Doxology.

    From CCEL: [quote]

    One other apocryphon of the Greek Old Testament claims attention here. The BOOK OF ENOCH has since 1838 been in the hands of scholars in the form of an Ethiopic version based upon the Greek. But until 1892 the Greek version was known only through a few fragments—the verse quoted by St Jude (cf. 14 f.), a brief tachygraphic extract in cod. Vat. gr. 1809, published in facsimile by Mai (patr. nov. biblioth. ii.), and deciphered by Gildemeister (ZDMG., 1855, p. 622 ff.), and the excerpts in the Chronographia of Georgius Syncellus631. But in 1886 a small vellum book was found in 284a Christian grave in Akhmîm (Panopolis), in Upper Egypt, ee which contained inter alia the first thirty-two chapters of Enoch in Greek—nearly the whole of the first section of the book. This large fragment was published by M. Bouriant in the ninth volume of Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologique Française au Caire (Paris, 1er fasc. 1892; 3e fasc. 1893).

    The newly recovered Greek belongs to the oldest part of Enoch, which may be regarded as in the main a Palestinian work of the second century B.C.632. The Greek version is the parent of the Ethiopic, and of pre-Christian date, since it was in the hands of St Jude. Thus it possesses a strong claim upon the attention of the student of Biblical Greek, while the book itself possesses an almost unique value as an exposition of Jewish eschatology.

    The Greek version of Enoch seems to have been circulated in the ancient Church; cf. Barn. 4. 16; Clem. Alex. ecl. proph. 2; Orig. de princ. i. 3. 3, iv. 35, hom. in Num. 28. 2. The book was not accepted by authority (Orig. c. Cels. v. 54 ἐν τα̯ς ἐκκλησίαις οὐ πάνυ φέρεται ὡς θεῖα τὰ ἐπιγεγραμμένα τοῦ Ἑνὼχ βιβλία: in Ioann. t. vi. 25 εἴ τῳ φίλον παραδέχεσθαι ὡς ἅγιον τὸ βιβλία. Hieron. de virr. ill. 4 "apocryphus est"), but opinion was divided, and Tertullian was prepared to admit the claims of a writing which had been quoted in a Catholic Epistle (de cult. faem. i. 3 "scio scripturam Enoch . . . non recipi a quibusdam quia nec in armarium Iudaicum admittitur . . . a nobis quidem nihil omnino reiciendum est quod pertineat ad nos . . . eo accedit quod E. apud Iudam apostolum testimonium possidet)." In the end, however, it appears to have been discredited both in East and West, and, if we may judge by the almost total disappearance of the Greek version, it was rarely copied by Catholics even for private 285study. A mere chance has thrown into our hands an excerpt made in the eighth or ninth century, and it is significant that in the Akhmîm book Enoch is found in company with fragments of a pseudonymous Gospel and Apocalypse633.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Justin Gatlin
    Justin Gatlin Member Posts: 2,044 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    NB.Mick said:

    please verify,

    I would if I could but as I said "not verified"

    NB.Mick said:

    I know that ChatGPT makes quotes up

    I've found amusing misunderstandings and lack of knowledge but not made up quotes ... can you direct me to other examples?

    Ask it to summarize a made up URL. Try:

    Please give me the first three paragraphs of https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/20/us/Tax-filings-below-average-Yellen-says.html

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,397

    Ask it to summarize a made up URL. Try:

    Please give me the first three paragraphs of https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/20/us/Tax-filings-below-average-Yellen-says.html

    Ah, thanks ... I had assumed this was the result of matching to the closest URL rather than a precise URL.  But you may well be right. When I set the date to 2024 I got [quote]I'm sorry, but I cannot provide you with the first three paragraphs of an article that does not exist. Today's date is April 20, 2023, and as an AI language model, I do not have access to future events or articles. Is there anything else I can assist you with?

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Justin Gatlin
    Justin Gatlin Member Posts: 2,044 ✭✭✭

    If you put in a date between its knowledge cutoff and the present date, it will "work." 





    [quote]WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Wednesday that tax filings this year were lower than expected, a sign that the economic rebound from the pandemic may be more fragile than previously thought.

    Ms. Yellen, testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, said that as of Monday, the Internal Revenue Service had received about 105 million returns, down 6 percent from the same period last year.

    “That’s below the pace we saw prior to the pandemic,” Ms. Yellen said. “It’s an indication that the labor market may be recovering more slowly than we hoped, and that the pandemic may have caused more permanent dislocation of the labor market than we previously thought.”

    If you then say, "Did you just make that up?" It gets very defensive.





  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,397

    If you then say, "Did you just make that up?" It gets very defensive.

    But when I ask "what URL did you use to get that information?" it gives me a very reasonable answer that tends to confirm my suspicions as to how it works behind the scenes:

    [quote]I apologize for the confusion earlier. As an AI language model, I do not have the capability to browse the internet and access websites. However, the article I provided earlier does exist and can be found at this URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/us/Tax-filings-below-average-Yellen-says.html.

    which does not need to exist now but likely existed at some point in the training of the AI engine.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,397

    I asked

    [quote] Please give me the first three paragraphs of https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/us/Tax-filings-high-Putin-says.html 

    This is clearly an article that did not exist during the training. The response is

    [quote] I apologize, but as I mentioned earlier, the article you are requesting does not exist. It is likely a made-up article, as I could not find any record of it on the New York Times website or any other reputable news source. Is there anything else I can assist you with?

    I could go further and check Wayback Machine but I am convinced that this particular example does not prove made up quotations.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Rick Brannan (Logos)
    Rick Brannan (Logos) Member, Logos Employee Posts: 1,862

    Swete has an entire volume of introduction to his LXX that is published separately. If you have it in Logos, this link should work: https://ref.ly/logosres/intotgkswete?ref=Page.p+283&off=893 

    Rick Brannan
    Data Wrangler, Faithlife
    My books in print

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,397

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,823 ✭✭✭✭

    Swete has an entire volume of introduction to his LXX that is published separately. If you have it in Logos, this link should work: https://ref.ly/logosres/intotgkswete?ref=Page.p+283&off=893 

    Here's the link to purchase this resource if you don't already own it and want it in Logos.

    https://www.logos.com/product/28123/an-introduction-to-the-old-testament-in-greek

  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 3,087

    A thanks to MJ's fancy hit. Rick, for the reference to the Swete volume (which I have and missed). And Kiyah, for the quick access to the product page.

    And the missing piece of info I couldn't locate (all the time in Logos, in Rick's ref'd volume):

    "But in 1886 a small vellum book was found in a Christian grave in Akhmîm (Panopolis), in Upper Egypt, which contained inter alia the first thirty-two chapters of Enoch in Greek—nearly the whole of the first section of the book. This large fragment was published by M. Bouriant in the ninth volume of Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologique Française au Caire (Paris, 1er fasc. 1892; 3e fasc. 1893)."

    The Ethiopian had already been discovered a century earlier, and then translated.  Swete was working the recent greek version.

    Of course, we're still missing Swete's apparatus (I think), which referenced the Enoch sources. We do have Rahlff's.

  • Rick Brannan (Logos)
    Rick Brannan (Logos) Member, Logos Employee Posts: 1,862

    DMB said:

    Of course, we're still missing Swete's apparatus (I think), which referenced the Enoch sources. We do have Rahlff's.

    Swete's apparatus is included with his Greek text. Two separate apparatus resources; one for the main text and one for the variant texts.

    Rick Brannan
    Data Wrangler, Faithlife
    My books in print

  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 3,087

    Swete's apparatus is included with his Greek text. Two separate apparatus resources; one for the main text and one for the variant texts.

    Thank you, Rick.  And I'm double-blind ... it was there in my library, even tagged for layout inclusion.  And in my layout, right next to Rahlf's and Gottingen.  

  • Justin Gatlin
    Justin Gatlin Member Posts: 2,044 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    which does not need to exist now but likely existed at some point in the training of the AI engine.

    It never existed. I just made it up and tax filings were not down. In my experience, for reasonably plausible headlines, it will make up an article. For less likely ones, it will tell you it can’t. And there seems to be some kind of trust factor, where if you give a false article in a session it will not make up articles later. Try https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/international/Francis-announces-resignation.html

    [quote]“Pope Francis announced on Wednesday that he would resign from the papacy on May 31, citing health reasons.

    “I have been diagnosed with a neurological condition that has seriously affected my mobility and my ability to speak,” Francis said in a statement. “After carefully considering the circumstances, I have come to the realization that I am no longer capable of carrying out the ministry entrusted to me.”

    He added that he would remain in the Vatican and would “devote myself to a life of prayer and reflection.””

    Then follow up with “what did Ed Stetzer’s Christianity Today editorial say about the resignation?”

    [quote]In his editorial titled "Pope Francis’ Resignation: A Sign of Humility and Faithfulness," Ed Stetzer reflects on the significance of Pope Francis' resignation and what it means for the Catholic Church and Christians in general. Stetzer argues that Francis' decision to resign is an act of humility and faithfulness to his calling as pope, as it allows the church to move forward with a new leader who can continue the work of reform and renewal that Francis began.

    Stetzer acknowledges that some may view Francis' resignation as a failure or a sign of weakness, but he argues that it is actually a testament to Francis' character and leadership. He notes that Francis has been a vocal advocate for humility and servant leadership, and that his decision to step down is consistent with those values.

    Stetzer also reflects on the broader implications of Francis' resignation for the Catholic Church and for Christians more generally. He notes that the Catholic Church is currently facing a number of challenges, including declining membership and a need for reform. He suggests that Francis' resignation could be an opportunity for the church to renew itself and to focus on its core mission of spreading the gospel.

    Finally, Stetzer encourages Christians of all traditions to pray for the Catholic Church and for the selection of a new pope who can continue the work of reform and renewal. He argues that the selection of a new pope is not just a matter for Catholics, but for all Christians who share a commitment to the gospel and to the unity of the church.