Behold the Beasts Beside You: The Adaptation and Alteration of Animals in LXX-Job

“Behold the beasts beside you; they eat grass like cattle” (LXX-Job 40:15). The first translator for the book of Job into Greek was faced with a difficult text, replete with archaisms, corruptions, and convoluted Hebrew. He produced a distinctive – and often misunderstood – translation. Though its central characteristic is one of omission, its general approach to the text has proven hard to categorize. This study continues this trend by following one feature of Job that a casual reader cannot overlook: the book of Job’s zoological panoply. The LXX-translator handles these creatures in a variety of ways, often contextually-sensitive and quite creative. Furthermore, he brings in external material, from other LXX books and Greek literature, to translate other passages. Most surprisingly, he displays a remarkably “inclusive” approach to canonicity and “exclusive” ideas about animals and wisdom. At the end, the individual character of the translator is much more visible in the translation than what it would appear at first. “Beholding the beasts” in LXX-Job tells us as much about the translator as the translation itself