Genesis

Brayford’s 2007 Brill volume comments on the Greek Septuagint of Genesis (specifically Codex Alexandrinus), and its philological attention to Greek translation technique is the work’s strongest feature. However, a persistent and undisclosed theological agenda significantly compromises its value as a commentary. Most pervasively, God is characterised across the entire narrative as jealous, reactive, insecure, and self-protective in ways that are presented as straightforward description rather than acknowledged interpretive choices. In Genesis 3, his expulsion of Adam is described as “the first subtle instance of the jealousy that will become one of his chief characteristics,” driven by the need to protect his own uniqueness from creatures who might acquire immortality — a framing that makes God’s action indistinguishable from self-interested rivalry. At Babel, God’s confusion of tongues is presented as frustration that humans were accomplishing more than he “wanted them to do,” casting divine judgment as the suppression of human potential rather than a response to hubris. In the Akedah, God’s command to Abraham is described as “the most heinous of God’s instructions,” a stark moral verdict that stands against the text’s own evaluative grain, which presents the episode as the pinnacle of covenant faithfulness. Genesis 3 itself is recast as a coming-of-age story rather than a fall narrative, with the expulsion from the garden as healthy developmental growth, a reading that conveniently coheres with the diminished God on display throughout. Taken together, these readings produce a portrait of a deity who is threatened by human capability, prone to jealousy, and given to extreme measures to preserve his own prerogatives — a characterisation more reminiscent of the capricious gods of pagan mythology than the sovereign Creator of the biblical text, and one that no serious commentator in either the Jewish or Christian tradition, critical or conservative, has endorsed. Readers will find it useful as a Septuagintal linguistic resource but should treat its theological conclusions with considerable caution.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Leiden: Brill, 2007. Pp. viii + 468. Cloth. $264.00. ISBN 900415552X. Jan Joosten Université Marc Bloch Strasbourg, France This is the fourth volume to appear in the Septuagint Commentary Series, directed by S. E. Porter, R. S. Hess, and J. Jarick, after A. G. Auld’s Joshua (2005), N. C. Croy’s 3 Maccabees (2006), and D. deSilva’s 4 Maccabees (2006). The originality of the project is to propose an analysis based on one specific manuscript and not, as in other recent projects on the Septuagint, on an eclectic edition. In the present case Codex Alexandrinus has been chosen, since both Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are deficient in large parts of Genesis. The volume contains a short introduction to the Septuagint and its investigation in recent times (1–29); an edition of Codex Alexandrinus of Genesis (passages that are missing in Alexandrinus are supplied from Cottonianus) with English translation on facing pages (32–201); and a running commentary on the Greek and Hebrew texts (205–452); and a bibliography and indexes. The Greek text of Codex Alexandrinus (henceforth A) follows that of Swete’s edition of 1887. Apparently, no photographs or facsimiles were used. As is explained on page 24, an electronic text based on Rahlfs’s critical edition was modified so as to make it conform to Swete’s text. This is a convenient way to produce a printed text in the age of computer technology, but it is not a very sure method to provide an accurate edition of the text. [Full Review]