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Shaolen
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Can anyone give evidence that Jesus and the apostles used this old testament? I’ve heard that the NT quotes the Septuagint. Can someone show this? Also I heard that the NT references 2 macabees
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Gorgias
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catholic.com/quickquestions/in-which-passages-does-jesus-quote-the-septuagint-and-where-does-the-new-testament-al
(The link at the bottom of the article seems to be dead, though…)
(The link at the bottom of the article seems to be dead, though…)
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Shaolen
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Thanks again Gorgias! And the link worked on my end ������
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Gorgias
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You were able to get to the link at the bottom of the article (www.cin.org/users/james/files/deutero3.htm) ? Hmmm…
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Shaolen
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Yep. Not sure what would cause it not to work but it did. Really huge list
No, because it’s unlikely. Making the assertion that Jesus and the Apostles used the LXX is poor apologetics. Jesus and the apostles were Palestinian Jews, not Hellenistic Jews, and it is only reasonable that they used the Hebrew in the Palestinian synagogues and in the Temple.
What IS true is that the NT authors (some of whom of course were apostles) quoted the LXX. Which makes sense, because the NT is written in Greek, so naturally they would quote from what would be the most popular Greek edition of the OT of the day. A key example of an LXX quote is Matthew 1:23, quoting Isaiah 7:14. Even if a quote spoken by Jesus himself is rendered by the Gospels from the LXX, that itself is not proof that Jesus himself spoke the Greek. He would merely have been speaking the Hebrew, and then when the time came for the evangelist to put it into writing, he simply quoted the equivalent passage from the LXX.
The NT does not directly cite or quote any Deuterocanonical books, including Maccabees. It does reference the feast of Hannukah, which originated during the Maccabean period, but that is not the same as a citation or quotation.
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Gorgias
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Except that it’s similarly reasonable that they spoke Koine Greek.
Yet, this is sufficient for the argument at hand. If Scripture is divinely inspired, and the (undisputed) canonical books of the NT cite the LXX, then that makes a sufficient claim that the LXX appears as inspired Scripture. The argument doesn’t have to be “Jesus used it”, but rather, “inspired writers of Scripture used it.”
That’s one interpretative stance. Do we take as our standard, then, that a book of Scripture must be “directly cited or quoted” by another book in order for it to be considered canonical? Or, is it sufficient that there are references in canonical Scripture back to a particular book? Take a look at the list credited to Jimmy Akin that’s cited in the Catholic Answers page I referenced. (Yes, the link finally worked for me.) There, in that list, are assertions of many deuterocanonical references in the NT.
One, for example, is the following:
Hebrews 11:35 - “Women received back their dead through resurrection. Some were tortured and would not accept deliverance, in order to obtain a better resurrection.”
See 2 Maccabees 7 for the description of the events mentioned in the quote from Hebrews.
Possible they would have had some conversational knowledge, but highly unlikely they used it in Synagogue.
This would not prove the LXX as inspired Scripture in itself, but rather the passage would be inspired insofar as it is part of the New Testament text, i.e. the sacred author was inspired to quote the LXX in the NT.
Whether or not a book is quoted, cited or alluded to in the NT is not proof or disproof of inspiration. A book need not be directly cited, quoted, or even alluded to for it to meet the criteria for canonicity. Otherwise, Esther, Obadiah, Nahum, to name a few would be considered noncanonical, but we know this not to be the case. The “reference test” or “citation test” is not a valid one for either proof or disproof and is not one of the determinants for canonicity.
It’s a parallel. It’s not a quote. It does not prove 2 Maccabees’ canonicity and neither does it disprove it.
Anti-Catholics make a mistake when they argue that the Deuterocanonicals are not canonical because they are not cited in the NT (because the “quote test” is not a valid one, otherwise, they have to drop Esther).
We make the same mistake when we answer with Deuterocanonical allusions in the NT (same reason, the “quote test” is not valid because St. Paul (via St. Luke) quotes pagan writers, which does not canonize their writings).
The Deuterocanonicals (and indeed all the books of Scripture) are canonical for one summarized reason alone: because the Church said so.
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Shaolen
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I fairness I didn’t state that it quotes 2 Maccabees but it References it. I’m literally just starting Gary Michuta’s book “the Case for the Deuterocanon: Evidence and Arguments” and his first chapter addresses Heb 11:35’s reference to 2 maccabees and your objection. From his book:
Argument: Hebrews 11 presents examples of men and women who lived out their supernatural faith in Sacred scripture. Included among these are people of faith are the Maccabean martyrs, as described in the deuterocanonical book of Second Maccabees. Therefore, the inspired author’s Bible included the book Second Maccabees, which he considered to be an authentic member of sacred scripture.
Gary Michuta responds to your objection of it not proving its canonicity and NT authors quoting other non-canonical writings with this. From his book:
Reply to Objection #1: The point is not that Hebrews 11 uses only biblical [sources], but that is uses only biblical [characters]. Even if Hebrews 11:37 did take its information from “ascension of isaiah” to describe the death of the profit Isaiah (I know this wasn’t your specific argument but its similar), which is certainly disputable, the fact remains that Isaiah is a biblical [character]. The introduction of non-biblical [characters] that are nowhere attested to in scripture would cause, in the context of Hebrews 11, a rather sharp and unwarrented disjuncture from the rest of the text and be in contradiction to its earlier claim that those listed were “attested to”
Sorry, but Gary’s argument is a stretch. The whole “it’s quoted/referenced/whatever therefore it’s canonical” is tenuous at best. Trying to frame it to within just Hebrews and limiting its content to Biblical characters doesn’t really form a logical, coherent argument. What applies to the rest of the New Testament must apply to Hebrews as well.
But, yes, it’s NOT a disputed point that the inspired author’s Bible included 2 Maccabees. It did, there is no doubt about that. That in itself, however, is not proof of canonicity either.
It is an argument in favour of, yes. But it is not proof.
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Erich
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From this link:
Of the approximately 300 Old Testament quotes in the New Testament, approximately 2/3 of them came from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) which included the deuterocanonical books that the Protestants later removed. This is additional evidence that Jesus and the apostles viewed the deuterocanonical books as part of canon of the Old Testament. Here are some examples:
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Erich
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This link lists scores of places where the deuterocanonical books are cited/quoted in the New Testament.
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Gorgias
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The question isn’t simply whether they used Greek in the synagogue. It’s whether they used the LXX.
Your point about Luke quoting pagan sources is well taken. However, what you’re saying is that, in places in which the inspired writer wants to reference Scripture, he’d defer from using his canonical Scripture, and would instead use non-canonical Scripture? That’s absurd.
Quite right. However, when Scripture cites, quotes, and alludes to other Scripture, the manuscript it references as Scripture is highly relevant.
You’re mischaracterizing the ‘quote test’ here, as I asserted above. The question has to do with quotes from canonical Scripture, not with the use of quotations per se.
Yep.
But, a person who does not hold to the authority of the Church has to answer some very difficult questions when faced with references to Scriptural text from the deuterocanon.
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Erich
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In Acts 17, St. Paul quotes Epimenides of Knossos (6th century B.C.) and Aratus of Soli (3rd century B.C.), yet these quoted works are not canonical.
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BartholomewB
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I have read that in some of the Dead Sea scrolls there are passages where the Hebrew text is closer to the Septuagint than to the later Masoretic text. Couldn’t this be an indication that the Hebrew scriptures known to Jesus and the apostles were also still quite close to the Septuagint?
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Erich
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Given the degree to which the New Testament writers quoted from the Septuagint, evincing their approval of it, by definition they must have accepted the Deuterocanonical books (which are only “deuterocanonical” because they are in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Masoretic text).
That said, there were bits and pieces of 6 of the 7 Deuterocanonicals, written in Hebrew, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. And, from this link,
Also interesting: Sirach was read and copied by the Jews even after 90 AD, and it was recorded by Tosephta in Yadaim that it was a book that “did not soil the hands,” indicating reverence for it.
Esther was not in the Qumran collection, but deuterocanonical books as well as Apocryphal books (like Enoch, Jubilees, etc.) were also found, more evidence that the the “Jewish canon” was not a fixed collection at this time. Baruch 6 and Sirach manuscripts were also found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Yes, we know that, and I have no doubt that the Deuterocanonicals were accepted from Apostolic times.
I’m criticizing only the common arguments Catholics try to use, as well as the common objections the Protestants use.
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Gorgias
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You’re missing the point.
Let’s suppose I’m an inspired writer of Scripture. In my book, when quoting some non-Scriptural author or source, it is simply a reference that’s helpful to the narrative at hand. However, when in Scripture I reference other Scripture itself, I’m making a statement about the Scripture I’m referencing. That is, my use of a Scriptural source means that I’m asserting that this Scriptural source is, in fact, Scripture! Therefore, if the preponderance of Scriptural references are from the LXX, then I’m saying that the LXX is Scripture. Similarly, if I reference the deuterocanon as Scripture, then I’m saying that the deuterocanon is Scripture!
(The only way to refute this argument is to assert that the references of the deuterocanon aren’t attempts to reference Scripture. The quantity of references, though, hurt that line of thought. Yes, there are a handful of non-Scripture references in Scripture; but if there are multiple references to the deuterocanon, it’s difficult to assert that these are just random references that aren’t supposed to be Scriptural references.)
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patrick457
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I should just add: the ‘Septuagint’ as we know it today is really a Christian construct. In fact, the term is so vague that it could literally have different meanings depending on the context and/or the speaker.
Part of the confusion about the term ‘Septuagint’ lies in the early Christian usage of the term. (I should note that the term itself is a Christian invention.)
The earliest Greek translation of any OT book was that of the Torah, made around the 3rd century BC. A legend (mostly fictional, but with bits of fact in it) from the 2nd century BC claims that this translation was made by seventy-two (sometimes rounded into seventy) Jewish scholars for the Greek king of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (reigned 285-246 BC). This very famous legend was repeated as fact by later generations of Jews and Christians. However, by the time it got into Christian hands, the legend became distorted a little bit: early Christians tended to consider those translations of OT books they encountered and commonly used to be also the ‘version of the seventy’ (versio septuaginta in Latin), although the original legend was about the Greek Torah only. This explains why nowadays, ‘Septuagint’ is used interchangeably with ‘Greek Old Testament’.
So strictly speaking, what the term ‘Septuagint’ means could either be (1) the 3rd century BC Greek Torah (as per the original form of the legend), with the earliest Greek versions of other OT books (3rd-1st century BC) being called “Old Greek” (OG); or (2) in a more looser way, as a catch-all reference to these earliest available Greek translations of Jewish (scriptural) books as a whole, or even (3) Scriptural books in Greek that were available to and read by the early Christians, regardless of whether they were the oldest translations made of said books or not. Nowadays the more common sense in popular usage is somewhere midway between (2) and (3), with more emphasis on (3).
The problem with the common shorthand use of ‘Septuagint’ to refer to the Greek OT (“The evangelists/Paul quoted the Septuagint,” etc.), however, is that using it gives an inaccurate image in people’s heads. One might imagine ‘Septuagint’ here being used in the same way as, say, the terms ‘King James Version’ or ‘RSV’. In other words, it could give the image of (1) an already-established canon of OT books, and (2) that this established canon was already in scroll form (i.e. all the inspired works are contained in a single scroll or codex, like in our modern Bibles).
First off, the books that make up what we usually call the ‘Septuagint’ were not translated as a set. These books were originally independent translations that were made by different people at different times. In fact, AFAIK it’s rather unlikely that the collection of these books we’re familiar with already existed before Christianity arose. It was really the early Christians who gathered together these different independent Greek translations into a single collection.
Part of the confusion about the term ‘Septuagint’ lies in the early Christian usage of the term. (I should note that the term itself is a Christian invention.)
The earliest Greek translation of any OT book was that of the Torah, made around the 3rd century BC. A legend (mostly fictional, but with bits of fact in it) from the 2nd century BC claims that this translation was made by seventy-two (sometimes rounded into seventy) Jewish scholars for the Greek king of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (reigned 285-246 BC). This very famous legend was repeated as fact by later generations of Jews and Christians. However, by the time it got into Christian hands, the legend became distorted a little bit: early Christians tended to consider those translations of OT books they encountered and commonly used to be also the ‘version of the seventy’ (versio septuaginta in Latin), although the original legend was about the Greek Torah only. This explains why nowadays, ‘Septuagint’ is used interchangeably with ‘Greek Old Testament’.
So strictly speaking, what the term ‘Septuagint’ means could either be (1) the 3rd century BC Greek Torah (as per the original form of the legend), with the earliest Greek versions of other OT books (3rd-1st century BC) being called “Old Greek” (OG); or (2) in a more looser way, as a catch-all reference to these earliest available Greek translations of Jewish (scriptural) books as a whole, or even (3) Scriptural books in Greek that were available to and read by the early Christians, regardless of whether they were the oldest translations made of said books or not. Nowadays the more common sense in popular usage is somewhere midway between (2) and (3), with more emphasis on (3).
The problem with the common shorthand use of ‘Septuagint’ to refer to the Greek OT (“The evangelists/Paul quoted the Septuagint,” etc.), however, is that using it gives an inaccurate image in people’s heads. One might imagine ‘Septuagint’ here being used in the same way as, say, the terms ‘King James Version’ or ‘RSV’. In other words, it could give the image of (1) an already-established canon of OT books, and (2) that this established canon was already in scroll form (i.e. all the inspired works are contained in a single scroll or codex, like in our modern Bibles).
First off, the books that make up what we usually call the ‘Septuagint’ were not translated as a set. These books were originally independent translations that were made by different people at different times. In fact, AFAIK it’s rather unlikely that the collection of these books we’re familiar with already existed before Christianity arose. It was really the early Christians who gathered together these different independent Greek translations into a single collection.
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