Using Septuagint + NT Greek

Hi everyone!

I am someone with Zero original language skill, so pardon my questions. The questions that I am raising in this post are based on my 1-data point experience here (

https://community.logos.com/forums/p/216493/1269921.aspx#1269921). To summarize my experience in the previous link, I was struggling to find verses in the OT that talked about steadfastness in the following sense as given by BDAG (the capacity to hold out or bear up in the face of difficulty), even though intuitively I know this is a concept that was relevant for the Old Testament (OT) people and, hence, God had no reason not to talk about this concept in the OT. I am trying to figure out a way out of this,

When you are in the Old Testament and you turn on the Interlinear, you can see the underlying Hebrew word. Is it also possible to see the underlying Greek word used in the Septuagint without opening the Septuagint?

It seems that the people who wrote the Septuagint were closer culturally to the Hebrew language, so they would have an advantage of choosing the right Greek word to use to translate the Hebrew Bible. Trying to attach a meaning (Sense as in the Bible Sense Lexicon) to the Hebrew word today (or even 100-200 years back) is that much more difficult task, I am thinking, compared to the people who translated the Hebrew Bible in the Septuagint. That’s the reason I’m asking. And I totally understand that a lemma can have multiple meaning (see my next point that addresses this issue).

What do I want to do with Greek lemma underlying Hebrew OT? I want to do a Greek lemma search for the entire Bible. To do that, I think we need to have a Bible with Septuagint for the OT + New Testament Greek? I am gonna call this the “Greek” Bible. The reason is that I would like to do a lemma Word study in this combined “Greek” Bible. Then I would like a BDAG-type lexicon covering this “Greek” Bible. Is there one? Then when I click on a lemma, I would know what meaning is assigned by scholars and I can collect all the verses that have the same meaning. (Right now, I have set my prioritized resources to go to BDAG if I click on a word in the NT.

I understand that the lemmas don’t have the same meaning in all the contexts. Thus, even if there is no BDAG-type lexicons for this “Greek” Bible as I call it, at least I can start with the verses with the same Greek lemma across the whole Bible and then try to whittle down the list to those verses that seem to have the same sense.

I haven’t fully thought through what all I can learn from such an exercise, but here goes the initial attempt.... I think that some concepts are more widely illustrated by God in the OT (example: Wrath of God), while other concepts are widely illustrated in the NT (example: Heaven), and certain other concepts are covered in both the OT and NT. (This difference. I feel, is due to the optimal choice of progressive revelation of truths made by God.) For the third group, having the full sweep of what the Bible says would be helpful instead of limiting ourselves to just one Testament (as when we do a Hebrew lemma or Greek lemma search). I could be doing a Sense search using the Bible Sense Lexicon, but I am not sure of its reliability (given my 1-data point experience listed above).

Since I do academic research (in Finance) for a living, I overestimate my ability to do research in other areas even though I don’t have the necessary expertise. So my questions could be arising from this overconfidence. Sorry if the questions sound downright silly to those who do Biblical research.

Any guidance/help would be much much appreciated.

Thank you.

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Comments

DMB

The closest you're going to get, isn't what you say you want:

Septuagint with Logos Morphology (Text) which aligns the greek with the hebrew. It's also the base for the BWS hebrew/greek equivalency.

The other older resource, Tov's The Parallel Aligned Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek Texts of Jewish Scripture

But for what you're describing, you're better off, using one of the Analytical Lexicons, where the hebrew is presented relative to the greek (and visa versa).

And of course, the easiest is the BWS, looking at the Septuagint section (that MJ displays below).

All that said, the LXX is centuries (in theory) after the hebrew, and translators were at the tail-end of hebrew general usage. Then, there's the problem of examples where the LXX appears older (uses an older hebrew) than the hebrew we have. Finally, greek is culturally distant from the hebrew; one might come close, but rarely match (where need to review).

So, like everything else, review, analyze, and recognize the limitations.

MJ. Smith

If you start with a BWS in English you get the words in Greek and Hebrew that have meanings overlapping the English word steadfast -- overlapping sufficiently for the English word to sometimes be used to translate the Hebrew and Greek. You get no information on how great the overlap nor what portion of the meanings don't overlap.

If you click on a segment in the Greek translation circle - then click on the headword of the detailed information that displayed you get a Greek BWS with an LXX section which shows you where the Greek and Hebrew word had enough overlap in meaning that the Greek was used to translate the Hebrew,

The standard Greek translation wheel and the LXX translation wheel both appear in the Greek BWS so it covers the entire scripture. Because one is Hebrew > Greek and the other Greek > English you have to settle for the information in two parts.