Esther

The canonicity of these Greek additions has been a subject of scholarly disagreement

An additional six chapters appear interspersed in Esther in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible. This was noted by Jerome in compiling the Latin Vulgate. Additionally, the Greek text contains many small changes in the meaning of the main text. Jerome recognized the former as additions not present in the Hebrew Text and placed them at the end of his Latin translation.

The two (or three) versions of Esther

Date: April 28, 2020 Author: Stephen D. Cook

This Greek version has just over 100 additional verses in 6 blocks, in addition to some other relatively minor differences. The additional material appears to have been mostly translated from a Hebrew or Aramaic original [1], and includes a colophon (Esther 11:1) which names the translator:

“In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said that he was a priest and a Levite, and his son Ptolemy brought to Egypt the preceding Letter about Purim, which they said was authentic and had been translated by Lysimachus son of Ptolemy, one of the residents of Jerusalem.”

From the date in the colophon we can set the latest possible date for the translation as either 142 BCE or 78/77 BCE, both dates being in the Maccabean or Hasmonean era. The longer (Septuagint) version of Esther has some noteworthy differences from the Hebrew:

1. The Hebrew version does not mention God at all, not even once, while the Septuagint version uses “God” or “Lord” about 50 times, mostly in the additional verses but also including a handful of places where the Hebrew parallel does not mention God.
2. There is nothing “religious” about the Hebrew version. However, the Septuagint version includes prayers by Esther and Mordecai, refers to laws of Moses including circumcision and dietary regulations, and speaks of Israel as God’s “inheritance.” It also includes the “Deuteronomistic” claim that Israel went into exile because of disobedience to God’s laws (14:6-7), and refers to the Temple in Jerusalem as God’s house (14:9). 
3. The Hebrew version tells the story of how Esther came to be Queen, married to a Persian king, but only the Septuagint version tells us that she found it abhorent that she was compelled by necessity to be married to a Gentile (14:15-18).

There is a scholarly consensus that while the longer Septuagint version was translated from a Hebrew or Aramaic original, some of these additions were probably made to the Hebrew version before it was translated, and not added by the translator. The additions were not all necessarily made by the same person or at the same time. Scholars are mostly agreed, however, that these are additions, and were added some time after the shorter Hebrew version which has come down to us as the Masoretic Text was written, but before being translated into Greek. In other words, the shorter version is earlier than the longer version – verses were added to the long version rather than deleted by the short version. (For an alternative view, David Clines has argued convincingly that the religious elements in a Pre-Masoretic story were edited out by the author of a Proto-Masoretic version  [2].)

Interestingly, the longer (Septuagint) version is more “biblical” than the shorter Hebrew version in that it frequently mentions God and his relationship with Israel, refers to biblical commandments and morality, contains prayers, and mirrors theological ideas which we find elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. This has led many scholars to speculate that the reason the additions were made was to give the book a more religious character, to make it a religious rather than a secular story, to make up for the “religious deficiencies” of the shorter version, and to explictly state God’s involvement which is at best only implicit in the Hebrew version. All the additions emphasise God’s providential care for Israel. The additions also add drama and detail to the shorter version

In fact, we actually have two ancient Greek versions of Esther: the Septuagint is sometimes known as the β-text (or BT) but there is also another ancient version known as the α-text (or AT).  The α-text also has the additions which are in the β-text (which it appears to have copied from the β-text) but for the remainder it appears to be a translation of a Hebrew original which was different to both the Masoretic Text and the Hebrew text from which the Septuagint (β-text) was translated. So at one stage there may have been three different Hebrew versions of Esther in existence.

The fact that we have these three versions of Esther demonstrates that from a very early time, quite likely soon after the story was first written down, alternative or expanded versions (“redactions” if you like) started to appear. In Esther’s case we still have three of those versions, and in the case of other books of the Bible we can be confident that alternative, revised or expanded versions were also made. Sometimes we can detect evidence of redaction in the texts which we have, although we don’t have a complete record of the editorial process and we don’t know what the “original” form looked like. At best we can speak of the “final forms” – the versions which have been preserved in the Hebrew Masoretic Text, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Greek Septuagint, and other ancient versions – but we should never refer to any of these texts as “the original” version. I have to laugh (or cry) when I hear people speak of “the original Hebrew [or Greek]” of the Bible as though we still have those “orginal” manuscripts. The fact is, we have well and truly lost “the original” and it would be quite wrong to refer to the Masoretic Text, or any text, as the original. We have copies which have been edited, revised, expanded, and redacted, we have “final forms” of this editorial process, and our oldest manuscripts are preserved in multiple versions, but alas, no “originals.”

[1] It is, however, generally accepted by almost all scholars that the two “edicts” in 13:1-7 and 16:1-24 were composed in Greek and are later additions.

[2] Clines, David J. A., The Esther Scroll: The Story of the Story. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Supplement series 30. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984.

The Hebrew text that has come down to us varies considerably from those of the Septuagint and the Vulgate. The Septuagint, besides showing many unimportant divergencies, contains several additions in the body of the book or at the end. The additions are the portion of the Vulgate text after ch. x, 3. Although no trace of these fragments is found in the Hebrew Bible, they are most probably translations from an original Hebrew or Chaldaic text. Origen tells us that they existed in Theodotion’s version, and that they were used by Josephus in his “Antiquities” (XVI).

His major works are: History of the Jewish War, in seven books, from 170 BCE to his own time, first written in Aramaic but translated by himself into the Greek we now have; and Jewish Antiquities, in twenty books, from the creation of the world to 66 CE.  › view Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Volume I: Books 1-3 | Loeb Classical Library

Theodotion was a Greek-speaking Jewish scholar, who likely worked in Ephesus (a place in the west of modern-day Turkey), and translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek in roughly AD 150.

​Teodoción fue un prosélito judío, helenista, que tradujo la Biblia hebrea al griego. Aunque no se tienen datos precisos sobre las fechas y hechos de su vida, los expertos estiman que vivió entre finales del siglo i y finales del siglo ii. Ireneo de Lyon lo llama Teodoción de Éfeso.^[1]

​^[1] Ireneo polemiza con la traducción de Teodoción del controvertido pasaje de Isaías 7:14:Así Dios se hizo hombre y el mismo Señor nos salvó, dándonos la señal de la Virgen, pero no como lo pretenden algunos en nuestro tiempo, que se aventuran a traducir el texto: “He aquí una joven concebirá y dará a luz un hijo”., como lo traducen los prosélitos judíos Teodoción de Efeso y Aquila del Ponto, a quien siguen los ebionitas.

About purgatory

It is important to study it to understand what could be the real meaning of bible’s purgatory if it reads about it.

Descriptions and doctrine regarding purgatory developed over the centuries.^[5] Roman Catholic Christians who believe in purgatory interpret passages such as 2 Timothy 1:18, Matthew 12:32, Luke 23:43, 1 Corinthians 3:11–3:15 and Hebrews 12:29 as support for prayer for purgatorial souls who are believed to be within an active interim state for the dead undergoing purifying flames (which could be interpreted as an analogy or allegory) after death until purification allows admittance into heaven.^[3]

1. Purgatory in Encyclopædia Britannica
2. ^ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1032
3. ^ Isabel Moreira, Heaven’s Purge (Oxford University Press, 2010) pp. 3-13

Prayers for the dead were known to ancient Jewish practice, and it has been speculated that Christianity may have taken its similar practice from its Jewish heritage.^[14] In Christianity, prayer for the dead is attested since at least the 2nd century,^[15] evidenced in part by the tomb inscription of Abercius, Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia (d. c. 200).^[16] Celebration of the Eucharist for the dead is attested to since at least the 3rd century.^[17]

Specific examples of belief in purification after death and of the communion of the living with the dead through prayer are found in many of the Church Fathers.^[18]Irenaeus (c. 130-202) mentioned an abode where the souls of the dead remained until the universal judgment, a process that has been described as one which “contains the concept of… purgatory.”^[19]Origen of Alexandria (c. 185-254), developed a view of purification after death;^[20] this view drew upon the notion that fire is a divine instrument from the Old Testament, and understood this in the context of New Testament teachings such as baptism by fire, from the Gospels, and a purificatory trial after death, from St. Paul.^[21] Origen, in arguing against soul sleep, stated that the souls of the elect immediately entered paradise unless not yet purified, in which case they passed into a state of punishment, a penal fire, which is to be conceived as a place of purification.^[22] For Origen, the fire was neither a material thing nor a metaphor, but a “spiritual fire”.^[23] An early Latin author, Tertullian (c. 160-225), also articulated a view of purification after death.^[24] In Tertullian’s understanding of the afterlife, the souls of martyrs entered directly into eternal blessedness,^[25] whereas the rest entered a generic realm of the dead. There the wicked suffered a foretaste of their eternal punishments,^[25] whilst the good experienced various stages and places of bliss wherein “the idea of a kind of purgatory… is quite plainly found,” an idea that is representative of a view widely dispersed in antiquity.^[26] Later examples, wherein further elaborations are articulated, include St. Cyprian (d. 258),^[27]St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407),^[28] and St. Augustine (354-430),^[29] among others.

1. George Cross, “The Differentiation of the Roman and Greek Catholic Views of the Future Life”, in The Biblical World (1912) p. 106
2. ^ Gerald O’ Collins and Mario Farrugia, Catholicism: the story of Catholic Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) p. 36; George Cross, “The Differentiation of the Roman and Greek Catholic Views of the Future Life”, in The Biblical World (1912) p. 106; cf. Pastor I, iii. 7, also Ambrose, De Excessu fratris Satyri 80
3. ^ Gerald O’ Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) p. 217
4. ^ Gerald O’ Collins and Mario Farrugia, Catholicism: the story of Catholic Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) p. 36; George Cross, “The Differentiation of the Roman and Greek Catholic Views of the Future Life”, in The Biblical World (1912) p. 106
5. ^ Gerald O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) p. 27.
6. ^ Christian Dogmatics vol. 2 (Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 1984) p. 503; cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.31.2, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979) 1:560 cf. 5.36.2 / 1:567; cf. George Cross, “The Differentiation of the Roman and Greek Catholic Views of the Future Life”, in The Biblical World (1912) p. 107
7. ^ Gerald O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) p. 27; cf. Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma vol. 2, trans. Neil Buchanan (London, Williams & Norgate, 1995) p. 337
8. ^ Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (University of Chicago Press, 1984) p. 53; cf. Leviticus 10:1–2, Deuteronomy 32:22, 1Corinthians 3:10–15
9. ^ Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma vol. 2, trans. Neil Buchanan (London: Williams & Norgate, 1905) p. 377. read online.
10. ^ Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (University of Chicago Press, 1984) pp. 55-57
11. ^ Gerald O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) p. 27; cf. Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma vol. 2, trans. Neil Buchanan (London, Williams & Norgate, 1995) p. 296 n. 1; George Cross, “The Differentiation of the Roman and Greek Catholic Views of the Future Life”, in The Biblical World (1912); Tertullian De Anima
12. ^ Jump up to:^a b A. J. Visser, “A Bird’s-Eye View of Ancient Christian Eschatology”, in Numen (1967) p. 13
13. ^ Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma vol. 2, trans. Neil Buchanan (London: Williams & Norgate, 1905) p. 296 n. 1. read online; cf. Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (University of Chicago Press, 1984) pp. 58-59
14. ^ Cyprian, Letters 51:20; Gerald O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) p. 27
15. ^ John Chrysostom, Homily on First Corinthians 41:5; Homily on Philippians 3:9-10; Gerald O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) p. 27
16. ^ Augustine, Sermons 159:1, 172:2; City of God 21:13; Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Charity 18:69, 29:109; Confessions 2.27; Gerald O’ Collins and Mario Farrugia, Catholicism: the story of Catholic Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) p. 36; Gerald O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) p. 27

What catholics say