Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-SA?

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Nigel Chapman
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Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-SA?

Post by Nigel Chapman »

I'm publishing a query about an LXX text here and a nearly parallel query about a GNT text in the NT forum.

Like many people with technological and Greek backgrounds, I aspire to have/make all the relevant texts for NT studies available in the most open and usable formats and licenses, as a basis for writing analytical and educational software. The holy grail is a reasonably modern text, good enough for language education if not for academic use, which can be CC-BY-SA licensed like Wikipedia, and then collaboratively maintained online without any licensing concerns.

I recently came across a pair of GNT and LXX texts at the Antioch site.[1] According to the person who hosts them there, they circulated online for some years, were corrected or updated by many different people, and are now orphaned, so that no-one has a clear claim of copyright on their current forms.

The LXX is a ~7 Meg Word Doc, and is introduced as follows:
BIBLIA GRAECA IVXTA LXX INTERPRETES
Totus fere textus cum Vetere Graeca versione congruit, discrepantes tamen versiones librorum Judicum et Tobit ponuntur: Codicis Alexandrini versio sub littera A, Codicis Vaticani versio sub littera B et Codicis Sinaitici versio sub littera S. Adaeque producuntur binae versiones librorum Susannae, Danielis, atque libri qui inscribitur Bel et Draco: textus Vetus Graecus sub nota LXX, et versio Theodotionis.
I was told that it this version of the LXX derived originally from Rahlfs. Can anyone here tell me anything about the history of this version of the text, or any information that might help me establish it's copyright status or risk?

My current plan is to pick about ten textual and interpretive cruxes and compare them with the major academic Greek texts, to see if this text has been conformed to one or another in any consistent way. If so, then I won't be using it. Otherwise, I think it's a candidate to release under CC-BY-SA.

[1] http://www.hancock.dircon.co.uk/antioch.htm (see under "Free Extras", halfway down the page)
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Ken M. Penner
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Ken M. Penner »

The text is Rahlfs, judging by the unaccented Hebrew names and the presence of movable nu. Swete accents the names, and Ziegler avoids the ν.
IIRC, the Rahlfs text that appears on various sites originally derives from TLG, which has quite a strict license.
Ken M. Penner
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Ken M. Penner »

It seems to me that I once read a paper that might be helpful: it was by Rex Koivisto on "Recent Advances in the Electronic Research of the LXX" presented at the IOSCS in 2010. But I can't seem to find it now. Does anyone have a copy?
Ken M. Penner
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Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Ken M. Penner wrote:The text is Rahlfs, judging by the unaccented Hebrew names and the presence of movable nu. Swete accents the names, and Ziegler avoids the ν.
IIRC, the Rahlfs text that appears on various sites originally derives from TLG, which has quite a strict license.
For the text itself, if it accurately reflects Rahlf's text, what would the copyright issue be? The only creative work would be typos and errors that distinguish the text from Rahlf, would TLG really claim copyright on those errors? Or are there corrections to Rahlf? If so, do you need them?

For the morphology, I don't know if TLG started with the CCAT text, but if it did, any corrections would probably be relevent.

Again, I am not a lawyer.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Ken M. Penner
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Ken M. Penner »

IIRC, the ccat text is from TLG. But I'm trying to verify this. I thought this was what koivisto said.
Ken M. Penner
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Ken M. Penner wrote:It seems to me that I once read a paper that might be helpful: it was by Rex Koivisto on "Recent Advances in the Electronic Research of the LXX" presented at the IOSCS in 2010. But I can't seem to find it now. Does anyone have a copy?
No, but this IOSCS page seems relevent:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ioscs/editions.html
In response to questions about the best available critical editions of the so-called Septuagint or Old Greek (LXX/OG) for use in scholarly discussion and development, including electronically based research, the Executive Committee of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies offers the following rationale and recommendations.

The creation and propagation of a critical text of the LXX/OG has been a basic concern in modern scholarship. The two great text editions begun in the early 20th century are the Cambridge Septuagint and the Göttingen Septuagint, each with a "minor edition" (editio minor) and a "major edition" (editio maior). For Cambridge this means respectively H. B. Swete, The Old Testament in Greek (1909-1922) and the so-called "Larger Cambridge Septuagint" by A. E. Brooke, N. McLean, (and H. St. John Thackeray) (1906-). For Göttingen it denotes respectively Alfred Rahlfs's Handausgabe (1935) and the "Larger Göttingen Septuagint" (1931-). Though Rahlfs (editio minor) can be called a semi-critical edition, the Göttingen Septuaginta (editio maior) presents a fully critical text, as described below.
Swete's 1922 text falls magically within the pre-1923 guideline. These others might be worth tracking down.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
MAubrey
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by MAubrey »

It should be emphasizes that Swete's text isn't a critical text, but a diplomatic text. It follows a single manuscript except where that manuscript is deficient.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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Ken M. Penner
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Ken M. Penner »

From http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/text/r ... readme.txt
CATSS LXX = The computer form prepared by the TLG (Thesaurus
Linguae Graecae) Project directed by T. Brunner at the University
of California, Irvine, with further verification and adaptation
(in process) by CATSS towards conformity with the individual
Gšttingen editions that have appeared since 1935.
From E. Tov, "Electronic Resources Relevant to the Textual Criticism of Hebrew Scripture"
9. Besides Hebrew Scripture, nine software packages also contain the LXX encoded by the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) from the edition of A. Rahlfs (Rahlfs 1935), without any variants. The variants of the LXX have been encoded by CCAT in Philadelphia, though not yet for all books. Other tools available are the text editions by H. B. Swete (Swete, ed. 1887-1912); A. E. Brooke, N. McLean, and H. St. J. Thackeray (Brooke, McLean, and Thackeray, eds. 1906-); and F. Field (Field, ed. 1875); the grammar of F. C. Conybeare and St. G. Stock (Conybeare and Stock 1905); the introductions by H. B. Swete (Swete 1914) and G. Dorival, M. Harl, and O. Munnich (Dorival, Harl, and Munnich 1988); and modern translations, some of them as scanned images.
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
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Diego Santos
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Diego Santos »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
Swete's 1922 text falls magically within the pre-1923 guideline. These others might be worth tracking down.
Swetes's Septuagint is in public domain worldwide, but its text is not easily available on line. However, it seems that Logos has the 1909 edition digitized for $79.95. Since Logos recognize it is in public domain, I think it may be copied from there legally.

Rahlf's edition is in public domain also (in countries where the 70 years rule applies), since he died in 1935, but the texts available in the internet are probably later revisions by the German Bible Society.
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Re: Is this LXX from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Diego Santos wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:
Swete's 1922 text falls magically within the pre-1923 guideline. These others might be worth tracking down.
Swetes's Septuagint is in public domain worldwide, but its text is not easily available on line. However, it seems that Logos has the 1909 edition digitized for $79.95. Since Logos recognize it is in public domain, I think it may be copied from there legally.

Rahlf's edition is in public domain also (in countries where the 70 years rule applies), since he died in 1935, but the texts available in the internet are probably later revisions by the German Bible Society.
The 70 years rule is more complex than that. See http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg ... ght_How-To .
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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