Saturday, January 22, 2022

David A. Baer on Isaiah 65:3 (LXX) and Sacrifices "to the demons, which do not exist (τοῖς δαιμονίοις ἃ οὐκ ἔστιν)"

  

Correlative Ameliorations That Alter the Identity or Status of Non-human Beings Other than god in Chs. 56-66

 

Isaiah 65.3. The word διμονιον is rare in those LXX books that are translated from the Hebrew Bible. For this reason, the four occurrences in Isaiah stand out disproportionately. Our attention is drawn to LXX Isaiah 65, that describes aberrant cult in a manner that may suggest that the translator has specific contemporary practices in mind.

 

MT Isa. 65.3 reads as follows:

 

העם המכעיסים אותי על־פני תמיד זבחים בגנות ומקטרים על־הלבנים

 

. . . a people who provoke me to my face, continually, who sacrifice in gardens and burn incense upon bricks . . .

 

In an unauthorizied elaboration upon this cult, the LXX makes two remarkable assertions. In the first place, it asserts that the burning of incense upon bricks—as perhaps sacrifice in gardens—is performed for the benefit of (the) demons. The phrase τοις δαιμονιοις is wholly without parallel in the Hebrew text. In the second, it immediately describes these demons as figures of the worshippers’ deluded imaginations: α ουκ εστι (Curiously, הישׁבים—the very next word, in 65.5—appears not to have been translated here. It is conceivable that the translator considered that α ουκ εστι correspond to these Hebrew letters, though it is difficult to imagine what that connection might have been).

 

Isa. 65.11 may also identify a demonic element in aberrant cult, though here there is some motivation in the Hebrew expression הערכים לגד שׁלחן as well as some textual uncertainty.

 

It appears that the translator is willing to ascribe the worst motives to these worshippers. For our purpose, the salient point is his simultaneous claim that the demons they mean to worship do not exist at all. (David A. Baer, When We All Go Home: Translation and Theology in LXX Isaiah 56-66 [Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 318; The Hebrew Bible and its Versions 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001], 176-77)