A critical analysis of the Old Greek (G) of Amos 3:12 in light of ancient translation practices

When an unexpected variation occurs between an Old Greek (Septuagint) reading and a Hebrew reading of the Massoretic text, scholars often explain the variation as due to the activities of the Greek translator. When the variation involves a wrong rendering of the Hebrew it represents, scholars often ascribe the wrong rendering to the translator’s mistaken or interpretive activity. In this article, I make the point that scholarly analyses on supposedly wrong renderings have often been inadequate because they have not often taken ancient translation practices into account and as a result have often incorrectly treated the translator as if he were a scribe who copied the Hebrew rather than as a translator who translated the Hebrew. I argue that the nature of the work of a copyist is different from that of the translator. This means that in analyzing an unexpected Greek rendering of a Hebrew form, one must also treat the unexpected rendering in the light of the translation process, not the copying process. I demonstrate that in coming up with the unexpected renderings of the various elements in a textual segment of Amos 3:12, the translator employs translation techniques that are consistent with ancient translation practices.