Theodotion (Θεοδοτιών) (d. ca. 200 A.D.) was a Hellenistic Jewish scholar[1], perhaps working in Ephesus[2], who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Whether he was revising the Septuagint, or was working from Hebrew manuscripts that represented a parallel tradition that has not survived, is debated. In the second century Theodotion's text was quoted in the Shepherd of Hermas and in the Christian apologist Justin Martyr's Trypho.
His finished version, which filled some lacunae in the Septuagint version of the Book of Jeremiah and Book of Job, formed one column in Origen of Alexandria's Hexapla. (The Hexapla presented six Hebrew and Greek texts side-by-side: two Greek versions, by Aquila and Symmachus, preceding the Septuagint, and Theodotion's version following it, apparently reflecting a contemporary understanding of their historical sequence.)
Theodotion's translation was so widely copied in the Early Christian church that its version of the Book of Daniel virtually superseded the Septuagint's.[3] Jerome (in his preface to Daniel) records the rejection of the Septuagint's version of that book in Christian usage, asserting that its translation was very faulty. Theodotion's Daniel is the one embodied in the authorised edition of the Septuagint published by Sixtus V in 1587.[4]
His caution in transliterating Hebrew words for plants, animals, vestments and ritual regalia, and words of uncertain meaning, rather than adopting a Greek rendering, gave him a probably undeserved reputation of being "unlearned" among more confident post-Renaissance editors, such as Bernard de Montfaucon.
See also
Notes
- ^ The only contemporary reference to him is that of Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses, III.xxi.1), who ranks him with Aquila of Pontus, another translator, as "Jewish proselytes" in the course of taking exception to their rendering of the "virgin" prophesied in Isaiah vii. 14 as "damsel",[clarification needed] "following whom the Ebionites pretend that he was begotten of Joseph."
- ^ "Theodotian of Ephesus" in Irenaeus
- ^ The Septuagint Daniel survived in only a few mss., including the Chigi codex Codex Chisianus, and Papyrus 967.
- ^ Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)
References
- Jewish Encyclopedia: "Theodotion" Details of Theodotion's insertions.
- Moses Gaster, 1894. The Unknown Aramaic Original of Theodotion's Additions to Daniel in Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology Vol. xvi. Demonstrating that the existing Aramaic text is itself an adaptation from the Greek of Theodotion, not its original.
- Emil Schürer in Herzog-Hauck, Real-Encyclopädie für protestantische Theologie i. 639 (1909)
- Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century (1911)
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