Septuagint: Joel

As it is unclear when exactly Joel lived, it is difficult to place his writing into a historical context, however, he does refer to his temple as being in the Valley of Shittim, which identifies his Lord as Ba'al Hammon (𐤁𐤏𐤋 𐤇𐤌𐤍‎), the Canaanite fertility god. The Temple of Hammon, at the ruins of Tell el-Hammam in Jordan, reportedly sent tribute to Solomon when he was the king, and the town around the city existed from roughly 980 to 332 BC. As Joel mentioned the Valley of Jehoshaphat, it is accepted he lived after the time of King Jehoshaphat, King of Judea between circa 870 and 849 BC. At the time, the region northeast of the Dead Sea, where the Valley of Shittim is located, was under the dominion of the Kingdom of Samaria. Joel also refers to Zion and Jerusalem, which implies a strong connection to the Kingdom of Judah

While the Septuagint's Book of Joel makes a clear division between the 'Temple of your god,' and the 'Temple of the Lord,' the Masoretic Texts do not make this distinction, interchangeably referring to a Temple of God and a Temple of Yahweh. Only a few fragments have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, half of which confirm the Septuagint's translation of 'Temple of your god,' and half of which confirm the Masoretic 'Temple of God.' These fragments date back to the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties, after the Jews had adopted the Assyrian script. As the adoption of the Assyrian script under the Hasmoneans was likely when the name Yahweh was inserted into the Books of the Twelve Prophets, the earlier translation of the Twelve into Greek circa 180 BC likely reflects an older version of the texts.

The differences between the versions of Joel found in the Septuagint and Masoretic Texts indicate a significant redaction to names took place between the time the Septuagint was translated circa 180 BC, and the time the Masorites started copying the text in the 4th century AD. The Greek translation of the Twelve Prophets indicates that several Canaanite gods were still named in the books when it was translated at the library of Alexandria, however, most of these names were changed slightly by the time the Masorites started working with the texts, resulting in strange sentences in the Masoretic versions of the Twelve, which modern translators rectify by adding words to their translations that are not in the Masoretic Texts based on the assumption that the words were lost at some point.