The Septuagint has fascinated me for some time. Although it has widely been considered holy writ by the church historically, some groups—Protestants primary among them—reject it, choosing to do away with the deuterocanonical (pejoratively called apocryphal
) texts and to stick as closely as possible instead to the Masoretic text-type. Even those who might claim sympathy for the LXX are quick to make it subservient to the Masoretic, rendering null and void its own voice and authority. Saint Augustine’s attempt at compromise between the two sides led him to believe that the Spirit which inspired the writings of the prophets was the same which inspired the translators of the Septuagint. Thus, according to Augustine, there is dual-scriptural authority—that both the Hebrew and the Greek, even when they are different or at odds, are equally authoritative. In order to come to an understanding of some of the evidences which might argue for an acceptance of the Septuagint on its own grounds, I attempted to come to a grasp of the historical situation and what that might mean. What follows are my conclusions that favor the LXX.
1 - Aristeas
Perhaps the best place to begin is with the Letter of Aristeas. The purpose of the letter, as many scholars attest, was to help stimulate the acceptance of the Greek translation among Jews of the diaspora and/or pagan converts. For reasons and arguments that have escaped me thus far, the letter is not considered genuine or historically reliable. Another important thing to note is that the Septuagint of Aristeas is only the Pentateuch. Despite these things, however, the letter makes the Septuagint to be nothing less than guided by the Spirit of God and sacrosanct—so much so that a curse is placed near the end of the letter, like unto Revelation 22:18-19, which gives dire warnings against additions or changes to this Greek translation of the Torah (Letter of Aristeas 310-311). Although the curse was not regarded by later Jewish translators like Aquila, this letter makes it clear that the first Greek translation was held in esteem early on and that its translators were venerated by Jewish communities outside Palestine.
2 - Philo
And then there was the Hellenistic Jew Philo. In his Life of Moses I, Philo writes much more glamorously of the events surrounding the translation of the sacred books into Greek. He wrote that the translators were inspired by God as prophets in the office of Moses. Their translation was under divine motivation, prophetic in nature, and the holy word of God. Indeed, according to him, each translator wrote the same words as if one single, invisible voice had dictated the Septuagint to them. There is no doubt that Philo was glorifying the Septuagint and that he considered it as great if not greater than the Hebrew itself. It is quite likely he was not the only one.
3 – Palestinian and Rabbinic Judaism
But what of those within Palestine? What did they think about the texts of the Septuagint? Among the Dead Sea Scrolls and from caves nearby, not only have we discovered Hebrew and Aramaic fragments of some of the deuterocanonical/apocryphal
texts in the Septuagint (like Tobit and Sirach), proving that they were used alongside the other biblical texts, but we have also discovered both proto-Septuagintal texts—Greek texts that antedate any previously known Septuagint manuscript, but which closely follow it in word and form—and Hebrew texts which agree in meaning or form with the Septuagint against the Masoretic. In fact, the Babylonian Talmud itself quotes extensively from Sirach. Origen and Jerome both tell us of Hebrew and Aramaic versions of Judith and Maccabees used in their day. Origen defended Susanna (one of the additions
to Daniel) as being inspired scripture by pointing to its authenticity in a proto-Theodotian LXX manuscript, a version of the Greek scriptures used by many Jews and which was used exclusively by almost every church father after him. So we can see quite clearly that the various texts of the Septuagint, including the so-called apocrypha,
were quite commonly used and preserved as every other biblical text among the Jews.
4 – Justin Martyr
Indeed, the authority of the Greek translation among Jews can be seen in that when Justin Martyr accused the Jew Trypho of failing to obey his teachers who told him the translation of the seventy elders was true scripture(Dialogue 68:6-8), Trypho didn’t deny that his teachers had told him this or that Justin’s appeal to the LXX as true scripture was incorrect, something which would have greatly supported him in his debate had he believed the Hebrew was superior.
5 – 4 Ezra (?)
This Jewish psuedepigraphal work might be saying in 14:37-48 that while the regular texts of the Masoretic tradition were regarded as scripture, the seventy (the Septuagint) were of even greater authority and thus were to be given only to the wise, because in those texts was the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge.
6 - Josephus
Even Josephus, who seems to take the hard, Pharisaic line that only certain Hebrew texts (those of the Masoretic tradition) were scripture, actually makes use of the Septuagint’s so-called apocryphal additions
in the longer Greek version of Esther in Book 11, Chapter 6 of his Antiquities.
7 – Church Fathers
If I were to even begin listing the times and places that church fathers quoted authoritatively from texts of the Septuagint, both apocryphal
and not, or spoke of the texts of the LXX as being either inspired or canonical, such a list would quickly consume the bandwidth of my website. Indeed, many councils, such as the Council of Laodicea, the Third Council of Carthage, and the Council of Hippo, all presumed texts of the LXX to be inspired scripture.
8 – The New Testament
We mustn’t forget the fact that the LXX was used without issue by many of the earliest Christians including those who wrote parts of the New Testament and quoted from it or summarized the LXX’s words therein. Although I believe that the NT’s reliance upon the Septuagint is not so great as many claim, it must be acknowledged that some differences between quotes or summaries of OT verses in the NT and what those verses look like in the Masoretic is best explained by reliance upon a Greek text of the OT. And despite what is commonly assumed and even taught, many things in NT texts have a foundation in the deuterocanonical
texts of the LXX. John’s entire concept, for instance, of the Word becoming flesh and tabernacling in Israel is drawn directly from Sirach (the major difference being that whereas Sirach says the Word in flesh tabernacling in Israel is Torah, John says it is Yeshua). Therefore, any understanding and acceptance of John’s perspective is dependent upon an understanding of Sirach and an acceptance of at least some authority of viewpoint in that text.