The Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old
Testament produced in Intertestamental Egypt by Jewish scribes is frequently
cited by New Testament authors and their use of it has generated a great deal
of controversy and even confusion... even today.
It is not exclusively used when citing the Old Testament, but
its use at times seems to dominate. The problem is the Septuagint doesn't
always match the actual Hebrew Old Testament. Sometimes the Jewish translators
seem to employ a fairly loose or dynamic principle of translation... something
most conservatives of our day would be rather uncomfortable with.
In other cases they obviously had a slightly different take
of the Jewish wording and diction. If you know anything about Hebrew you'll
know that there are sometimes various possibilities in how something is
translated. As with all languages context is not only important but critical in
getting it right.
So what do we make of the Septuagint? Given that the Apostles
used it extensively, how should we? The Greek Orthodox Church goes so far as to
simply use the Septuagint for their Old Testament. The fact that it's written
in Greek makes their position somewhat understandable... though of course the
Koine Greek of Scripture is no longer a vernacular language. The Orthodox still
utilise it in their liturgy which is convenient, as a translation would not be
required when they use Old Testament texts.
But outside the Orthodox world some form of the Hebrew text
is used as a basis for vernacular translation. The Masoretic Text is used by
most Jews, Protestants and even Roman Catholics in the modern era. For centuries
the latter reckoned the Latin Vulgate as authoritative and relied on its
translation of both the Old and New Testaments.
So no one apart from the Greeks uses the Septuagint as
authoritative but then everyone must wrestle with the fact that the
authoritative New Testament seems to rely on it (the Septuagint) for many of
its Old Testament citations.
Is this a problem?
Not in the least, but something has to be made very clear.
Apart from this point I'm about to make, then yes, a good many problems are
likely to ensue.
The 'something' I reference is the principle of Apostolic
Authority. This refers to the fact that the Apostles establish the canon and
the doctrine (authoritative teaching) for the Church. The Apostles provide an
authoritative commentary on the Old Testament. By Apostles I naturally include
the Gospels written by them, which also provide a historical record of the
source of their authority, the Messiah or Christ Jesus.
In other words the New Testament needs to be understood as
Apostolic and it is the canon for the Church. This next statement will confuse
and upset some but it has to be understood rightly.
The Old Testament is not the canon of the Church. It is quite
literally the Old Covenant and has been abrogated. That's what the New
Testament teaches though such a notion will upset some, especially those who
rely so heavily on Old Testament forms for their contemporary liturgical, social
and cultural agendas.
But abrogation doesn't fully cover or comprehend our relation
to the Old Testament. It has been fulfilled
and on that basis it is abrogated.
The New Testament doesn't come along and simply cancel out or negate the Old.
Rather the Old is fulfilled and is now obsolete... no longer needed. It has
been superseded by the New which is
presented as being much better. We need not address all the reasons here. The
book of Hebrews is a great place to start as it deals extensively with this
topic.
The fact that it's no longer needed does not mean it is of no
value. Rather it is of tremendous value... when understood properly. What does
that mean? Its value comes only when
understood in light of Christ, His person, His work and the doctrine regarding
these things given to us by the Apostles. Only then can we rightly understand
the Old Testament.
We do not go to the Old Testament, establish principles and
insist on imposing them on the New Testament. We do not locate promises and
prophecies in the Old Testament and insist they are not yet fulfilled or that
they find some fulfillment outside of
Christ. This is a common practice and represents a very grave error. On a
practical level it represents a rejection of Apostolic Authority. No, the
Apostles tell us how to read the Old Testament and they overwhelming teach what
can be called a Christocentric doctrine or hermeneutic. Christ is the focus of
the entire Old Testament and all the promises are fulfilled in Him. He said as
much in John 5. Or to put it another way as Paul does in 2 Corinthians 1, all the promises are yes and amen, affirmed and confirmed in Jesus.
Most Evangelicals today actually reject what Paul and the other
Apostles teach and insist there are literally scores of prophecies yet to be
fulfilled concerning the Jews and the land of Israel. They are guilty of a
Judaized reading of the New Testament and they are guilty of rejecting the
authority of the Apostles and the Christocentric doctrine they and Christ
Himself taught.
The Septuagint need not be reckoned the authoritative reading of the Old Testament. Basically the
Apostles took the Old Testament and used (under inspiration) whatever verses
they deemed best to express the point they were trying to make. It seemingly
was a convenient Greek translation that could be easily employed while writing
the Gospels and Epistles... also in Greek. Their use of it does not in any way
endorse the scribal practices, methods or outlook of the Alexandrian diaspora.*
This next statement could also be misunderstood.
In a manner of speaking, it
doesn't really matter which translation of the Old Testament the Apostles
used. Verily there is an inspired text of the Old Testament but once Christ
came it was fulfilled and became obsolete. We are right to have the Old
Testament in the same binding as the New. Indeed it is truly a Holy Bible, a
collection of Holy Writings, of Sacred Scripture.
But again for Christians the Old Testament is only valid and
of use in light of the New Testament and
what the Apostles teach regarding it. Apart from Christ, it is as Paul
calls it, a ministration of death.
This is so very important to understand. Only then can we
grasp that the Apostles weren't treating Scripture in a flippant or loose
manner. Far from it. It's just that their purposes and use of the Old Testament
were a bit different than how a Christian preacher will use it when preaching
from the Pentateuch or the Prophets.
And rightly so. But that preacher had better teach the Old in
light of what the New says about it. The Old Testament cannot be treated in
isolation. Or at least if the treatment is to be reckoned 'Christian' it must
be read and interpreted in light of the New Testament. This flies in the face
of modern academic methodologies and will even offend some people, but it is
doctrinally necessary.
Can we follow the Apostle's methodology in utilising and
quoting the Old Testament?
This is where things get a bit tricky. In terms of principles,
hermeneutics and questions of interpretation, then yes, we follow the Apostles
and very closely. If we hold fast to the Christocentric foundation they
establish we should be able to avoid many troubles in how we read the Old
Testament.
That said, it would be improper to loosely quote an Old
Testament passage in order to make what could be described as an
extra-Scriptural point. Some may think that's what the Apostles were doing but
it's not. At least the New Testament makes it clear as to what it is the
Apostles were doing. Some teachers in our own day might do this (loosely quote
and apply the Old Testament) thinking they are emulating an Apostolic method or
practice but in reality they are not. In fact what they're doing is quite
dangerous in terms of doctrine.
If the point or comparison can be made using the standard Old
Testament text, then fine. If we encounter Old Testament texts that are used by
the New Testament, even if the Apostles (in that instance) used the Septuagint,
then it's valid for us to do the same. At that point we're not building on a
Septuagint reading of the Old Testament but rather the doctrine of the
Apostles.
What I'm essentially trying to say is... where the Apostles
specifically do it, we can echo them. Where they don't we better stick with
what is safe and not get carried away in teasing out analogies, let alone
doctrine. If we're basing our developments on a Septuagint reading that somehow
seems to be contrary to the Masoretic Text, I would say that's out of bounds.
That's an authority only the Apostles possessed.
Once we start treating the text as something fluid and
malleable we are on the road to doctrinal subjectivity. The Apostolic use of
the Septuagint does not sanction either:
1. Textual Fluidity or,
2. A Dynamic Equivalence principle of translation
Again, the Apostles were permitted (and inspired) to use the
Old Testament text as they saw fit and deemed appropriate. The Old Testament is
a different sort of document than the New, written over a much broader context
and based on a covenant that was of a somewhat different nature. It was more
extensive in its overall scope and as the New Testament teaches it was (on one
level) faulty and deficient. This is not to in
any way denigrate the Old Testament but rather it is meant to emphasize and elevate the superiority and
glory of the New.
The aforementioned erroneous tendencies with regard to the
Septuagint have been embraced by many Evangelicals and perhaps the reader will
begin to grasp that this all too easily can become a point of origin for a
drift into the realm of subjectivism, the questioning of the authority of the
text itself and eventually a defection into theological liberalism.
While in many ways it is a separate issue but the same kinds
of attitudes with regard to the New Testament text itself, its origins and
preservation lead to a subjectification of the text's authority.
These arguments can be made on the basis of Apostolic use of
the Septuagint and it's not too difficult to see why some people fall into this
mistaken understanding. Unless the authority of the Apostles is grasped and
applied to one's understanding of the New Testament, then such
misunderstandings are not only possible but become almost inevitable.
At the end of the day, the Bible from start to finish must be
embraced by way of faith. It is a supernatural document. They are verily Sacred and Holy writings. For us, on
this side of the cross our grounding in Scripture is rooted in faith in Christ.
We don't believe the Old Testament because of scientific data regarding the
flood, the fossil record or appeals to archaeology and the like. We primarily believe it because Christ
Himself ratified it and yet His authority to do so fulfilled it and ultimately
changed the Covenant order. We accept the Apostles because they are Apostles. If we understand what an
Apostle is (and is not) then we grasp that they spoke under Divine Authority
and Inspiration. For the Church it is the New Covenant that is paramount. It is
our canon and the final canon.
This is why the Apostles can quote the Septuagint and it need
not trouble us. They can quote pagan authors and apocryphal works and it
presents no problem. There are no lost books of the Bible.** The principles
behind the Septuagint and Alexandrian Jewry are not necessarily endorsed, nor
are the thoughts and views of Epimenides and Aratus who are quoted by Paul in
Acts and Titus.
The Apostolic use of the Septuagint is not a model for
Biblical interpretation. Their Christocentric development of the Old Testament
is the primary example for us in how to read and interpret the now obsolete
Jewish Scriptures. But finally and fundamentally it is the New Testament which (for
us) is the arbiter of all Biblical questions.
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*One finds a great deal of confusion on this point and some
erroneously believe that some of the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled by
the counterfeit temples built at Leontopolis and Elephantine. I say counterfeit
because not only were they not a
fulfillment of prophecy their very construction was a heretical deviation
from Old Testament Judaism and a challenge to the God ordained Altar
established at Jerusalem. Doctrinally speaking the Jewish Temples of
Leontopolis and Elephantine were akin to Jeroboam's shrines at Dan and Bethel
or even the Samaritan shrine on Gerizim.
**The use of 1 Enoch by Jude and Peter presents another set of
interesting questions. It is not a canonical work and is not missing from the
Bible as some have suggested. And yet its use is of particular interest. It's
not quoted incidentally to make a point. Rather its content or to put it
another way its cosmology is appealed to and thus to some degree the Apostles
seem to grant its outlook a certain validity. They can do this without giving
the book a complete endorsement. The work represents a degree of truth, or we
could even say they viewed it as a 'true' work and yet for whatever reason it
was not Providentially chosen to be part of the canon. Perhaps the text was Providentially
corrupted? Perhaps the text contains some errors. That might not matter. We
need not exegete the book or treat it as infallible to nevertheless grasp its
basic teaching and outlook... one both Peter and Jude clearly endorse.
Along this same vein, it's interesting and instructive to
note how various terms regarding angels, fallen angels, demons and other
creatures are used in Old Testament Hebrew and then how these are translated in
the Septuagint. This ties in with what might be described as the Spiritual
Cosmology or Angelic worldview presented in Enoch and echoed in the
aforementioned catholic (or general) Epistles. The New Testament seems to
'smooth out' these labels and many terms that are distinguished in Hebrew are
simply categorised as demonic in the
New Testament. It's a fascinating study.