Purify Your Bride

For example, in Mark 7:6-8 we have Jesus quoting Isaiah. But He is quoting the version of Isaiah that is found only in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. So what do you do with that? Jesus and the pharisees are obviously aware of the LXX and nobody argues it is not the word of God. Some of the other quotes from the LXX have parallels in the Hebrew text and one might suggest Jesus quoted the Hebrew version and the gospel writer replaced it with the LXX version. This one does not allow that. Jesus Himself must have been quoting the LXX.

Why is this a big deal? The two are mostly just a translation from one language to another but there are some differences. There are 7 books found in the LXX that are not found in the Hebrew bible. Those 7 books contain some passages the reformers don’t like. So they rejected them and said only the Hebrew bible is inspired.

Now it is important to note that many reformers admitted they rejected these books for doctrinal reasons. Protestants today understand that this is very circular. Doctrine comes from scripture but then scripture comes from doctrine as well. So they argue that the only reason they were rejected is because the Hebrew books were older and they were the common scriptures in Palestine during the first century. That just flies in the face of what the reformers actually said. For them, it was about doctrine and they were the ones who did the deed. They can make up better motives later but we need to be aware that that is what they are doing.

The other thing that we need to understand is that the translation process was something that had the hand of God on it. This makes sense. Greek is going to be the language of the world during the time of Jesus and the early church. God paves the way for this by providing a Greek scripture that has His own seal of approval. The details of the translation process are not that important but it is important that it was seen as supernatural by the Jews. They did not view the LXX as a human translation of the Hebrew word of God. They viewed it as an inspired translation. There is nothing in the New Testament to indicate Jesus or the apostles denied this.

In fact, quite the opposite is true. The LXX was considered a document that pointed to Jesus quite strongly. It was for that reason they began to doubt it. The virgin birth was one doctrine that was taught more explicitly in the LXX than it was in the Hebrew scriptures. So as Christianity grew the Jews became more and more critical of the LXX. It was doing what God intended it to do. It was making Greek speakers into Christians.

Now St Jerome did spend a lot of time with the Jews when he translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin. He ended up accepting many of the negative things the Jews were saying about the LXX. He rejected the supernatural account of its origin and the inspiration of the books that were not in the Hebrew version. He was very well respected as a bible scholar and translator. Still his objections did not get much traction. The question was never even brought before an ecumenical council until Trent.