For All Things, a Time

In this final episode of the Septuagint (LXX) series, we discuss what needs to be done to produce a proper translation of the LXX in English. This a technical episode, but a vital one. There should exist in every language spoken by a Christian nation a definitive version of the Scriptures in that language, and in this episode we provide the structure and the mechanics by which that can be achieved.

This episode is our closing argument for the Septuagint (LXX) and its proper place as the Word of God — the Scripture of the Early Church, the Apostles, and Christ Himself. Once you have finished this episode, you will need to decide for yourself if you believe the argument as presented or if you intend to double down on the ‘Hebrew’ the rabbis smuggled into the churches. The question is one of fidelity to God and to His Word, and it is a question that will split the churches, that will sift the wheat from the chaff.

In this episode and the next, we cover the places where the New Testament cites the Old Testament and there is a difference between the Septuagint (LXX) and the rabbinic text. In this first (of two) episodes, we cover citations from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts; in the next episode, we will cover Romans through Revelation. By the sheer weight of the evidence, it will become undeniable that the New Testament authors were reading and citing the Septuagint — not some supposed ‘Hebrew’ edition (that, in fact, no longer existed at the time of the composition of the New Testament).

The rabbis made a number of different kinds of edits to their version of what some call ‘Scripture’ (i.e., the Rabbinic or Masoretic Text). In some places, they fiddled with numbers, in some they changed names, and in still others they deleted entire sections of the text. In this final episode of the Old Testament portion of the Septuagint series, we examine the changes the rabbis made to the timelines (particularly the genealogies), the Book of Job, the Book of Esther, and a few other miscellaneous matters.

As between the Septuagint (LXX) and the rabbinic text (MT), there are significant differences in the books that comprise the wisdom literature (i.e., Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon). These differences range from changes in diction through distortions and corruptions to outright additions and deletions (one should think of the warning in the Book of Revelation). Out treatment here is not (and is not intended to be) comprehensive — there are centuries of work ahead of the Church; rather, we intend to drive home the point that the only Christian reaction is to abandon and anathematize the ‘Hebrew’ passed to us by the rabbis in favor of the Greek passed to us by Christ, the Apostles, and our faithful forebears — and, most importantly of all, preserved by God, as He promised.