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Course 4 · Lesson 2.2

Origin and character of the Septuagint

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 4 outline

Module 1: How the Canon Formed

  1. What a canon is, and what canonical means
  2. The Old Testament canon: Law, Prophets and Writings
  3. The New Testament canon: from gospels and letters to a list
  4. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant canons compared

Module 2: The Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint

  1. The Hebrew Bible and the work of the Masoretes
  2. Origin and character of the Septuagint
  3. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the state of the Old Testament text
  4. How New Testament writers quote the Old Testament

Module 3: Transmission of the New Testament Text

  1. Copying by hand: papyri, codices and scribes
  2. Manuscript traditions: Alexandrian, Western and Byzantine texts
  3. Kinds of variants and how they arise
  4. The principles of textual criticism
  5. Reading a critical apparatus and a translation footnote

Module 4: Reading Responsibly: Exegesis and Method

  1. Exegesis and eisegesis with worked examples
  2. Source, form and redaction criticism: what each asks
  3. Strengths and limits of the historical method
  4. Literary and canonical reading

Module 5: Meaning Beyond the Surface: Typology, Allegory and Genre

  1. Typology in the New Testament and the fathers
  2. Allegory and its critics: Alexandria and Antioch
  3. Reading by genre: narrative, law, poetry, prophecy, gospel and letter
  4. Setting, authorship and audience as questions to ask of any passage

Module 6: Christian Approaches to Interpretation

  1. The fourfold sense of Scripture in the medieval church
  2. Reformation principles: Scripture, clarity and the grammatical and historical sense
  3. Orthodox and Catholic approaches: Scripture within Tradition
  4. Historical scholarship and theological interpretation in conversation

Module 7: Writing an Exegesis

  1. Choosing a passage and framing a question
  2. Observation and context: what the text says and where it stands
  3. Using commentaries and reference works without being led by them
  4. Writing up, checking conclusions and revising

All courses

Program / Course 4: Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics / Lesson 2.2

What you will learn

  • Say what the Septuagint is and how it got its name.
  • Summarize the traditional story in the Letter of Aristeas and what historians make of it.
  • Describe how the translation varies in style and sometimes in content from the Hebrew text.
  • Explain why the Septuagint mattered to early Christians and why Jewish use of it declined.

The big idea

The Septuagint is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It began in Alexandria in Egypt, most likely in the third century BC, with the translation of the Law, and other books were translated over the following generations. It became the Bible of Greek speaking Jews and then of the early church. Because it was made before the Masoretic Text was fixed, it sometimes preserves older readings. Its character varies from book to book, so it must be studied with care, book by book.

Key terms

Septuagint (LXX)
From the Latin for seventy. The name comes from the tradition of seventy or seventy-two translators. It is abbreviated with the Roman numeral LXX.
Letter of Aristeas
An ancient Jewish work, probably from the second century BC, that tells how the Law was translated into Greek for the library of Ptolemy II of Egypt.
Diaspora
A Greek word meaning scattering. It names the Jewish communities living outside the land of Israel.
Hellenistic
Relating to the Greek influenced culture that spread across the Mediterranean and the Near East after Alexander the Great.
Vorlage
A German word meaning the source text. It names the Hebrew text that the Greek translators had in front of them, which may differ from the Masoretic Text.
Hexapla
A massive work of the third century by Origen that set out the Hebrew text and several Greek versions in parallel columns.
Old Greek
A name scholars use for the earliest form of the Greek translation of a book, before later revisions.

Background

After Alexander the Great, Greek became the common language of the eastern Mediterranean. Large Jewish communities lived in cities such as Alexandria, where many spoke Greek as their first language. These communities needed Scriptures they could understand, and the Greek translation of the Law and other books answered that need. The Septuagint became the Bible that many Jews read in the centuries before and during the time of Jesus.

The name Septuagint comes from a story in the Letter of Aristeas. It tells that the Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus wished to have the Jewish Law for his library, and that the high priest in Jerusalem sent seventy-two scholars, six from each tribe, who worked on the island of Pharos and finished in seventy-two days. The details of the tale were later embroidered. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish writer of the first century, went further and said the translators were divinely inspired.

Historians treat the letter with caution. Most think its account of the royal commission is legendary, though they accept that the Law was translated in Alexandria in the third century BC. They think the translation arose from the needs of the Jewish community and was later given a royal origin in the story. Other books were translated over the next two centuries or so, by different hands and with different methods.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Weigh the story and the evidence

The Letter of Aristeas is our main early source, and it is a literary work with its own aims, which include praise of the Jewish Law. It is probably later than the events it describes. A reader should neither accept it as plain history nor throw it out. The simplest summary is that scholars agree on three points: the Law was translated into Greek, the work was done in Alexandria, and it dates to roughly the third century BC. The details of the royal commission are not supported by other evidence.

Step 2: See how the translators worked

The Septuagint is not one uniform work. The Law is usually translated in a fairly literal way. The Psalms and the Prophets often follow the Hebrew closely but sometimes interpret it. Proverbs and Job are freer. In the Greek book of Job, for example, the text is noticeably shorter than the Hebrew. The Greek book of Jeremiah is also shorter than the Hebrew and arranges some material in a different order. Isaiah and Daniel show their own features.

These differences have two possible explanations. Sometimes the translators were interpreting freely. And sometimes they were translating a Hebrew text that read differently from the Masoretic Text. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discussed in the next lesson, support the second explanation in several places, since Hebrew manuscripts have been found that agree with the Greek.

Step 3: Notice what the Septuagint contains

The Greek Old Testament includes the books of the Hebrew Bible and also several others, such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and the Maccabees, as well as longer forms of Esther and Daniel. Its order differs, grouping books by kind: the Law, the historical books, the poetic and wisdom books and then the prophets. This order became the pattern of Christian Old Testaments.

Our oldest nearly complete copies of the Septuagint are Christian codices of the fourth and fifth centuries, such as Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus. Their contents differ slightly, which is a reminder that the Septuagint was never a single closed list.

Step 4: Follow it into the church and out of the synagogue

Early Christians, who often spoke Greek, took up the Septuagint as their Bible, and the New Testament writers frequently quote it. Some well-known passages depend on its wording. In Matthew 1:23, the quotation of Isaiah 7:14 uses a Greek word that means virgin, while the Hebrew word in that verse is often translated young woman. Christians and Jews have argued about that difference for centuries, and it is a good example of how a translation can carry an interpretation.

As Christians used the Greek, many Jewish communities moved toward the Hebrew text and made or favored other Greek versions, such as those of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion. Origen compared these in his Hexapla. Jerome, working on the Latin Vulgate, insisted on going back to what he called the Hebrew truth, while Augustine preferred to keep the Septuagint, which he held to be inspired. The disagreement shows that the question was serious for the early church.

  1. Is the passage I am reading from the Septuagint, the Masoretic Text, or a translation of one of them?
  2. Does the Greek differ from the Hebrew, and is the difference a matter of style or of source?
  3. What kind of translation does this book of the Septuagint seem to be?
  4. Did the New Testament writer quote the Greek or the Hebrew wording?
  5. How would the argument change if the other wording were used?
  6. What does a Jewish reader say about the same verse?

Examples

Job in two lengths

The Greek book of Job is noticeably shorter than the Hebrew. Some scholars think the translator abridged the Hebrew. Others think the translator worked from a shorter Hebrew text. Origen noticed the difference and added missing material to his Hexapla with marks to show what he had added. The case shows an ancient scholar facing the same problem a modern reader faces.

Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew

Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah with the word virgin, following the Greek wording. The Hebrew of Isaiah uses a word that can mean a young woman. A reader should know the difference, and should also know that the story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew does not rest on one word alone. Scholars of all traditions discuss how the Greek and Hebrew relate and what Isaiah meant in its own setting.

A Greek Psalm title

Some psalms in the Greek version carry titles or numbers that differ from the Hebrew. The Greek and Latin churches numbered the Psalms differently from the Hebrew Bible, grouping some together and splitting others. A person who looks up a psalm in a Catholic or Orthodox book of prayers may find a number one off from a Protestant Bible. The difference goes back to the Septuagint.

Different perspectives

Orthodox

The Orthodox Church receives the Septuagint as the Old Testament of the church and reads it in worship. Orthodox writers stress that the apostles and fathers used it and that the church should not set it aside in favor of a later Hebrew text.

Catholic

The Catholic Church honors the Septuagint as the Old Testament of the early church. The Second Vatican Council’s constitution on revelation said that the church accepted the ancient Greek translation as its own, while the Vulgate has had a long role in the Latin church.

Protestant

Protestant translators generally follow the Hebrew text and consult the Septuagint when the Hebrew is unclear. They recognize its value as a witness to older readings and to how the New Testament writers read Scripture, but they usually do not treat it as an equal authority.

Jewish

Jewish tradition preserves accounts of the translation of the Law, some admiring and some more guarded. Over time Jewish communities came to prefer the Hebrew text and other Greek versions, in part because of the use Christians made of the Septuagint.

Scholarly

Historians of the text regard the Septuagint as an invaluable witness. Debate continues over how often differences reflect a different Hebrew text and how often they reflect the translator’s choices, and over how to reconstruct the Old Greek where later revisions have shaped the manuscripts.

Why it matters

A large part of the church has always read the Old Testament in Greek, and the New Testament writers often did too. If you know the Septuagint, you will not be surprised when a New Testament quotation reads differently from your Old Testament. You will also understand why Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles differ in contents and order, and why scholars consult it when the Hebrew is difficult.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The Septuagint was translated by seventy men in seventy days in a single act.

Correction: The story comes from the Letter of Aristeas and was elaborated later. Historians think the Law was translated in the third century BC and that other books followed over a longer time.

Misunderstanding: The Septuagint is just a poor translation of the Masoretic Text.

Correction: It translates a Hebrew text that sometimes differed from the Masoretic Text. In several books the Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed that.

Misunderstanding: The New Testament always quotes the Septuagint.

Correction: Many quotations follow it, but some follow the Hebrew or a different Greek version, and some are free adaptations. Each quotation must be checked.

Misunderstanding: The Septuagint is a closed list of books.

Correction: Early manuscripts differ in contents. It was a collection used by Greek speaking communities, not a canon defined by a single authority.

Knowledge check

What does the name Septuagint mean and where does it come from?

It means seventy, from the Latin. The name comes from the tradition in the Letter of Aristeas that seventy or seventy-two translators produced the Greek version of the Law for the Egyptian king. It is abbreviated LXX.

What do historians accept from the account in the Letter of Aristeas?

They accept that the Law was translated into Greek in Alexandria around the third century BC. They doubt the details of the royal commission and the miraculous accounts, and they think the translation arose from the needs of the Jewish community.

Why can the Septuagint sometimes preserve an older reading than the Masoretic Text?

It was translated before the Masoretic Text was fixed, from Hebrew manuscripts that sometimes read differently. The Dead Sea Scrolls include Hebrew texts that agree with the Greek against the Masoretic Text in several places, which supports this.

Why did Jewish communities largely move away from the Septuagint?

Christians took it up as their Bible and used it in arguments, and Jewish teachers emphasized the Hebrew text. Some communities produced or used other Greek versions that followed the Hebrew more closely. The shift was gradual.

Think it through

  1. What is gained and what is lost whenever a text is translated?
  2. Why might a community be tempted to make a translation sound miraculous?
  3. What does it mean for Christians that their New Testament writers often quote a translation?
  4. How should a reader weigh a Greek reading against the Hebrew one when they disagree?

Independent assignment

A translation comparison

Choose one Old Testament passage quoted in the New Testament, such as Psalm 40:6 quoted in Hebrews 10:5. In your notebook, copy the Old Testament passage from your Bible and the New Testament quotation. Note every difference in wording, and look for a footnote that mentions the Septuagint or the Hebrew. Write 250 to 400 words on what you found and what you cannot tell without reading the original languages. Keep your work in your notebook.

Further study