The Living Word of God: Appreciating, Trusting, & Using the Scriptures

THE LIVING WORD OF GOD: APPRECIATING, TRUSTING, & USING THE SCRIPTURES Notes For Week Four: The OT Canon - Septuagint & Apocrypha This week, we shall look at two topics of particular significance in the study of the Old Testament canon. The Septuagint, or ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, is the version of the Old Testament that was used by the early Christians (both Jews and Gentiles). The Apocrypha is a collection of ancient works that some denominations consider to be canonical. Review An overview of the origin and usage of Scripture includes Inspiration, Preservation, Translation, Interpretation, and Application. So far, we have focused mostly on the inspiration of Scripture: what this implies, the reasons to believe that the Bible was divinely inspired, and so forth. Our Old Testament canon (books accepted as inspired) is the same set of writings considered canonical by the ancient Jews before the time of Jesus. The Old Testament is important as a witness to Jesus, and also as the foundation of Christianity and the forgiveness of sins. These books are known to have existed well before the time of Christ through the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint (see below), the targums, and other sources of historical evidence. The ancient Hebrew Scriptures were arranged in three sections: the Law, the Prophets, and the (Sacred) Writings. The order of the books and the way they were counted were different from Christian practice, but the material was the same. Until the first century BC, all of these books were accepted by Jews of all backgrounds and beliefs, with the exception of the Samaritans. Then a series of rabbinical disputes brought a few books into question, and the formation of sects like the Sadducees (who accepted only the Law Of Moses) produced more divergent views. At the Council of Jamnia in AD 90, the conventional Jewish canon was once again re-affirmed. The Septuagint (Readings in Acts 8 & Acts 17) The Septuagint is an ancient Greek version of the Old Testament that was compiled in Egypt during the inter-testamental period. It is significant to our study in several different respects, and in fact a study of the Septuagint ties together several other aspects of our study. Both its history and its contents help us better to understand how our own Bible reached its final form. The early Christians, both Jews and Gentiles, frequently used the Old Testament. For example, when Philip meets the Ethiopian eunuch, sees him reading Isaiah, and asks, "do you understand what you are reading?" (Acts 8:30-35), Philip then uses Isaiah to teach the gospel. Our Old Testament was the only written Scripture available to the earliest Christians. The Hebrew language was not widely spoken in the 1st century AD*; but both Jews and Gentiles in Roman territory commonly spoke Greek, so the Septuagint enabled both to study the Hebrew Scriptures. * Most Jews in the 1st century AD spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew. Hebrew was then an academic language; and it remained a 'dead' language for many centuries, until it was deliberately revived in the 20th century. Early believers also relied on the Old Testament in seeking the truth about Jesus and the gospel (Acts 17:2-3 and 17:10-11). In the well-known verse about the Bereans, note that they did not so much look to verify facts, but to clarify whether the gospel of Jesus fulfilled the promises God had made, and whether the teachings of the gospel were consistent with the spiritual principles taught in the Old Testament. Again, they would have been using the Greek language Septuagint. 1 In a sense, the Septuagint arose out of the relationship between Alexander the Great* and the Jews. When Alexander founded the great city of Alexandria in 331 BC), his favorable attitude towards the Jews helped to foster a large and strong Jewish community in the new city. * Alexander himself is the object of the vision of the ram and the goat in Daniel 8. Written not long before the fall of Babylon, this vision looked ahead to the time when Medo-Persia (the ram with two horns) would rule that part of the world, only then to be overthrown by Greece and Alexander (the goat with the prominent horn). When this happened, the Jews passed from Persian rule to Greek rule. Then, when Alexander died suddenly, his kingdom was divided up among his successors (verse 8). The Jews in Egypt became subject to the Ptolemy line, while the Jews in Palestine came under the rule of the Seleucids. The Egyptian Ptolemies continued Alexander's favorable treatment, and many Jews living in Egypt gladly adapted to Greek culture*. In the 3rd century BC, Ptolemy II Philadelphus asked the leaders of the Jewish community to translate the important Jewish writings into Greek, so that Greeks and Egyptians could study them. The king assembled a committee combining knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, though the details of these arrangements are now uncertain. * Jews who accepted much of the Greek culture and lifestyle were called Hellenistic (that is, Grecian) Jews. Other Jews, especially those who remained in their original homeland, resisted the influence of Greek culture. The different opinions on this subject led eventually to the formation of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and caused something of a division in the Jewish community as a whole. This division is reflected, for example, in the difficulties described in Acts 6:1. The name Septuagint comes from the Greek word for 70, since this panel contained 70 members (some sources say 72). The Septuagint is often referred to as "LXX" in references and footnotes. While the methods of translation were not always literal, they were very successful in making a readable version that soon became widely popular. It probably took quite some time for the entire Septuagint to be compiled and published*. The entire work was completed by about 100 BC, and most or all of it was probably completed well before that. The Greek translation of the Law is known to have been the first part completed, which should be no surprise. * There is an old legend that it was completed in 72 days, but this is fanciful, as are some of the other legends that later arose regarding the Septuagint and its production. The Septuagint is significant in establishing the antiquity of the Old Testament canon, but its usage in the early church is even more significant. While the Septuagint would later be replaced in the Jewish community by a different Greek edition, in the early church the Septuagint quickly became the standard version of the Old Testament. Many Scriptures show that the early Christians used it extensively in teaching the gospel of Jesus. (It is an interesting exercise to see how much about Jesus you could teach someone, using only the Old Testament.) New Testament quotes from the Septuagint version often differ from the same passage in the Old Testament itself, because of differences introduced by translation*. Many dozens of quotes in the New Testament are based on the Septuagint reading, rather than the original Hebrew**. Yet only on rare occasions do the different wordings actually introduce a possible different meaning. *There are also times when the New Testament writers quote from the Septuagint, and the quote agrees completely anyway, since in those cases the translation process did not introduce any variations. ** Here are a few examples to illustrate the kinds of differences that occur: Mark 4:12/Isaiah 6:9, Mark 7:6-7/Isaiah 29:13, Romans 3:4/Psalm 51:4, Romans 3:13a/Psalm 5:9b, Romans 3:14/Psalm 10:7. In these examples, and in the vast majority of other such examples, there are observable differences in the wording of these passages, but the meaning of the passage is exactly the same. 2 One such example, which caused controversy between the early church and the first century Jews, is Isaiah 7:14, which is quoted in Matthew 1:23 using the Septuagint reading of "virgin". The Hebrew word could mean either "virgin" or "young woman" depending on context, and English versions of the Old Testament vary in their choice in Isaiah, since either choice could be possible. But the Septuagint translators deliberately chose "virgin", and this was the reading quoted by Matthew, making it the only correct way to translate Matthew 1:23. The main point of this is to keep in mind that if you should encounter a passage in the New Testament that quotes the Old Testament in a way that differs somewhat from the original passage, it is most likely that this has occurred because the New Testament writer is quoting from the Septuagint. These are not, therefore, errors in any sense of the word, and in most cases the meaning is not changed in any significant way. Another interesting, if secondary, side-effect of the Septuagint was its influence on the order of the books of the Old Testament. Rather than following the then-standard arrangement of Law, Prophets, and Writings, they followed a somewhat different pattern, which established the arrangement of the Old Testament that we still use - with a few minor changes that have occurred along the way* - today. * For example, the books of Samuel and Kings were for a time called 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 3 Kings, and 4 Kings, or sometimes 1, 2, 3, and 4 Kingdoms. Also, as the translators proceeded with their work, they chose to translate into Greek not only the canonical books of Hebrew Scripture, but also some other works that were widely read, but not considered canonical or inspired.

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