The Book of Genesis, the first and foundational book of the Torah, holds the utmost importance in establishing core narratives, themes, and theological perspectives that echo throughout the remainder of the biblical texts. Genesis provides the primary accounts of creation, human origins, the ancestral Patriarchs, and the emergence of Israel as God's chosen covenant people. In recounting these primordial stories, Genesis supplies the base notes that resonate beneath all subsequent scripture.
Genesis is also expressed in multiple textual forms that frequently differ in wording, order, emphasis and meaning. The traditional Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Septuagint represent two major textual streams that at times fundamentally diverge in their presentation of both narrative and theology. Thus, while Genesis stands as the bedrock beginning of the Bible, close and careful study also reveals that Genesis represents a shifting landscape of textual transmission, exegesis, and editing. The complex differences between the traditional Masoretic and Septuagint unsettle any notion of Genesis, the Bible itself, or later reception tradition as monolithic or static.
This then raises critical questions. If divergent versions of such a foundational text exist, what does this reveal about the nature of scripture itself? How could such substantive differences arise in the transmission of sacred text believed to be divinely inspired? For faith traditions grounded in the role the biblical texts play, the plurality highlighted by the Septuagint can pose significant challenges. Yet, meaning can still be found searching through this literary multivocality. In this sense, Genesis demonstrates a thoughtful and ever-unfolding conversation behind the text.
This is in turn magnified by how the Septuagint of Genesis proved to be influential for later traditions that would adopt and transmit this textual form. As a relatively early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures (in comparison to the prophets, for example), the Septuagint first served as the bible for early Hellenistic Jewish communities in the last centuries BCE. During the last half of the 1st century CE, Christianity emerged from Second Temple Judaism to embrace the Septuagint as its core sacred text. Early Christian authors in the New Testament and Patristic eras drew extensively from the Septuagint in developing theology and referencing scripture. As Christianity spread throughout the Greek-speaking communities of late antiquity, the Septuagint was exported with it.
Unsurprisingly, this phenomenon begins at the very beginning. At the end of the first creation account, at the beginning of the second chapter of Genesis, we have this brief summary of the days of creation:
The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them. On the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing. (Genesis 2:1-2)
What may seem to modern readers as a simple and clear summary was in fact a possible point of contention to the Greek translators. The Septuagint at this passage contains a small, but notable, difference:
And the sky and the earth were finished, and all their arrangement. And on the sixth day God finished his works that he had made, and he left off on the seventh day from all his works that he had made. (LXX Genesis 2:1-2)1
Why would the translator behind the Septuagint alter the simple reference to the “seventh” day to the “sixth” day in summarizing the first creation story and the end of the divine work? It’s unlikely there were any difficulties with the source Hebrew text nor anything else that would impede a straightforward translation into Greek.
Rather, this choice appears to be motivated by a desire to harmonize a potential discrepancy with a later and more developed tradition. In Exodus 20, for example, Israel is called to emulate the divine by not working on the seventh day. Yet, the Hebrew reading of Genesis 2:2 allows, even if only slightly, for the interpretive possibility that God did some work on the seventh day and then rested. The need to eliminate even this remote possibility and preserve a critical tradition in Sabbath observation was more important to the translator than preserving the text itself. Hebrew Bible and Septuagint scholar Emanuel Tov highlights this as a likely outcome: “This reading probably derived from contextual theological harmonization because it was found difficult to explain how God could finish his work “on the seventh day” without having worked on that day.”2 Even before we’ve left page one, we have evidence that the text, in translation, can and will be shaped by existing tradition when needed.
However, there are times that the source Hebrew the translator had to work with was cryptic and complicated already difficult interpretive choices that needed to be made. Genesis 4:7, notable for the many readers who struggle with the question, “Why did God reject Cain’s sacrifice?”, is one of those occasions. The Masoretic text is typically rendered into English as:
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why is your expression downcast? Is it not true that if you do what is right, you will be fine? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it. (Genesis 4:6-7)
The Septuagint, though, takes a much different approach and made what appear to be unusual choices in its final translation:"
And the Lord God said to Kain, “Why have you become deeply grieved, and why has your countenance collapsed? If you offer correctly but do not divide correctly, have you not sinned? Be still; his recourse is to you, and you will rule over him.” (LXX Genesis 4:6-7)3
The translator here has taken what appears to be a more general warning against sin, along with its notable personification, and re-interpreted it as a warning regarding the correct method of offering sacrifices. This cultic interpretation, as noted by John Wevers, may in fact be a subtle attempt to harmonize the story of Cain and Abel with later traditions as found in Leviticus. Wever summarizes, “Sin is personified as a wild beast crouching at the tent door, who is desirous over against you, but you must prevail over him. LXX Genesis did not understand it this way at all. Since the general context is that of offering sacrifices LXX Genesis puts a cultic interpretation on the first part of the verse … This contrasts with 'but you should not correctly divide,' i.e. divide or cut up the sacrifice. LXX Genesis considered Cain's sacrifice unacceptable to God, because he had not performed the sacrificial ritual correctly. Could the translator have read [Leviticus 1:12]?”4
While perhaps not as straightforward as Genesis 2, this would seem to be another example of a later translation taking into account existing traditions and contemporary concerns when making choices. It also provides a demonstration of a translator who presents their own answer to a difficult question - the rejection of Cain - with a more concrete answer in their finished work.
At the end of the fourth chapter of Genesis, we find another case of an altered rendering in the Septuagint potentially motivated by a harmonization with tradition. In this case, at the very end of the narrative about Cain, we have the quick narrative about the birth of Seth a “replacement” for Abel along with Seth’s own son Enosh:
Adam was intimate with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son. She named him Seth, saying, “God has given me another child in place of Abel because Cain killed him.” And a son was also born to Seth, whom he named Enosh. At that time people began to worship the Lord. (Genesis 4:25-26)
What is hidden underneath this English translation is the use of the divine name YHWH at the end of verse 26. Careful readers have long noted that a straightforward reading of this text can be difficult (if not impossible) to reconcile with a statement in Exodus 6 about the use of this divine name:
God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name YHWH I was not known to them …” (Exodus 6:2-3)
How can the generations of Seth and Enosh invoke the name of YHWH if this name was unknown until after the time of Abraham and the patriarchs? The Septuagint translator, likely aware of this well-known difficulty, offers perhaps its own attempt at a creative solution:
Adam knew his wife Eve, and after she had conceived, she bore a son and named his name Seth, saying, “For God has raised up for me another offspring instead of Habel, whom Kain killed.” And to Seth a son was born, and he named his name Enos. He hoped to invoke the name of the Lord God. (LXX Genesis 4:25-26)5
What the translator has done here is, through the means of multiple translation possibilities, makes a choice that alters the definitive “began to worship YHWH” into the passive “hoped to invoke the name of YHWH”. Wevers notes again, “It should also be noted that the use of the double name negates the Hebrew notion that invoking the name Yahweh began with Enos. That Enos ‘hoped’ to invoke the name might well mean that he did not actually succeed in doing so ... Harl makes the interesting suggestion that this might resolve the inherent contradiction with Exodus 3:14 and 6:3. This may well have motivated the translator …”6
In the opening of Genesis 6 we have the narrative depicting the terrible state of humanity leading up to the judgment of the flood. In a notoriously difficult to read and interpret passage, Genesis 6 depicts the divine perhaps showing some form of remorse or regret in creating humans:
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and he was highly offended. (Genesis 6:5-6)
While not directly connected to a literary or textual tradition, by the time of the translation of the Septuagint, common theological traditions emerged which described the divine in ways understandable to modern readers, such as omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscient (all-knowing). If God knows everything, then how could He have regretted the prior act of creating humanity? To regret in this context carries the potential implication of not knowing the results of creation. Complicating this further is the potential reading of the end of the verse where God is not only surprised, but also upset or offended. In the context of the theological tradition behind the Septuagint, neither of these ideas were viable readings or interpretations. Unsurprisingly, then, we see in the Septuagint a likely attempt to soften the traditional Hebrew text:
When the Lord God saw that the wicked deeds of humans were multiplied on the earth and that all think attentively in their hearts on evil things all the days, then God considered that he had made humankind on the earth, and he thought it over. (LXX Genesis 6:5-6)7
What the Septuagint does here is replace regret with “consider” and offended with “thought it over”. While neither absolutely resolve the theological tension, it would seem to be a much more palatable reading that what the translator started with. Michael Segal, in discussing this passage in both the Septuagint and the book of Jubilees, emphasizes, “… if the Lord regrets creating humankind, then his knowledge of the future is limited. This same tendency [in avoiding this idea] is present in the Septuagint, which uses the verb ‘lay to heart, ponder’ in order to translate the verb in Genesis 6:6 and the verb ‘have in mind’ as a translation for ‘and his heart was saddened.’”8
Again, what is likely the best explanation here is that a later tradition took precedence over the literal text. In these cases, the translator made choices based on more than just the words in front of them and their equivalent(s) in the target language.
These examples just begin to scratch the surface of what is going on in the book of Genesis in its Greek life. It should not be surprising to find that the complexity of the written text, combined with varying emphases on established tradition, produces literature with a life of its own independent of its source. The net result with both Hebrew and Greek texts is a complex literary multivocality that while unmistakably challenging, also demonstrates the ingenuity of translators when faced with difficult choices. These historic literary and theological conversations should give us permission to join in and start conversations with the text in ways we might not have otherwise.
Tov, Emanuel The Text-Critical use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research (p. 88) Eisenbrauns, 2015
Wevers, John William Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis (pp. 54-55) Scholars Press, 1993
Wevers, John Williams Ibid., (pp. 67-68)
Segal, Michael The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (p. 106) Brill, 2007