Septugaint, New Testament, And Messianic Verses by slaveofone
For Mit The Destroyer
I was recently asked about the verses from the Old Testament that are quoted in the New as verification or explanation of Yeshua’s Messianic status. My friend had heard (if I remember correctly) that the messianic verses in the New Testament were taken from the Septuagint. The Septuagint, of course, deviates from the Masoretic Text in many places, which explains some of the differences we see in the New Testament’s use of the Old. As a Christian, it is definitely intriguing if the apostles, disciples, and/or witnesses of Christ himself should use a verse to argue for Yeshua’s messianic status that is different than the Hebrew. A lot of questions present themselves in dealing with this situation. And I am far from being able to address most of them. However, I have read some things that would shed light on this discussion and would like to present it briefly here. The particular area I will be focusing on is Matthew’s use of the Greek OT.
In Matthew 12:18-21, the gospel quotes a portion of the Old Testament as proof of Yeshua’s messianic status. The question then is whether Matthew relies on the witness of the Septuagint to verify Yeshua’s messianic status. In order to answer that, I have reproduced data drawn from Paul Kahle’s The Cairo Geniza. Below is the Greek of Matthew 12:18-20 which is quoting Isaiah 42:1-4. After each line of Greek from Matthew (M), I show the Greek from the Septuagint of Isaiah (S). All the DIFFERENCES between what M says and what is in the Septuagint (S) are bolded or noted in the Septuagint line. The Greek text of Matthew used for comparison is the textus receptus
(Stephens 1550). The Greek text of the Septuagint is A. Rahlfs’ Septuaginta, 9th Edition, 1971.
M – ιδου ο παις μου ον ηρετισα ο αγαπητος μου εις ον ευδοκησεν η ψυχη μου θησω το πνευμα μου επ αυτον και κρισιν τοις εθνεσιν απαγγελει
S – ιακωβ ο παις μου αντιλημψομαι αυτου ισραηλ ο εκλεκτος μου προσεδεξατο αυτον η ψυχη μου εδωκα το πνευμα μου επ αυτον [no και] κρισιν τοις εθνεσιν εξοισει
M – ουκ ερισει ουδε κραυγασει ουδε ακουσει τις εν ταις πλατειαις την φωνην αυτου
S – ου κεκραξεται ουδε ανησει ουδε ακουσθησεται [missing material] εξω η φωνη αυτου
M – καλαμον συντετριμμενον ου κατεαξει και λινον τυφομενον ου σβεσει εως αν εκβαλη εις νικος την κρισιν
S – καλαμον τεθλασμενον ου συντριψει και λινον καπνιζομενον ου σβεσει [missing material] αλλα εις αληθειαν εξοισει κρισιν
M – και εν τω ονοματι αυτου εθνη ελπιουσιν
S – αναλαμψει και ου θραυσθησεται εως αν θη επι της γης κρισιν και επι τω ονοματι αυτου εθνη ελπιουσιν
As one can clearly see, there is very little that is the same between the Septuagint and the Greek quoted by Matthew. Often times there is material in the verses quoted by Matthew which does not exist in the Septuagint and sometimes there is material in the Septuagint that is entirely missing in Matthew’s quotation. Clearly, Matthew was not depending on the Septuagint of Isaiah for his proof of Yeshua’s messianic status.
The differences between these two versions of the Greek Isaiah are so great that no one can seriously attempt to explain the one text as a free quotation from the other. . . . There can be no doubt that here Matthew quoted a translation of Isaiah which differed from the translation found in the Christian ‘Septuagint’.
Paul Kahle, The Cairo Geniza, p. 251
In fact, according to Kahle, in the critical edition of the Septuagint of Isaiah by Joseph Ziegler, all quotations of Isaiah in Matthew have been noted and they all differ substantially from the Septuagint, which leads Kahle to say that there must have existed a Greek version of Isaiah different than anything that now exists but which was familiar to and used by the early Christians (p. 251). It was this now lost Greek version of Isaiah that Matthew used to prove Yeshua’s messiahship.
The Septuagint of Daniel was almost entirely lost. The version of Daniel that now exists in virtually every manuscript in existence–including all Septuagint manuscripts–is not the Septuagint of Daniel, but is the Greek text called Theodotion
. The Septuagint of Daniel is preserved in only a few manuscripts and has been translated (alongside Theodotion) in the NETS. According to Sir Frederic Kenyon, who studied and published parts of the Septuagint of Daniel when they were first discovered, many quotations from Daniel in the NT and even in the early church fathers come from the Theodotian text (or it’s earlier form), not the Septuagint text (The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, Fasc. 7, Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther, p. X.). It is therefore very probable that if a proof-text is used in the New Testament from Daniel to support Yeshua’s messianic status, this comes from Theodotion. Here, for example, is a place in the NT where the Greek text called Theodotion is quoted word-for-word as proof of Yeshua’s messianic status: John 19:37, quoting Zechariah 12:10 exactly from Theodotion (I did not verify this independently, but base it on the authority of Paul Kahle in The Cairo Geniza, p. 258). The Theodotion text, for the most part, conforms closely to the Masoretic.
So what does this go to show? It shows that the Septuagint was not the only Greek text of the Old Testament used authoritatively in the New in order to verify Yeshua’s messianic status. Rather, many different texts were used. Sometimes these texts agreed with the Hebrew in our Masoretic (Theodotion), sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes texts were used which we don’t even have today (the text of Isaiah used by Matthew). It seems to me that early Christians–including even the authors of the NT–were not all that concerned about preferring a certain text (like the Septuagint) over another (like the Masoretic), but used whatever texts were at hand and available to make their point. And that would seem to mean that early Christians did not so much place the validation of Yeshua’s messianic status on the authority of a written text, but on the authority of the historical witness of the church.