The Song of the Sea (Ex 15:1-18) in the Septuagint. LXX’s Treatment of Anthropomorphisms

In 1943, Fritsch proposed that the Greek Pentateuch, sporadically, spiritualizes anthropomorphic conceptions of God. In turn, harsh replies argued against an anti-anthropomorphic tendency in LXX (Orlinsky,,1944;,Wittstruck,,1967). The recent development of a proper Septuagint-theology re-opened the debate regarding the so-called anti-anthropomorphisms as element of LXX’s theology. Against the background of this renewed debate, I aim to analyze the highly anthropomorphic Song of the Sea (Ex 15:1b-18) and its Greek translation. LXX-SOTS has been characterized as avoiding MT’s anthropomorphisms (e.g., Frankel,,1851; Fritsch,,1943; Levine Gera,,2007) this anti-anthropomorphic reading being part of LXX’s theology. Especially striking is LXX-Ex 15:3 (κύριος συντρίβων πολέμους) (cf.;Perkins,,2007; Maier,,2010; Lang,,2012; Schmitz,,2014; Bons,,2018). As Bons showed, interpretations of this verse are polarized, from “pacifist” readings reversing the violent God in MT, to “destructivist” readings presenting an as violent God as MT. Many of these polarized interpretations regard LXX-Ex 15:3 nonetheless as weakening MT’s anthropomorphisms. However, they focus on the peaceful/destructive character of God, rather than the (anti-)anthropomorphic aspect of the verse, or the (rendering of the) surrounding anthropomorphisms. Therefore, the characterization of LXX-Ex 15:3 and LXX-SOTS as anti-anthropomorphic has, up until now, been disappointingly general and lacks nuance. LXX-SOTS shows a paradoxical tendency rendering MT’s anthropomorphisms: sometimes the Greek indeed seems to avoid anthropomorphisms (v.3.8.10), but elsewhere leaves the anthropomorphisms untouched (v.16.17) or even renders ‘more blatantly’ (v.4.5 by the active rendering of MT’s passive verbs). Against the simplified anti-anthropomorphic characterization of LXX-SOTS, the variants of the larger SOTS are analyzed to assess how LXX understood its Vorlage. Thereupon, I will evaluate where the LXX-variants stem from. Stressing the multicausality underlying the variants in LXX-SOTS, I want to address the seemingly paradoxical tendency of LXX-SOTS: it is my hypothesis that some variants stem from harmonizations with the larger context of the Exodus-narrative, others from translation-technical issues like poetic stylistics, and again others from theological issues.