Chapter 12, "The Forgotten Septuagint." The Septuagint was the first translation made of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek; it was begun over 200 years before the birth of Jesus. It often reads differently from the Masoretic text, the Old Testament text that became standardized for the Jews in AD 70. Since most Old Testaments used today in the West have been translated from the Masoretic text, it means that the early Christian quotations from the Old Testament sometimes do not fit our Bibles.
As I have mentioned before, at first it seemed strange to me that the early Christians preferred the Septuagint, a translation, over the Hebrew text of their day. Yet how could I have been so blind to the fact that most of the New Testament writers, too, preferred the Septuagint over the Masoretic-type Hebrew text of their day? When they quoted from the Old Testament, the Apostles primarily quoted from the Septuagint, so their quotations, too, frequently didn't match the Old Testament passages in our Bibles.
For example, notice this passage from the Psalms that is quoted in the Book of Hebrews: "Therefore, when he comes into the world, he says, 'Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.'" Hebrews 10:5-6. However, the Masoretic text of Psalm 40:6 says, "Sacrifice and meal offering you have not desired; my ears you have opened." Our Bibles don't say anything in Psalms about "a body you have prepared for me." Is that not part of Scripture?
If it isn't, why did the writer of Hebrews quote it as Scripture? That is not an isolated example. Such variances between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text are fairly numerous. In fact, one of the cardinal teachings of Christianity turns on one of these variances.
We have all read Matthew's quotation from Isaiah 7:14, which says, "Now all this took place, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, 'Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.'" That's in Matthew 1:22-23.
What I did not realize until recently was that the Hebrew Masoretic text does not say "the virgin shall be with child." It says "the young woman shall be with child." No wonder the Apostles and their disciples chose the Septuagint over the Masoretic text.
Unless you use the revised standard version, if you look at Isaiah 7:14 in your Old Testament, you will probably find that it reads "virgin" instead of "young woman." That's because the translators have fudged on their use of the Masoretic text in order to conform to the cardinal Christian doctrine of the virgin birth. But how honest is that? Can we ignore the Septuagint and treat it as a translation full of errors? But then, when one of those errors supports a major Christian doctrine, go over and borrow from it?
Are we really seeking truth when we do that? Next subheading: "Is the Septuagint Full of Errors?" During the Middle Ages and for many centuries thereafter, Western Christians mistakenly thought that the Septuagint was merely a careless translation of the Hebrew text. Many Christians today still think that. I know that's what I believed until recently.
However, during the 1800s, scholars began to postulate that perhaps the reason for the variance between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text was that the translators of the Septuagint were working from an earlier Hebrew text that varied from the later Masoretic text. In 1947, when scholars were still speculating about these things, an Arab shepherd accidentally discovered some ancient Jewish scrolls near the settlement of Qumran in Palestine.
Those scrolls, along with numerous other scrolls later found in the same vicinity, have come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Qumran Library. The Old Testament texts found among these scrolls were centuries older than any previously known Old Testament manuscripts. Among the first scrolls examined were two manuscripts of the Books of Isaiah. The initial published reports proclaimed that those manuscripts were virtually identical to the Masoretic text of today.
Evangelical Christians were quick to propagate these initial reports. I remember reading such reports myself and spreading them to others. However, later, a more sober reflection on the Isaiah scrolls, coupled with the discovery of Dead Sea manuscripts for other Old Testament books, revealed that the initial reports were premature.
Rather than vindicating the Masoretic text as being the original Hebrew text, the thousands of Qumran text specimens reveal that there was a definite diversity of text types of the Old Testament in use during the centuries of Christ. The Masoretic text reflects only one of those text types. Unfortunately, evangelicals have not been very quick to retract those original, premature reports.
More importantly, those manuscripts confirmed that there were early Hebrew manuscripts that largely agree textually with the Septuagint. So the Septuagint was not a sloppy translation of the Masoretic text. Rather, it is apparently a reasonably faithful translation of another text type, a text that may well be older than the prototype of the Masoretic text. Again, let me emphasize that the differences between these texts may not affect any significant spiritual truths.
They mainly affect the wording of various Old Testament passages. Next subheading: "The Value of the Septuagint." More and more Bible scholars today are recognizing the immense value of the Septuagint and its unique relationship to the New Testament. For example, Bible scholar George Howard points out that if the writers of the New Testament were influenced by secular Greek, they were influenced more by the Septuagint.
Separated from the Septuagint, the New Testament would have been almost unintelligible to the contemporary reader, according to B. Atkinson. At any rate, in the past decades, there has been an appreciation for the influence which the Septuagint vocabulary had on the New Testament thought, and the contributions in this area of Septuagintal research are still coming.
Consequently, the debate over which source is more important for New Testament lexicography, Greek or Hebrew, will probably be resolved in terms of the Septuagint. End quote. Dr. Sven Soderlund of Regent College writes, "The Septuagint was the Bible for most writers of the New Testament. Not only did they take from it most of their express citations of Scripture, but their writings, in particular the Gospels, and among them especially Luke, contain numerous reminiscences of its language.
The theological terms of the New Testament, such as law, righteousness, mercy, truth, propitiation, were taken over directly from the Septuagint and must be understood in the light of their use in that version." End quote. For instance, Old Testament scholar Dikran Y. Hadidian writes, quote, "F. W. Danker, in his article on Aids to Bible Study: The Septuagint, Its History, refers to the remark by the eminent biblical critic and Hebraist Ferdinand Hitzig to his students, 'Gentlemen, have you a Septuagint?
If not, sell all you have and buy a Septuagint.' E. Stauffer gives the answer as to why a man ought to sell all his possessions and buy a Septuagint, by saying, 'The Old Testament was the Bible of primitive Christianity.' What the writers of the New Testament read in the Old Testament became the normal starting point for their own formulation of ideas. The writers of the New Testament were deeply versed in the Septuagint, its language, its text, and its textual tradition.
This is adequate ground for us to take the Septuagint as our constant aid in understanding the New Testament, and in the main to use the Greek text for Old Testament references." Other Old Testament scholars have expressed similar sentiments. Although the vindication of the Septuagint may come as a surprise to many Western Christians, it doesn't surprise the Eastern churches at all. That's because the Septuagint has always been their Old Testament, from the days of the Apostles to the modern day.
The Eastern and the Oriental Orthodox churches did not need to wait for archaeological findings to support the Septuagint. Rather, the only evidence they ever needed was the fact that the Septuagint was the Bible of the New Testament church. However, the use of the Septuagint is not the only spiritual bombshell that hits us when we read the early Christian works.