Divine names from the Hebrew Bible to the Septuagint: Methodological remarks and a case study

Focusing on the translation of Shadday as a test case, this paper advances a methodology to approach the study of divine names and epithets in ancient Jewish traditions. Unlike other divine epithets, the renderings of Shadday in Greek are divergent and inconsistent, although some patterns can be detected. The fact that the epithet was probably received as a divine attribute by translators with a blurred knowledge of its etymological meaning made room for multiple strategies of translation, each of which highlights a different aspect of the power of the deity. The comparison with the available Greek epigraphical evidence and the large distribution of the epithet throughout the biblical books allows us to identify a tension between the tendency to standardize the renderings (attested, for example, in the Pentateuch), and the certain degree of variety (witnessed in books such as Psalms and Job), which requires an explanation. More generally, the treatment of the title “Shadday” seems to call for new models for understanding the relationship between divine names and divine attributes both in the Hebrew Bible and in the Septuagint.