Between 8-9 November 2024, the 4th Septuagint Hungarica conference took place at the Protestant Theological Institute of Cluj-Napoca (2017 – Alba Iulia, 2019 – Cluj-Napoca, 2022 – online). The short-term objective of the conferences is to give lectures and publish studies that bring closer to the Hungarian-language readership the Old Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The long-term goal of the working group behind the conference is to prepare a Hungarian translation of the Septuagint with an apparatus (and possibly an accompanying volume).

The concept of wisdom was at the heart of this year's conference, but the eight presentations were more diverse.

Martin Meiser, professor at the Lutheran Theological Faculty of Saarbrücken University, addressed the question: why was the book of Job translated into Greek? In his lecture, he touched upon the translational, rhetorical and theological differences that characterise the book of Job, and emphasised the theological themes that made it accepted by Jews in Palestine, Diaspora and later Christianity. He expressed caution in claiming that the Greek translator considered the book to be part of the Scriptures of ancient Judaism (the translation contains a substantial amount of Homeric and Greek mythological motifs clear or hidden reference).

Professor Erik Eynikel of the Theological Faculty of the University of Regensburg presented the content of one of his articles written in the second volume of the forthcoming Historical and Theological Lexicon to the Septuagint and the workflow behind it, encouraging Hungarian researchers to join the working group in subsequent volumes.

In her presentation, Eszter Csalog, teacher of St. Paul Academy of Budapest, examined how the four cardinal virtues of classical Greek appear in the Septuagint.

In the first half of his presentation, Gábor Buzási, assistant professor at the Department of Hebraic Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, presented the differences between the Hebrew and Greek texts of Genesis 22, and then drew the attention of the audience to the differences between the Greek text and the explanation of Philo of Alexandria.

Ioan Chirilă, professor at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology at UBB introduced the participants to the world of Greek Orthodox spirituality and presented what he called "a spiritual morphology analysis" based on the meaning of the phrase "broken heart" in Isaiah 55:17, the objective of which is to heal and rebuild a broken heart in a prayer relationship with God.

Zoltán Oláh, teacher of the Roman Catholic Theological Faculty (Cluj / Alba Iulia), talked about how the teaching of the book of Isaiah appears in the Book of Wisdom.

In his lecture, Sándor Enghy, professor at the Reformed Theological University of Sárospatak, talked about how the Aristotelian concept of wisdom appears in various books of the Septuagint.

The conference was closed by a presentation by György Papp, which focused on the poem of Psalm 90:12 (LXX: Ps 89:12). In his presentation, he touched upon the difference between the interpretation of wisdom in the Hebrew and Greek texts: while in the Hebrew text the knowledge of the essence of wisdom appears as a goal, in the Greek text wisdom belongs to the people whom the psalmist presents to his readers as role models: Their hearts are shackled to wisdom or, according to other readings, instructed in wisdom.

In a short professional discussion following the presentations, the speakers and interested researchers agreed that it would be useful to organise conferences annually rather than biannually and focus more on concrete translation work.