The Seventy

English

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Greek

LXX Gen 1:5 (Rahlfs) · pd

Notes

The Seventy render the cardinal exactly: ἡμέρα μία, 'day one', not ἡμέρα πρώτη. Every later day in the chapter is an ordinal (δευτέρα, τρίτη), so the Greek preserves the very unevenness the commentators argue about. Brenton's 1851 English prints 'the first day' and dissolves it; this is a fresh draft rather than Brenton for that reason.

Threads

• ← transmits · Jerome
  Jerome's 'dies unus' renders the LXX's cardinal ἡμέρα μία, not an ordinal; the whole Latin quarrel over unus and primus rests on a word the Greek had already kept from the Hebrew.
• ← parallel · Targum Pseudo-Jonathan
  Aramaic 'yoma chad' and Greek ἡμέρα μία make the same decision independently: keep the cardinal, though every following day in the chapter is an ordinal. Onkelos does the same.
• ← parallel · Targum Onkelos
  Phase 6. Onkelos's yoma chad and the Seventy's ἡμέρα μία, with yom tinyan and δευτέρα after each: two independent translators out of one Hebrew, and both let the unevenness stand rather than regularise the series. Every Latin argument in this crux descends from a Greek decision that an Aramaic translator had already made on his own.
• ← echoes · Ambrose
  Ambrose reads a Latin text that keeps the Greek cardinal and builds his chapter on it: 'Praeclare etiam unum non primum diem dixit.' Without ἡμέρα μία behind the Latin there is no question to ask.
• ← cites · Philo of Alexandria
  Philo is quoting the Seventy and the crux exists because they translated as they did. His whole argument stands on hemeran mian, day one, against hemeran proten, and he is reading the Greek word for word: the Maker called it day, and day not first but one. This is the edition's one place where a witness on the greek-jewish bench cites the other witness on the same bench, and it shows what the LXX is for on this daf, a text somebody argued from and not only a version to compare.