Investigation: Greek Ecclesiastes, a Different Kind of Translation

When Jews in Alexandria began translating their Scriptures into Greek in the 3rd century BC, they started with the Torah. Other books followed over the next three centuries. Ecclesiastes may have been among the last, and its Greek looks very different from the rest.

Its translator followed the Hebrew word by word, even where the Greek became awkward. That style is typical of Aquila, a convert to Judaism who produced a new, very literal Greek version around AD 130.

Mataiotes

The Greek renders hevel by mataiotes (emptiness, futility) throughout, and havel havalim as mataiotes mataioteton. The image of breath is lost; the Latin vanitas and English "vanity" inherited the abstract sense. Romans 8:20 uses the same Greek word.

The Aquila question

D. Barthélemy (Les devanciers d'Aquila, 1963) argued that Greek Ecclesiastes is an early edition by Aquila himself; others (e.g. J. K. Aitken, 2015; P. Pouchelle, 2020) prefer a translator of the same literalist school, perhaps in the 1st century AD. The Greek also appears in the great 4th–5th-century codices (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus). The Göttingen critical edition (P. J. Gentry, 2019) is the standard for C checks.

Not "the Septuagint" in one piece

It is common to call all Greek Old Testament books "the Septuagint." Each book has its own translator, date and style. Greek Ecclesiastes should not be dated to the 3rd century BC merely because the Greek Torah was.

The library's file

The library's Greek is Giguet's 1872 French translation of a printed Greek text. It is useful for locating differences (D check) but cannot show which Greek manuscripts read what. In this book Giguet's file is truncated in places (5:11; 6:9; 9:4) and has a probable misprint in 9:11 (paix for pain).