Reflections on the Interlinear Paradigm in Septuagintal Studies, in Scripture in Transition, by Jan Joosten
164: "The picture presented in the Letter of Aristeas could indeed be roughly accurate and the conservation of the Septuagint iin the royal library a historical fact."
164: "The idea of royal initiative or sponsorship may represent later propganda, designed to aggrandize the glory of the version."
164-165: "A small, but growing, group of scholars has started to propose a fourth hypothesis. The Septuagint did not originate as a freestanding text, but as a kind of 'interlinear' crib intended to assist Jewish pupils in the study of the Hebrew text. Only in a second stage was the version used and read as an independent text."
165: "It was designed to remain subservient to the source text and to be fully understood only in a conjoint reading of the Hebrew and the Greek."
165: "Such a [literal, hebraistic] translational attitude makes no sense, to Pietersma, if the goal was to produce a text that could be read independently, as a substitute for the Hebrew text."
166: "If the Septuagint was meant to be read independently, one might expect it to be written in a literary style. Study of the papyri has shown, however, that the stylistic register of most books of the Septuagint is not literary at all. The grammar and lexicon of the Greek version are close to the vernacular of the documentary papyri."
168: "The hypothesis developed by Pietersma and his students is undeniably innovative...There can also be no doubt that in the interlinear hypothesis, particularly as developed by Pietersma, is of high scientific quality...The 'potential interlinearity' of the version cannot be denied."
170: "The true point, then, at which a new paradigm of Septuagint origins should be developed is the Pentateuch...If in the end none of the competing hypotheses can be established in a convincing way, one should accept that the original Sitz im Leben of the Septuagint is unknown."
172: "Part of the stylistic mediocrity of the Greek version is due to the literal approach of the translators...A literal translation technique can be acommodated in different views of Septuagint origins."
172: "Many words, forms and constructions of the Septuagint are poorly attested in contemporary literary texts, but well known from non-literary papyri and ostraca."
174: "Incomprehensibility, howeve, does not mean non-independence."
174: "It is easier to point out the weakness of the arguments developed by those who favour the interlinear paradigm than to find specific arguments against it."
177: "The chief examples of free translation units are Job, Esther, Proverbs, Isaiah and Daniel. These books could hardly have been used as interlinear translations in the way envisaged by Pietersma...in Proverbs the translator appears to have inserted a number of passages that he knew in Greek...If, then, a freestanding version was needed for Isaiah, Proverbs and Job, would not the same need have been felt for Genesis or Psalms?"
178: "To the present writer, the arguments in favor of the hypothesis are too ambiguous and speculative, and the arguments against it too weighty, to be able to embrace it...the Septuagint was intended from the start to function as a stand-in, a substitute for the Hebrew Scriptures."