Serious discussion about the Greek Septuagint/LXX .

I wanted to ask you all what your opinions are regarding the authenticity of it and also the history of it. I've heard and read some pretty convincing arguments both for and against it. Any information would be greatly appreciated . Thanks.

not sure I understand your question...

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Originally Posted by alanmolstad

not sure I understand your question...

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Oh, I mean in the context of the whole Septuagint vs Masoretic Old Testament debate. Also I just want to know people's opinion of it in general.

as far as I know, Jesus had the LXX to use....

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Originally Posted by alanmolstad

as far as I know, Jesus had the LXX to use....

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Yeah, that's what I've heard also. I recently watched a video that talked about one of the church Fathers Justin Martyr writing to Trypho about some jewish scribes removing "From the Wood" from the 95th psalm because it was a prophecy about Christ reigning from the wood of the Cross. I don't know how true that is though. Who knows. I'm just barely starting to learn about this information.


This is the video I saw it on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7H6wJ43K_s

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Originally Posted by cheachea

Yeah, that's what I've heard also. I recently watched a video that talked about one of the church Fathers Justin Martyr writing to Trypho about some jewish scribes removing "From the Wood" from the 95th psalm because it was a prophecy about Christ reigning from the wood of the Cross. I don't know how true that is though. Who knows. I'm just barely starting to learn about this information.


This is the video I saw it on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7H6wJ43K_s

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Not looking at the video, the general issue is even larger. What language did Jesus and et al, his companions and disciples THINK and SPEAK in?

50 years ago the common idea was that the common lingo was Koine, and the subset among the Jewish population was Aramaic.

But the evidences from the Dead Sea Scrolls changed everything, along with the Bar Kokhba cave finds. Now some eminent Polish scholar says the main language around Judea was Mishnaic Hebrew. Milik.

This would change everything including the probability that the synagogues around Judea and even Galilee had the Mishaic Hebrew OT.

Just begun investigating this, but it is very interesting. The Ezra impetus was to change the ***yrian exiles who spoke Aramaic back to the mother tongue.

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Originally Posted by cheachea

I wanted to ask you all what your opinions are regarding the authenticity of it and also the history of it. I've heard and read some pretty convincing arguments both for and against it. Any information would be greatly appreciated . Thanks.

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Here, from the ISBE (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia) is more than you ever wanted to know about it, and it is a very reliable source, on par with Britannica, but for the Bible.

III. Traditional Origin.

The traditional account of the translation of the Pentateuch is contained in the so-called letter of Aristeas (editions of Greek text, P. Wendland, Teubner series, 1900, and Thackeray in the App. to Swete's Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, 1900, etc.; Wendland's sections cited below appear in Swete's Introduction, edition 2; English translation by Thackeray, Macmillan, 1904, reprinted from JQR, XV, 337, and by H. T. Andrews in Charles' Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, II, 83-122, Oxford, 1913).

I. Importance.

The Greek version of the Old Testament commonly known as the Septuagint holds a unique place among translations. Its importance is manysided. Its chief value lies in the fact that it is a version of a Hebrew text earlier by about a millennium than the earliest dated Hebrew m****cript extant (916 AD), a version, in particular, prior to the formal rabbinical revision of the Hebrew which took place early in the 2nd century AD. It supplies the materials for the reconstruction of an older form of the Hebrew than the M***oretic Text reproduced in our modern Bibles. It is, moreover, a pioneering work; there was probably no precedent in the world's history for a series of translations from one language into another on so extensive a scale. It was the first attempt to reproduce the Hebrew Scriptures in another tongue. It is one of the outstanding results of the breaking-down of international barriers by the conquests of Alexander the Great and the dissemination of the Greek language, which were fraught with such vital consequences for the history of religion.

The cosmopolitan city which he founded in the Delta witnessed the first attempt to bridge the gulf between Jewish and Greek thought. The Jewish commercial settlers at Alexandria, forced by circumstances to abandon their language, clung tenaciously to their faith; and the translation of the Scriptures into their adopted language, produced to meet their own needs, had the further result of introducing the outside world to a knowledge of their history and religion. Then came the most momentous event in its history, the starting-point of a new life; the translation was taken over from the Jews by the Christian church. It was the Bible of most writers of the New Testament.

Not only are the majority of their express citations from Scripture borrowed from it, but their writings contain numerous reminiscences of its language. Its words are household words to them. It laid for them the foundations of a new religious terminology. It was a potent weapon for missionary work, and, when versions of the Scriptures into other languages became necessary, it was in most cases the Septuagint and not the Hebrew from which they were made. Preeminent among these daughter versions was the Old Latin which preceded the Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.), for the most part a direct translation from the Hebrew, was in portions a mere revision of the Old Latin; our Prayer-book version of the Psalter preserves peculiarities of the Septuagint, transmitted through the medium of the Old Latin.

The Septuagint was also the Bible of the early Greek Fathers, and helped to mold dogma; it furnished proof-texts to both parties in the Arian controversy. Its language gives it another strong claim to recognition. Uncouth and uncl***ical as much of it appears, we now know that this is not wholly due to the hampering effects of translation. "Biblical Greek," once considered a distinct species, is now a rather discredited term. The hundreds of contemporary papyrus records (letters, business and legal documents, etc.) recently discovered in Egypt illustrate much of the vocabulary and grammar and go to show that many so-called "Hebraisms" were in truth integral parts of the koine, or "common language," i.e. the international form of Greek which, since the time of Alexander, replaced the old dialects, and of which the spoken Greek of today is the lineal descendant. The version was made for the populace and written in large measure in the language of their everyday life.


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