Chris,

Some thoughts (re the portion of the Translators’ Preface, in post #71):

The translators said:

“...it pleased the Lord to stir up the spirit of a Greek Prince (Greek for descent and language) even of Ptolemy Philadelph King of Egypt, to procure the translating of the Book of God out of Hebrew into Greek. This is the translation of the Seventy Interpreters, commonly so called...”

The Lord’s providential preservation evidently did not extend to their knowledge of the history of the LXX, as it apparently was not known to them that Aristeas’ letter was not genuine, a matter now widely agreed upon.

...which [LXX] prepared the way for our Saviour among the Gentiles by written preaching, as Saint John Baptist did among the Jews by vocal.

Though it cannot be proven to have existed, nor do we have the text of it if it did, there may well have been a Greek copy of the Pentateuch, and possibly some of the prophets and the writings which were available to Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles. It is reasonable to assume that the early churches (apostolic, sub-apostolic) had some Old Testament Scriptures in the Greek language.

It has been stated by me above (quoting Dr. DiVietro) that the value of a pre-Christ or Christ-contemporary Septuagint was in its “marrying the vocabulary of Greece to the theology of Israel”, and for today’s use “The pseudo-Septuagint offers the modern Bible student a rich source of semi-Biblical, theological literature. Having this large homogenous yet diverse body of literature, the student can determine with relative accuracy the meaning of words he finds in the Greek New Testament.”

Could the apostles have used a Greek translation to help them quoting the OT while they wrote the NT Scriptures in Greek? While they did not quote it, they may well have considered how the OT Scriptures had been translated from the Hebrew into the Greek.

The original bone of contention between Tim and myself concerned Jesus supposedly quoting the LXX of Isaiah 6:9 & 10 when He spoke as recorded in Matthew 13:14 & 15, simply because the LXX and Matthew agree somewhat in wording, while the Hebrew does not agree so closely. The question I posed – which was treated with undeserved ridicule, and then evaded by irrelevant argumentation – was why would Jesus, the Messiah of the Hebrew people, when speaking to His disciples (and at other times the priests, Pharisees, and scribes) use Greek, when the primary spoken language of the nation was Aramaic, and the Scriptures of the nation were in Hebrew? Let me re-state what I said earlier, quoting Edersheim:

"If Greek was the language of the court and camp, and indeed must have been 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 that 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 Aramaen – and can we believe that, in a Hebrew service, the Messiah could have arisen to address the people in Greek, or that He could have argued with the Pharisees and Scribes in that tongue, especially remembering that its study was actually forbidden by the Rabbis?"

From The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Vol. 1, pp.129, 130; by Alfred Edersheim

[Taken from the thread, What language did Jesus & apostles read scriptures]

Might He have spoken Greek when in the Decapolis area, where many Gentiles lived, Gentiles who followed him, and whom He healed and fed? Possibly. What language did He speak to the Syrophenecian woman in (whom Mark in 7:26 tells us was a Greek)? That she addressed Him in Jewish terminology (“Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David...” Matt 15:22) would seem to indicate she was fluent in Aramaic, and knew something of Messianic prophecy. But as DiVietro pointed out concerning the Aramaic:

The Aramaic Talmuds which contained acceptable Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew text were considered authoritative commentaries, but not the word of God. The Palestinian Jewish community accepted only the Hebrew Scriptures. This was the community of Jesus and the Apostles.

I realize this may seem to be dancing around the question, but without a historical-grammatical understanding of the setting of Jesus in those days, we cannot hope to piece together with full comprehension what was going on. To say He quoted from the Greek translation to speak to His disciples is without warrant, first, because He had the Hebrew available (and ready in His mind, knowing the Scriptures by heart), and could have translated it into the Aramaic had He wished; second, because Matthew’s Gospel is known to be the Gospel to the Hebrews, that which took the greatest pains to prove the prophecy-fulfilling Messiahship of Jesus, and to show from the Scriptures that He was indeed the One who should come, of whom Moses and the prophets wrote – and Matthew, speaking to the nation of Jewish readers, should be quoting a Greek manuscript? The Translators in their Preface say, “It is certain, that that Translation was not so sound and so perfect, but that it needed in many places correction.... Notwithstanding, though it was commended generally, yet it did not fully content the learned, no not of the Jews”. It is not likely Matthew would do such a thing, quoting an imperfect Greek text when trying to convince the Jewish nation of the credentials of the Son of David. And thirdly, it is without warrant because we simply do not know what any early Greek translation of the Old Testament looked like. The one we have – the Septuagint extant today – came through Origen, around 230-40 AD.

Consider Origen for a moment, from whom we got the LXX, and the precursor of the Vaticanus manuscript; Origen says [translated from the Greek],

…these [the Scriptures] do not contain throughout a pure history of events, which are interwoven indeed according to the letter, but which did not actually occur. Nor even do the law and the commandments wholly convey what is agreeable to reason. For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? and that the first day was, is it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish [from the Latin it is translated: “And who is found so ignorant…”] as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, toward the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? and again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that any one doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.[1]

One of the grievous errors of Origen is his constant inclination to interpret Biblical events and stories figuratively, denying the literal histories (as did his intellectual fathers, Clement and Philo). He himself is, in fact, known as the father of the allegorical – or “spiritualizing” – method of interpretation. He is also known to “correct” Scriptures if he thinks the text is unclear or wrong. To wit: in his commentary on Matthew,[2] when dealing with chapter 19, verse 19, he says that the Lord’s words to the rich young ruler, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” cannot be genuine, as the text seems to indicate the Lord concurred with the man’s affirming he kept this command, and thus must have been perfect, while the Lord shows in verse 21 he was not, and what he needed to do to be so. Origen then concludes – because there is a difficulty for him here (but certainly solvable) – this clause was added by some tasteless scribe. Dr. Edward Hills remarks,

In his comment on this passage Origen gives us a specimen of the New Testament criticism which was carried on at Alexandria about 225 A.D….it is clear that this renowned Father was not content to abide by the text which he had received but freely engaged in the boldest sort of conjectural emendation. And there were other critics at Alexandria even less restrained than he who deleted many readings of the original New Testament text and thus produced the abbreviated text found in the papyri and in the manuscripts Aleph and B.[3]

In his book, Believing Bible Study (page 47), Hills says,

Among the Christian scribes of Alexandria developments took another turn. According to Streeter (1924), these learned Christians followed the tradition of Alexandrian classical scholarship, which was always to prefer the shortest reading in places in which the manuscripts differed. The Alexandrians were always ready to suspect and reject New Testament readings which seemed to them to present difficulties.

Here Origen talks of Scripture in general:

I do not condemn them (authors of Scripture) if they even sometimes dealt freely with things which to the eye of history happened differently, and changed them so as to subserve the mystical aims they had in view; so as to speak of a thing which happened in a certain place, as if it had happened in another, or if what took place at a certain time, as if it had taken place at another time, and to introduce into what was spoken in a certain way some changes of their own. They proposed to speak the truth where it was possible both materially and spiritually, and where this was not possible it was their intention to prefer the spiritual to the material. The spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in the material falsehood.[4] (Emphases by Wm. Grady)

This is what one might call “a low view of the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture”! And it does not give confidence that one of the “foremost textual critics and teachers of the early church” dealt honorably (as we who hold the Bible in high esteem would understand “honorably”) with the texts that came his way! Can this be where the change [noted earlier] in Genesis 2:2 originated in the LXX – as though Moses wrote there that on the sixth day God ended His work? Compare with your Bibles translated from the Hebrew!

Burgon comments on Origen’s view of Matthew 19:19:

Now all this is very instructive. Here is the most famous critic of antiquity estimating the genuineness of a clause in the Gospel, not by the amount of external attestation which it enjoys, but by his own self-evolved fancies concerning it. As a matter of fact, no extant copy, Father, or version is without the clause under discussion. By proposing therefore that it shall be regarded as spurious, Origen does but convict himself of rashness and incompetancy.[5]

This is instructive to us in the 21st century as well, for it is upon the very same principles of textual criticism that Westcott and Hort established their Revised Greek Text! Personal fancies instead of careful examination of facts, and accumulation of solid evidence. And it is no coincidence that Origen was a hero and an inspiration to these two men some 16 centuries later.

William Cunningham, in his two-volume Historical Theology, after considering some pros and cons regarding Origen’s contribution to the theology of the church, says,

It is certain, however, that Origen thought that the divine nature was united only with the soul, and not with the body of Christ; so that there was no proper hypostatical union, as it is commonly called,—no proper assumption by Christ of human nature. This groundless fantasy led to his maintenance of what may be regarded as a still more serious and dangerous error, viz., a virtual denial that Christ offered a real atonement for the sins of men. This, of course, overturns the Gospel of our salvation; and it is a melancholy instance of the extent to which an unwarrantable indulgence in mere philosophical speculations may lead men astray from the path of Scriptural truth.[6]

Footnotes

1 Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., (MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), page 365.
2 Origenes Werke, Vol. 10, 1937, pages 385-388; Die Griechischen Schriftsteller, Preussisch. Akademie der Wissenschaften. Cited in Believing Bible Study, pages 47, 48, and The King James Version Defended, pages 144, 145, both books by Edward F. Hills (IA: The Christian Research Press, 1977 and 1984 respectively)
3 The King James Version Defended, Hills, pages 144, 145.
4 The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 10, Original Supplement to the American Edition, 5th ed., by Allen Menzies (MI: Wm B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1990), page 383. Cited by William P. Grady, Final Authority: A Christian’s Guide to the King James Bible, page 94.
5 The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels, Vindicated and Established, by John William Burgon (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896), page 274.
6 Historical Theology: A review of the principle doctrinal discussions in the Christian church since the Apostolic Age, Vol. 1, by William Cunningham (Canada: Still Waters Revival Books, reprint edition 1991), pages 155, 156.

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Thank you for bearing with this brief excursus (some of which I got from a paper I had previously written), as I wanted to show something of the mind-set of the man through whose instrumentality we got the LXX which exists today.

The Preface Translators say that the “Translation of the Seventy” was used by the Greek Fathers as the ground and foundation of their commentaries, which is not a great recommendation in my view, as I live in a land which bears the bitter fruit of these “Fathers” and their commentaries. The commentaries, those that have spawned the GO religion, are unsound.

And what is the final verdict of the Translators of the King James Bible?

...the Seventy were Interpreters, they were not Prophets; they did many things well, as learned men; but yet as men they stumbled and fell, one while through oversight, another while through ignorance, yea, sometimes they may be noted to add to the Original, and sometimes to take from it; which made the Apostles to leave them many times, when they left the Hebrew, and to deliver the sense thereof according to the truth of the word, as the spirit gave them utterance. This may suffice touching the Greek Translations of the Old Testament. [Emphases added –SMR]

This last portion, “and to deliver the sense thereof, as the spirit gave them utterance,” may well indicate those OT quotations in the New, which are not “exact” as per the way we in this age quote, but the way the Lord Jesus quoted Isaiah 6 in the Matthew passage we have belabored, giving the sense of it, as the Holy Spirit gave Him utterance, and Paul in Hebrews, Luke in Acts, John in his Gospel, in the same manner, sometimes giving exact quotes, and sometimes not. The copycat Septuagint of Origen and Vaticanus has its value, but not as inspired Scripture, which the Lord and His men quoted from. Whatever Greek Old Testament may have existed in Jesus’ age and before, we can only surmise concerning.

From Dr. Thomas Holland’s Crowned With Glory: The Bible from Ancient Text to Authorized Version (p. 121); he says,

Chris, I hope this is an adequate response.

Steve

__________________
Steve Rafalsky
Elder, International Evangelical Church (Reformed)
Limassol, Cyprus

"I am set for the defense of the gospel" (Philippians 1:17)

"Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious
power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness..." (Colossians 1:11)