Concerning the Septuagint and Jesus and the apostles allegedly quoting from it rather than the Hebrew Scripture. This is an intricate and nuanced subject, yet rife with misinformation—a veritable “urban legend” right here in our field of Biblical studies!
It is often said that the NT writers, as well as the Lord, quoted the LXX. A thread here on PB, “Psalm 14:3 in LXX” made that statement with respect to Psalm 14:3 and Romans 3:12-18. I append the url to the thread:
Psalm 14:3 in LXX
I respond in post #5 of that thread showing
the LXX copied Romans and not the other way around! This common misunderstanding ought to be set straight.
Consider: did the Lord Jesus speak Greek during His ministry? Edersheim remarks concerning the bi-ethnic character of Roman-occupied and somewhat Hellenized Palestine, specifically Jerusalem:
If Greek was the language of the court and camp, and indeed must have been understood and spoken by most in the land, the language of the people, spoken also by Christ and His Apostles, was a dialect of the ancient Hebrew, the Western or Palestinian Aramaic. It seems strange this could ever have been doubted. A Jewish Messiah Who would urge His claim upon Israel in Greek, seems almost a contradiction in terms. We know that the language of the Temple and the Synagogue was Hebrew, and that the addresses of the Rabbis had to be ‘targumed’ into the vernacular Aramæan—and can we believe that, in a Hebrew service, the Messiah could have risen to address the people in Greek, or that He would have argued with the Pharisees and Scribes in that tongue, especially remembering that its study was actually forbidden by the Rabbis? ((The Life And Times Of Jesus The Messiah, by Alfred Edersheim; Mac Donald Publishing, n.d.), pp. 129, 130.
Another point: there are no
extant copies of a Greek Old Testament prior to the time of Christ and the apostles, save one papyrus fragment containing part of Deuteronomy 31:28-32:7, the Papyrus Frouad 266, Cairo – 2nd or 1st century B.C. (
The Septuagint: A Critical Analysis, by Floyd Nolen Jones; p. 9). The most important uncial manuscripts containing large portions of the Greek OT are Codices Vaticanus 350 A.D., Sinaiticus 350 A.D., and Alexandrinus 450 A.D. These were likely copied from Origen’s
Hexapla (his Old Testament Polyglot – a book that contains the same text in more than one language). The import of this is, the Septuagint “quotes” supposedly found in the NT were actually taken from the NT and put into the LXX.
For those interested in a clear, concise, but detailed study of this I give the url to a complete pdf version of Dr. Floyd Jones’ classic work cited in the previous paragraph:
http://www.floydjones.org/LXX.pdf
And then there are three articles on the same topic by Will Kinney (the links to the second two articles at the end of the first):
http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/t...tuagint_-1.htm
Jones’ book may also be obtained in hard copy from The Bible For Today Ministries:
http://www.biblefortoday.org/search.asp, item #2161. Another book from BFT is Kirk DiVietro’s
Did Jesus and the Apostles Quote from the Septuagint (LXX)?, item #2707. This work examines the alleged primary “LXX quotes” in John, Acts, and Hebrews.
I’m Presbyterian/Reformed (passionately so), not a Fundamentalist Baptist, but I have to give credit to these FBs for some of the best scholarship in the field of text criticism. The stereotype that these folks are hillbilly ranting ignoramuses is a lie. Yes, they are my opponents as concerns the doctrines of grace, but that battle is secondary to the one over the Scriptures, where we stand together.
Steve