06 October 2017

The New Testament and the Septuagint

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.