The Septuagint — David Bercot — Ep. 063

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. We're here with David Burso, and this is your office here in New Chamberlain... Yeah, Amberson. Amberson, Pennsylvania, a little town in Pennsylvania, and it is a privilege to be here.

I'm guessing most of our audience is probably aware of your writings. You've written a lot of books, you've spoken at a lot of conferences, you're writing two books right now, one book? I'm working on a commentary on Matthew. Yeah, okay, so you are a busy man, you get a lot of things done, so we're going to jump in and do a few episodes with you here, and the first topic is one that might surprise our audience a little bit, but I'm guessing a lot of them aren't familiar with the Septuagint. So can you just describe what is the Septuagint, where did it come from, and just give us some background as to what that is?

The Septuagint was the first translation ever made of the Scriptures. It's the Old Testament, translated from Hebrew into Greek, and it's the Greek of the New Testament. It's called Koine Greek or Common Greek, same as the New Testament. Probably around the year 250, we don't have an exact date, 250 BC. BC, okay. So this is centuries before Christ. At least the Torah or the law was done then. We don't know some of the other books if they were done at the same time or if they were done in the decades after that. Most people would say, most scholars, at least by the year 150 BC, it was all translated. Who was it that would have seen a need to do this translation, you know, those centuries before Christ?

That's a good question because you would get different answers on that. All right. The account that we have, it's in a letter called the Letter of Aristeus, and he purports to be a Greek, you know, a Gentile. After Alexander the Great, on his death, his empire was divided among his four of his generals, and one of them was Ptolemy, who was given Egypt, okay? And this would be the son of Ptolemy I, it's Ptolemy II, I don't know where it ended, Ptolemy XV or something, so there's a lot of guys named Ptolemy.

So this would have been Ptolemy II, sometimes called Ptolemy Philadelphus, and he was collecting together works from all over the world because he was assembling a library there in Alexandria, which in the ancient world was the greatest library anyone put together. And he wanted the writings of, you know, like I say, all kinds of people, not so much just Greek writings or particularly Greek writings. He wanted all the wisdom of the whole world. He wanted the writings of the Hebrews because his kingdom bordered on Judea, and sometimes Judea was included in it, and sometimes it was included in a neighboring Greek kingdom. So that's the official story, which I myself would believe, and he wanted those writings, and so he sent ambassadors to Jerusalem and asked them if they would send some translators along with writings and translate them into Greek so that they could be read by the Greek population.

According to that account, 72 different ones, 12 from each tribe, were sent from Jerusalem together with copies of the Hebrew writings to Alexandria, Egypt, and there they did this translation. People who would be skeptical of that account, they say it was probably the Greek community, the Jewish community in Alexandria who were Greek-speaking, that they wanted it translated so they could use it in their synagogues because they no longer knew Hebrew, and so they feel like it was that Jewish community behind it. Either way, it was done in Alexandria, I don't think anyone questions that. It was almost like we wanted to take these writings and put this into the language of the people, at least in the...

Right, whether it was the Jews or the Greeks who were behind it, yeah, either way, it was to put it in the language of the people, yeah. Interesting. So in a number of your writings, you've mentioned how a lot of New Testament quotes of the Old Testament or illustrations, things like that, come from the Septuagint translation. Can you just discuss that a little bit and give us some examples as well? About 90% of the quotations in the New Testament are taken from the Septuagint, and that's why you maybe have noticed, I noticed all my life, that, you know, one of the apostles quotes the Old Testament, and you go look it up, you know, you're curious, and you read in the Old Testament, it's like, huh, this isn't how the apostle quoted it, and I just used to always shrug my shoulders, okay, I guess there's a reason and all that.

Well, yeah, what I didn't realize is that the apostles, or Jesus as well, were quoting from the Septuagint, and so in the Septuagint, when you look it up, yeah, it nearly always reads the same. Now, sometimes they're paraphrasing a quote or something like that, so it's not always word for word, but yeah, most of the time. The Masoretic Text, which is the text that the Roman Catholic Bibles and Protestant Bibles are translated from, most of the time they read very similarly, so I wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that, oh, wow, it's like there's another whole edition of the Bible or something like that. Most of the time they read, well, most of the time they read exactly the same.

When there are differences, usually there's not like some big doctrine that turns on that, but sometimes it is important the way it's quoted, yeah, the significance of that verse does turn on the fact that it's from the Septuagint. Interesting. Is that just because, I guess, Jesus and the apostles were quoting a translation, a text that would have been in familiar language for the people at the time, or, well, yeah, what's going on there? Well, that would be part of it because the New Testament was written, you know, in Greek. Obviously, if they're quoting it for Greek-speaking people, they're going to quote from the Greek Bible, but there's a little bit more to the story than that, and it's this that over the many centuries after, say, the time of Moses and the prophets, the Hebrew Bible was, you know, originally written in Hebrew, or most of it was, a few books were written in Aramaic, but for the most part, Hebrew.

Different people copied it. They didn't have, you know, printing presses and all that, so you had people just by hand sitting and copying these books. Variations came into the text over time. You can just imagine something, someone just by hand copying all of this over and over, yeah, it'd be easy to make a mistake, particularly ancient Hebrew had no punctuation, so there's no sentences, there's no commas, there's, I mean, you know, you're looking at this word and maybe the line below it has the same word, and you're, you know, you just skip a line in your mind or, you know, and you've just left out, you know, four words or, you know, whatever the case might be.

After time, there develop families of the Bible text, okay? Again, whichever one you use, no Christian doctrine is going to turn on that. I mean, God did have a providential hand that He, you know, saw that it was preserved, but not word for word. So the Septuagint, many times there is a variation in the wording, and often that variation is highly significant to a messianic prophecy. In other words, in the Masoretic Text, there's not a prophecy, but in the Septuagint, there's an important prophecy, you know, and I'll give you an example. I'm going, I'm quoting, having to quote from memory, in the Psalm where it says, "They pierced my hands and feet," something to that effect, okay?

That's from the Septuagint. See, we read that and, you know, that's obviously a messianic prophecy, okay? But that's from the Septuagint. In the Masoretic Text, it says, "A lion is at my feet." And in the Hebrew, I mean, it's so different in English, but in Hebrew, I mean, it's the slightest little thing changes that. And yeah, and so, so yeah, there's a whole messianic prophecy that disappears when you're in the Masoretic Text, and there's a number like that that it depends on the Septuagint and not the Masoretic. So yeah, I would believe that God providentially oversaw the translation into Greek and that they got the text that was going to have these important prophecies in them.

Yeah, it's why Jesus and the apostles nearly always quote from the Septuagint, but some of their quotes fit the Masoretic Text better. So it's almost like, I mean, clearly the Septuagint played a significant role in the transmission of these things to these people because, for one thing, it is a language that the common person understood. Right. But there's obviously some significance here that. Yeah, the way I look at it, God obviously, you know, foresaw that the gospel was going to be taken to all the world. Well, nobody spoke Hebrew other than the Jews, and most Jews didn't speak Hebrew in Jesus' time, only a few. So is He going to keep His word locked up in a dead language, or nearly dead language, or does He want it in a living language that people are speaking everywhere?

Well, obviously, we know from, you know, the New Testament, yeah, He wanted it in a language that could go across the world. Rather than have part of it in Hebrew that then the Gentiles couldn't understand, and most Jews couldn't understand, and then part of it in Greek, yeah, long ahead of time, yeah, He arranged it where there would be a Greek translation so it would just meld seamlessly when Christ came and the apostles. That's really interesting because Greek at that time would have been the trade language of the world, I guess you could say, or at least that part of the world, you know. Yeah, just about. If you knew Greek, you know, you could communicate, yeah, with Romans, with Persians, and everyone in between, so yeah, it was a universal language pretty much.

That's amazing. My question is then, how long after the apostles started dying off that the Septuagint was continued and still used by the church? It actually still is today in the East, okay? It's unfamiliar. Orthodox, you're saying? Yeah, the Eastern Orthodox, their Old Testament has always been the Septuagint, still is, and it never changed. The change only occurred in the West, and likewise, like the Coptic Church, the church in Ethiopia, the Armenian, a lot of these, the Bible was translated early on into, say, Coptic, into Georgian, into Armenian, and it was translated from the Septuagint. So they're not reading the Greek, they're reading it in their language, but they're reading it from what was a Septuagint translated from the Septuagint.

Now, around the beginning of the fifth century, the early 400s, that is, okay, Jerome, who was the secretary to the pope, he was commissioned to translate the Old Testament into Latin, well, actually the whole Bible into Latin, okay? He unilaterally decided that instead of translating the Old Testament from the Septuagint, because the Jews were always saying, well, you Christians are using the wrong scriptures, because by his time the Jews had rejected the Septuagint, they were no longer using it, even though it was their translation, it wasn't done by Christians, you know, it was done by Jews. The Jews were always saying, well, you Christians, you've got the wrong Bible, you know, and so he was so tired of hearing that, he said, I'm going to translate it from Hebrew, you know.

Now, he didn't realize that the Hebrew, there were these two text families and that the Septuagint was translated from a different Hebrew text, you know. Yeah. And so he made the translation from the Masoretic Text that the Jews were using. I mean, there was an uproar him doing this. I mean, this went against everything Christians had followed, you know, since the apostles. It probably wouldn't have caught on. This was what's known as the Latin Vulgate, except the 400s was when the Western Empire fell to the barbarians. At first, you know, they said, no, you know, you've, you know, overstepped your bounds, you know, we're not going to accept, you know, a translation from the, you know, Masoretic Text.

But, you know, after the barbarians overran the empire and no one in the West hardly spoke Greek, let alone no one spoke Hebrew, you know, and when you're just fighting for survival, you know, you're not going to argue, oh, was this translated from the Septuagint? I mean, you know, people didn't know, learning was pretty well lost, you know, for centuries. Yeah, it just kind of came in, the Roman Catholic Church made it the official Bible, and so that's why the West then, you know, the Roman Catholics had one and all the other parts of the church had the Septuagint, and then the Protestants, you know, followed Jerome's example and translated it from the Hebrew, and so those of us from a Protestant background, yeah, that's all we've known as well.

So it's new to us, but it's not new to Christianity, yeah. Yeah. So how does this all affect our lives today? How is a 21st century Christian? Why does it matter to us? I'll be frank, it is not one of the bigger issues. It's not something I'm beating, you know, a big drum on. I may be beating a little one, but yeah, there's a lot of other things I would think are more crucial, but yeah, it makes a difference. I mean, if the apostles are using the Septuagint, why would we not want to be using what they're quoting from? And the early Christians, all of their discussion of the prophecies and all this are always out of the Septuagint, you know, it was the Bible of the church.

When we go to the Masoretic Text, then we're separating ourselves from the early Christians, the ones who were closest to the apostles, and so you start reading their writings and it's like, huh, they're quoting, you know, this prophecy and you can't even find the prophecy in your Bible. And this was the experience I had when I first started reading the early Christian writings. I'm talking about pre-Nicene, you know, from like the 100s and 200s, those first few centuries, yeah, they were pointing out a lot of stuff that I couldn't find in my Bible because I didn't have a Septuagint back then. And it's like, yeah, where are they coming up with this? We're separating ourselves from, you know, Christian history, but fortunately no major doctrine, you know, turns on it.

Now, some of them might be affected by it, but none of them turn on this. So yeah, like I say, God saw to it that either way people would still have enough of the truth, enough of His word that, you know, the gospel could be carried on. Yes, it's almost like, it's almost like having the Septuagint and understanding that aspect and reading that gives you a little, I don't know about a little extra, it sounds weird, but you know what I mean? Like it's a little extra spice to some of these things that maybe we might miss otherwise. Right, it's an extra, it's an extra blessing. My wife and I, when we do our Bible reading every night, we read from the Septuagint.

If I'm real tired, I'll just, you know, listen to her reading, or if she's tired, I might just read and she'll listen, but if I'm, you know, feeling enough vitality, I'll put it that way, I'll try to follow along in the Masoretic Text and notice the differences. And most of the time they read exactly the same, but often there'll be, yeah, one verse and it's like, wow, now that is interesting because the Septuagint, the way it does it, you can see, ah, this is pointing to the Messiah, that's talking about Jesus, and it's not that way in the Masoretic. So there's a lot more messianic prophecies for sure in the Septuagint. Yeah, you can see God's providential hand in placing these prophecies all throughout the Old Testament text.

Kind of to wrap this up, what benefits would there be if Christians today would esteem the Septuagint? Like, how would that affect our reading of the Bible? Yeah, I pointed out you're going to see this consistency between the New Testament and the Old. When you look up a quote, it's nearly always going to follow what it says in the New. You don't have that gap like, where did they get this, okay? You're going to discover prophecies that aren't quoted in the New that are there in the Old. I mean, you can see this and read and see, oh, that's obviously a messianic prophecy, even though it's not quoted in the New. Like I say, there's the ones that aren't quoted that otherwise you don't find in the Old Testament, and then you find them in the Septuagint.

And then there's the ones that aren't quoted that are obviously messianic prophecies. So it does make it a blessing that way. The other interesting thing is there's a lot more difficulties in the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint, so many of the Old Testament difficulties, not all of them. But I'm going to give you one illustration, and that's why I had these notes here. I'm going to just read it just for time. It's the account of David, okay? In 1 Samuel 16, Saul is having this evil spirit, you know, that's affecting him, and he wants someone to play the harp. You probably remember that, okay? This is what we read in 1 Samuel 16. Then one of the servants answered this, is talking to Saul and said, "Look, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a handsome person, and the Lord is with him.

Therefore, Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, 'Send me your son David, who is with the sheep.' And Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine, and a young goat, and sent them by his son David to Saul. So David came to Saul and stood before him, and he loved him greatly, and he became his armor bearer." So David becomes Saul's armor bearer. "Then Saul sent to Jesse, saying, 'Please let David stand before me, for he has found favor in my sight.'" Okay, so David and Saul are very close. David plays the harp, he's his armor bearer, and Saul sends a message to Jesse, thanking him and saying, "Yeah, I'd like your son David to stay with me," all right?

Then you go to the next chapter, and this is where David slays Goliath. It says this that in the very next chapter, this is the Masoretic Text, which is most of our Bibles, okay? "When Saul saw David going out against the Philistine, he said to Abner, the commander of the army, 'Abner, whose son is this youth?' And Abner said, 'As your soul lives, O king, I don't know.' So the king said, 'Inquire whose son this young man is.' Then as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine, that's Goliath, in his hand. And Saul said to him, 'Whose son are you, young man?'

So David answered, 'I am the son of your servant, Jesse, the Bethlehemite.'" Now, did Saul have brain surgery? I mean, this is the guy who's his armor bearer, and he doesn't know him in the very next chapter. It's like, who are you, you know? Yeah, people make all kinds of excuses to try to harmonize it, but I mean, it doesn't harmonize. I mean, how can he be someone who plays the harp before him? He's his armor bearer, they're real close. He knows his father because he sends his presence to Jesse, and then the very next chapter, he doesn't know who he is. In the Septuagint, none of that is there about who are you, young man, who is your father.

It's not even there in the text. In other words, it's only in the Masoretic Text. So that's just one example of difficulties that, yeah, it could affect somebody's faith in the scriptures. I mean, people, well, we see a growing number of people, yeah, losing the faith in the Bible, and it's inconsistencies like that that people point out and say, "See, the Bible, how could it be inspired? It's got something that's that contradictory." Well, a lot of those are only in the Masoretic Text. They're not in the Septuagint. And that's one reason why I feel the Septuagint is the correct text. Again, most of the time there are no difficulties. Most of the time they read the same.

That's interesting. So are you suggesting maybe, you know, our listeners, our viewers, go and buy a Septuagint and read through it? I definitely recommend that. It has blessed me. In fact, that's what I use in church. A lot of, yeah, now in church, yeah, most of us in the church I attend are using that because, yeah, we're all finding a lot of blessings in doing that. That's interesting. We should put a link down to where people can buy it. I know, I mean, you can get it on Amazon or something. I have a copy of it. Yeah, scroll publishing would carry several different versions of it, and you can take your pick on that. Yeah, wonderful.

And I think maybe people could check out some of your other writings on this too. I know you've done a fair amount of work on this. I've done a CD, a series of CDs on just the Septuagint that goes into a lot more detail and talks about more of these difficulties. And I just gave you one illustration, but there's a lot more, yeah. The comforting thing is that you can see that God's hand has been there, that he did allow variation so that we wouldn't worship the text of scripture, but he never allowed them to get so far that, yeah, if you're using the Masoretic Text, you totally miss out on God's word. And so that's faith strengthening.

On the other hand, yeah, that it's possible to get even closer to what the apostles had than what many of us were using. And again, it's not just theoretical, it's practical things like contradictions that can cause someone to lose their faith in the Bible. And so that's one reason I, yeah, I really feel it's a blessing. It's something that our churches should wake up to, that, yeah, we've been using the wrong translation, you might say. Well, thank you for taking the time to share and all the research that went into this. And I hope, I really hope out of this episode, people are just inspired to go study God's word more, you know. Amen, yeah.

Yeah, that's the ultimate goal right there. So yeah, thanks so much for sharing. I appreciate it.