Wendland at academia.edu and Dr. Glenny on Micah

Finding Wendland on academia.edu

Ernst Wendland has been uploading a treasure trove of OT, Hebrew, and translation articles, books, etc. at academia.edu. Ernst is a top .1% poster at academia.edu, and what he posts is typically golden. Many of his posts/uploads are his own articles and work, but he also posts about others, also. Join academica.edu and “follow” Ernst to track what he is posting!

Glenny on LXX Micah

One of his most recent posts is on Ed Glenny’s book, Commentary Based on Micah in Codex Vaticanus, which is very important for OT textual criticism. As a personal aside, Glenny was one of my profs at University of Northwestern, and I very much appreciated his academic rigor and humble spirit. He has spent the last couple decades studying the Minor Prophets, especially the Greek texts of Amos and Micah. 

Here’s an intriguing paragraph from Glenny's book (pp. 9-10):

It is difficult to prove that renderings in lxx Mic were intentionally motivated by the theological concerns of the translator. One apparent example of a theological rendering is Mic 4:5 where the Hebrew “all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god” (nrsv) is rendered “all the people will walk, each in his own way,” apparently trying to avoid the suggestion that other gods exist. Joosten (“Une théologie de la Septante?”) has argued that a “literal” translation technique in the rendering of the lxx, like that found in Mic and the rest of the Twelve, indicates that the translator had great respect for his source text and regarded it as God’s inspired Word; thus, even where the translator does not know the precise meaning of his Vorlage, he attempts to translate it very literally. There are several sections of lxx Mic where the translator seems to have had trouble understanding his Hebrew Vorlage, and in spite of his lack of a precise understanding of it he seems to employ a “literal” translation technique (see esp. 1:10–15; 2:6–11; 6:10–16).