The beginning of this series can be found here.

Okay, there’s a little work we have to do before we get to the Apocrypha.

The time between when the Hebrew scriptures end and the Greek scriptures begin covers formative times in the history of the Jewish people. Periods of exile, deepening influence of Greek thought, reclaiming the Temple and the ongoing rebuilding of Jerusalem, the Maccabean revolt, several shifts in political empires, the birth of Jewish Gnosticism, and the creation of the Septuagint… and these are just highlights! This time of upheaval did shape the idea of perfection before Jesus’ birth by focusing on wisdom and how God’s people live.

The Greek End

As the Jewish people were forced or chose to interact with the world around them, particularly the Greek world, they encountered different philosophical ideas. One of those would have been the idea of teleology, which matters because teleo—which carries the ideas of moral, mature, complete, and genuine—becomes the word that most frequently gets used to translate perfect instances in the Hebrew scriptures into Greek for the Septuigent.

Greek teleological philosophy (which is not the same as post-Enlightenment teleological philosophy, more on that later) is just as multivalent as the Jewish understanding of perfection, so bringing the two together would have been interesting.

A quick way of thinking about Greek teleological philosophy would be asking yourself the question, "Why am I doing this?" The point of this philosophy is to focus on the end goal or final result. This could be as simple as saying, "I am brushing my teeth to stay healthy." It could also be as complicated as seeing your current action as part of the seventh step in your fifteen step plan to take over the world.

Whatever the action, Greek teleological philosophy would have you look to the goal or end of your actions. Please note that this approach is action based, not existential.

Aristotle pushed this idea out beyond particular motivations to the end of the effects of any particular action. Using Aristotle's approach when buying a car, you would ask the basic cost questions, but also ask about how your purchase is going to effect the environment both during your ownership of the vehicle and once that vehicle is no longer in use. Aristotle would have you ask what the end of the lifecycle of the vehicle looks like as part of your purchasing decision.

Faithful Jews encountering an Aristotelian approach to teleological philosophy can quickly say that the end, the completion, the full morality of all things is G-d. When the time came for the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, it should not be a surprise that many of the perfect instances become teleological.

Hebrew Meets Greek

Part of what happened in the intertestamental period is that the people of Israel started using a Greek translation of scripture in their worship. This came out of the Maccabean Revolts because the Greco-Roman empire learned the hard way to let the Jews worship their God. The concession was that they had to conduct their worship in the language of the occupying force—Greek. The result was the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.

When you translate something, there is always interpretation. Words and phrases, especially complicated or idiomatic ones, don't translate easily. The result for this reflection on perfection is that seven of the nineteen perfect instances in the Hebrew scriptures do not appear in the Septuagint at all.

Instances and Transliterated Greek Lemma Form
Job 37:16 still about God's knowledge, but the passage is totally different.
Psalm 50:2 is about Zion's beauty, which becomes excellent, but not perfect.
Lamentations 2:15 is still about Jerusalem's lost beauty, but with no perfect instance.
Ezekiel 27:3 is not about Tyre but God's beauty, and has no perfect instance.
Ezekiel 27:4 is still about the beauty of Tyre but with no perfect instance.
And both perfect instances have been removed from in Ezekiel 28:12, but are still about Tyre.

One translation of a perfect instance in the Septuigent is about truth (alethia) in place of perfect when talking about God's work. Four instances use morally blameless or without blemish (amoomos). The remaining eight have all become some from of teleo carrying the meaning of some sense of completion. The one notable exception is Psalm 119:96 again, which uses a form of teleo that comes out as the psalmist seeing the end of all ends.

Instances and Transliterated Greek Lemma Form
Of God’s works - Deuteronomy 32:4 (alethia)
Of the animal sacrifice - Leviticus 22:21 (amoomos)
About God's way and Law - 2 Samuel 22:31 (amoomos)
Of the Temple in Jerusalem - 1 Kings 6:22 (telos)
Of God’s knowledge - Job 37:16 (telos)
About God's way and Law - Psalm 18:30 (amoomos)
About God's way and Law - Psalm 19:7 (amoomos)
The end of everything - Psalm 119:96 (telos)
Of David’s hatred for those who hate God - Psalm 139:22 (telos)
Of the beloved - Song of Songs 5:2 (telos), Song of Songs 6:9 (telos)
Of Zion - Ezekiel 16:14 (telos)
alethia semantic domain: truth
amoomos semantic domain: without flaw
telos semantic domain: the end, complete

Next time: to the Apocrypha!