Proof Jesus and apostles used the Septuagint and deuterocanon

[patrick457]

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?

From David H. Lim’s The Dead Sea Scrolls (part of Oxford University Press’ Very Short Introductions series):

‘Text-type’ is an important concept that refers to the version of a particular document or literary composition. Let us say that you are composing a report or essay on your portable computer; you work on it for a while and save it on your hard disk in order to continue it at a later time. A good practice is to save the document in successive versions in order to minimize loss in the event of a crash or corruption of a particular file. Thus, you first save the file as ‘sampledocument.doc’ and having worked on it further save it as another file called ‘sampledocument2.doc’ and so on. If ‘sampledocument2.doc’ becomes corrupt, then you can return to ‘sampledocument.doc’, having lost only the incremental amount between the two. Moreover, you can revert to original formulations and calculations with this electronic paper trail. Each one of these files will share a common core, but will also be a slightly different version. If one were to ask which was ‘the original’ text, then the answer surely depends upon what we mean by the term. The initial commission of your thoughts to writing would be preserved in ‘sampledocument.doc’. However, if by ‘original’ you mean the copy that you sent off or submitted, then it would be the final or official version of the file.

In ancient times, ‘manuscripts’, as the word suggests, were written and copied out by hand. The production of literary works involved the compositional and copying stages, with the Qumran scrolls attesting to the latter. As we know from our own experience of copying, such a process is susceptible to expansions, contractions and all manner of scribal errors. For instance, our eyes could skip from one line to another or from one phrase to another that is either identical or similar. We could misspell a word or mis-form a letter. All these human errors contribute to the creation of different text-types. Other changes are intentional revisions of a text for ideological and religious reasons or mechanical ones, such as the stereotype or consistent rendering of one word by another in the target language.

Before the discovery of the scrolls, there were three previously known text-types of the Hebrew Bible: the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint. The second of these refers to the Torah of the Samaritan community who consider themselves descendants of the ancient Northern Kingdom of Israel. The origins of the Samaritan community is a question of much debate; some sources hold that they were foreigners (2 Kgs 17.24-34), the indigenous people of Samaria (Ezra 4.4), or a sect that broke away from Judaism in the Hellenistic period (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 11.340-345). The Samaritans regard the real sanctuary of God to be situated on Mount Gerizim and not in Jerusalem. They still reside today on that holy mountain in Israel and practise their own traditions. Their version of the Torah is characterized by expansionist and ideological readings. Strictly speaking the Samaritan Pentateuch refers only to the first five books, but the text-type is applied to the rest of the Hebrew Bible by analogy.

In the years following the discovery of the scrolls, Frank Cross proposed a local text theory that identified geographical areas with the three text-types. Accordingly, the Masoretic Text was representative of the Babylonian, the Samaritan of the Palestinian and the Septuagint of the Egyptian location. Cross classified all the Qumran biblical scrolls into one of the three text-types. For instance, 4QSam[sup]a[/sup] was considered a non-Masoretic Text much closer to the Vorlage of the Old Greek. Yet this text also has affinities with the Masoretic Text, the so-called proto-Lucianic text (a revision of the Greek translation), Chronicles and Josephus’s text of Samuel.

It became evident that the Qumran biblical texts could not be so pigeon-holed. A rival view was advanced by Emanuel Tov which posited a multiplicity of biblical text-types. Tov preferred to call them textual ‘groups’, but the more common designation is ‘text-types’. There were not just three text-types, but at least five or more groups of texts. Tov provided the following statistical data on the textual characteristics of the Qumran biblical scrolls: 35% were proto-Masoretic Text; 15% were pre-Samaritan; 5% were Septuagintal; 35% were non-aligned: 20% were texts written in the Qumran practice. Note that the total of 110% is due to the double counting of some of the texts in categories 1, 4 and 5, and category 4 is a ‘catch all’ for non-aligned and independent texts. Moreover, category 5 is a controversial group based upon the scribal practice of the Qumran community; not everyone agrees that this is a text-type.

It is now widely recognized that the Qumran biblical scrolls attest to a greater number of text-types than was previously thought. The Masoretic Text is surely an important text-type; it may even be argued that it was the dominant text-type, but there were several others that cannot be discounted. Some scholars, usually of the more conservative position, continue to hold the Masoretic Text as the text of the Hebrew Bible and all other text-types as translational, interpretative or recensional derivatives, even though they do not exhibit any of the relevant textual characteristics. This ‘Masoretic Text fundamentalism’, as it is called, prejudges the new evidence of the Qumran scrolls with unwarranted convictions.

 

[patrick457]

That said, there were bits and pieces of 6 of the 7 Deuterocanonicals, written in Hebrew, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

No. You only have Tobit (five copies, four of which are in Aramaic), Sirach (mainly bits and pieces of it*), and a Greek papyrus containing what looks like the Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6). 1-2 Maccabees aren’t represented (not surprising since both works are really what you might call Maccabean / Hasmonean propaganda, and the founders of the Community at Qumran - likely Zadokite priests from the Jerusalem Temple - apparently left for the desert because the Hasmoneans ‘usurped’ the high priestly position), nor is Esther, Judith, nor Wisdom of Solomon (which was a Hellenistic Jewish work anyway). The copies of Daniel found there meanwhile are that of the shorter Hebrew version rather than the longer Greek one.

• Medieval Hebrew manuscripts of Sirach were already found in the 19th century. What the Qumran-Masada finds (there wasn’t much text recovered from Qumran - only eleven verses; Masada yielded a bit more - the text of 39:27 to 43:30) did was confirm that these medieval manuscripts represented the original Hebrew version of the text fairly well.

 

[patrick457]

Just to explain where I’m coming from (this is my general opinion):

I tend to think nowadays that the 46-book OT we Catholics use (and the additional books found in the Eastern Churches) is an early Christian innovation. I wouldn’t dispute that for the Jews of Jesus’ time, there was only the 24/39 sacred books (the ‘Hebrew Bible’).

I’m not very good at explaining things, but this is the general gist of my idea (you can ask me questions, I’ll elaborate.)

• The Jews in Jesus’ time - and afterwards - de facto held 24 books as being special / ‘sacred’ in some way: these are the undisputed OT books. (At least, we really don’t have any evidence for that once-common idea that Greek-speaking Jews had a different, larger canon than the Palestinian Jews: the whole issue of the ‘Palestinian canon’ vs. ‘Alexandrian canon’.)
• At the same time, there were also Jewish ‘popular literature’: stuff like Jubilees or Enoch or Tobit or Sirach. These were not exactly on the same level as the ‘sacred literature’, but many of these books were widely read and used and alluded to.
• When the early Christians came into the scene, they never really distinguished between ‘sacred literature’ and ‘popular literature’. So they ascribed a status (nearly) equal to the de facto Jewish ‘sacred literature’ to some of the more-commonly used ‘popular literature’. Eventually, their choices were canonized, thereby forming the Christian Old Testament canon(s) we know today. During the Reformation, the Protestants dropped the books the early Christians had included.

I can see a parallel here with Ethiopian Jews. Ethiopian Jews seem to have a three-tier category of their literature. At the top is the Torah, or the Orit, the most important book. On the second tier are all the other OT books, which are viewed as having secondary importance. On the third tier, you have Ethiopian Jewish literature, which, while not really considered scriptural (one of the latest works in this category was AFAIK written in the 18th century!), are nevertheless considered to be of some importance.

My idea is that something similar was probably going on for 1st century Jews: on the one hand, you have the sacred literature (the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings), the cornerstone of Jewish belief and way of life. On the other hand, you have the popular literature, which may not be of equal status with the sacred writings, but are nevertheless influential and widely-used. When Christians came into the scene, they blurred the line between the two categories: the more famous popular works were given a status equal to the accepted sacred writings. And that’s how our OT canon was born.

(Now you often see the argument that the Ethiopian Jews use the Greek OT canon. But you have to remember that the Christian and Jewish communities in Ethiopia were historically close and had influenced each other in many ways. In fact, some argue that much of the distinctive customs practiced by Ethiopian Jews today were not really ancient, but actually reached them in the Middle Ages via the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Similarly, Ethiopian Jews could have simply been influenced by their Christian neighbors who were using the ‘Greek’ / ‘Septuagintal’ canon. In fact, there was a story that a renegade Christian monk named Qozmos wrote out the Torah for the Ethiopian Jews who rallied under him in the 15th century; up until then Ethiopian Jews never seem to have possessed a written Scripture but were a mainly non-literate culture. In fact, it was really in the 15th century onwards that Ethiopian Jewish literature began to flourish.)

 

[Erich]

No. You only have Tobit (five copies, four of which are in Aramaic), Sirach (mainly bits and pieces of it*), and a Greek papyrus containing what looks like the Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6).

My apologies, then. I read something somewhere to the effect that that every book of the Old Testament was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls except for one, and in the context of what I was reading at the time, I assumed it was referring to stuff in Hebrew.

 

[sirach2v4]

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

You might have “the” answer in a preceding post. I would point out some collateral evidence in 2 Tim 3:16-17 (or maybe I Tim): where the author says “all scripture is inspired by God and useful …”

The writer was writing in Greek to a Greek-speaking audience and when he said “all scripture” they knew what he was talking about – the Greek Septuagint.

The Greek Septuagint, you must remember, was 100% a Jewish witness to what were considered the inspired texts.

Although Martin Luther preferred to 1) “go” non-Catholic and write a different bible and 2) didn’t want to translate (into German) from what itself is a translation (Greek Septuagint), so he used the Hebrew Masoretic text. He said (I’m lead to believe) that he only accepted as valid those texts which he could translate from Hebrew.

But, he was premature in that judgment, by about 450 years, until the “proto-Septuagint” Hebrew texts WERE found at Qumran – the Dead Sea Scrolls. The “proto” texts were those which were the “extra” texts found in the Septuagint. The Septuagint was written for Jews who no longer understood Hebrew and lived largely outside Palestine. It was composed between 250 BC and 100 BC.

So, in a year or two, protestants will celebrate the 500th anniversary of Luther’s mistake in translating the Bible. ALL protestants follow the index of Luther’s Bible, so they – how to say this delicately – follow his heresy against 2 Tim 3:16-17 in denying the inspiration of scripture.

 

[BartholomewB]

Patrick:

Thank you for your four long, thoughtful, and fact-filled posts, particularly #21, addressed to me. I would very much like to hear your view on the point I was trying to make, which I failed to express as clearly as I ought to have done. In two stages, it goes like this:

1. Some of the Hebrew Bible/OT quotations (citations, references, allusions …) found in the NT are closer to the known Greek texts than they are to the MT.
2. This does not necessarily mean that Jesus and the Apostles read their scriptures in Greek. It might mean nothing more than this: they read their scriptures in Hebrew, but the Hebrew texts they had at the time were (in some passages) closer to our known Greek texts than they were to the established MT.

In other words, I was simply trying to suggest that the similarities that have been detected with the Greek texts can be explained without postulating that Jesus and the apostles were reading their scriptures in Greek.

 

[Shaolen]

As I continue with Gary Michuta’s book ill let everyone know if theres anything related to this specific subject

 

[TimothyH]

Luke 12:16-21 is a reference to Sirach 11:18-19. Both of these are about a rich man storing wealth in his barns and losing his life that night.

The charcoal fire kindled in the courtyard where Peter warmed himself in John 18:18 is a reference to the charcoal fire kindled in the midst of sinners in Sirrach 16:6.

The Sadducee’s question about the woman who had seven husbands in Luke 20:27-33 is a reference to the Tobias’s bride who had seven husbands prior in Tobit 6:13-17 and Tobit 7:9-12.

The Lord’s Prayer contains a reference to the Sirach.

Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done,
and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.
(Sirach 28:2)

There are many others.

-Tim-

 

[chero23]

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

At the bottom of my post you will see a link to a book that I did about apologetics. Theirs a section there in regards to the Septuagint. There you will see the Septuagint verse and then the NT verse quoting the Septuagint

 

[Shaolen]

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.

Point taken. Let me put the rest of what Gary says on the reference to 2 maccabees and let me know what you think. From his book:

Objection #2: Your distinction between the use of non-biblical [sources] verses non-biblical [characters] is an ad hoc attempt to avoid a major flaw in your argument. You have no justification for making such a distinction and the only reason you make it is to save your argument from proving to much (i.e. Showing that the Ascension of Isaiah was also part of the author’s bible).

Reply to Objection #2: The Epistle itself supplies more than enough justification for such a distinction. Hebrews is not listing sources, but people. Hebrews 11:2 is very important in this regard. It says “For by it the men of old gained approval” (NASB) or “Indeed by faith our ancestors received approval” (NRSV). Hebrews is holding up examples of men and women who by faith gained approval. Each example in Hebrews 11:4, 5, 7, 8, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23-24, and 31 begin with "By faith, so-and-so… [did something]. "Verses 32-33 marks a transition where for brevity sake the author only lists their names and then in verses 33-37 he mentions only exploits assuming that his readers would know the “men of old” or “ancients” he was describing. Hebrews 11:39 concludes “And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised” (NASB). What does “all these” refer to? It’s not books. It’s people, biblical characters. All these characters comprise the “great cloud of witnesses” spoken of in Hebrews 12:1. Therefore, the Epistle to Hebrews focuses on characters (and as we’ve seen from the context biblical characters) who exhibited supernatural faith, not sources.

Then why discuss Second Maccabees? First, it is to establish that Hebrews 11:35 is specifically referencing the Maccabean martyrs. Second, it shows that Hebrews 11:35 is not a vague recollection about these ancients, but rather its author took his description from the text of Second Maccabees. Once these two points are established, the conclusion naturally follows: Hebrews considered the Maccabean. Martyrs to be biblical characters. Therefore, the Maccabean martyrs must have been in the inspired author’s Bible. We then may ask the question: If the Maccabean martyrs were in the inspired author’s Bible, [where] were they found? Since Hebrews 11:35 was dependent upon Second Maccabees, we have no reason to doubt that his Bible included Second Maccabees.

 

[Shaolen]

Here’s another point Gary makes which shows he agrees with you. From his book:

Argument:

Although the mere presence or absence of an Old Testament reference in the New Testament tells us very little about that work’s inspired status, [how] it is referenced can tell us a great deal. The New Testament’s use of the deuterocanonical books provides probative grounds to believe that it’s inspired authors accepted these books as inspired, prophetic and authentic members of sacred scripture.

 

[TimothyH]

Here’s another point Gary makes which shows he agrees with you. From his book:

Argument:

Although the mere presence or absence of an Old Testament reference in the New Testament tells us very little about that work’s inspired status, [how] it is referenced can tell us a great deal. The New Testament’s use of the deuterocanonical books provides probative grounds to believe that it’s inspired authors accepted these books as inspired, prophetic and authentic members of sacred scripture.

I think the number of references tell us that these are inspired.

People focus on 2 Maccabees but there are lots more references, some from the mouth of Jesus himself.

-Tim-

 

[patrick457]

Patrick:

Thank you for your four long, thoughtful, and fact-filled posts, particularly #21, addressed to me. I would very much like to hear your view on the point I was trying to make, which I failed to express as clearly as I ought to have done. In two stages, it goes like this:

1. Some of the Hebrew Bible/OT quotations (citations, references, allusions …) found in the NT are closer to the known Greek texts than they are to the MT.

Okay.

Yes, this is generally true (approximately two-thirds of all the OT quotes in the NT are from the Greek translations). Although you might say that there are exceptions to the rule. Many of Matthew’s OT quotes for instance are not exactly similar to the Greek version(s) that we have today. In these cases, scholars think that either the author was paraphrasing the quote or was using a different Greek version (a revision?) than the one that we have today. (There are also a few quotes which agree with the Hebrew against the Greek, BTW, so the actual picture is a little complicated.)

1. This does not necessarily mean that Jesus and the Apostles read their scriptures in Greek. It might mean nothing more than this: they read their scriptures in Hebrew, but the Hebrew texts they had at the time were (in some passages) closer to our known Greek texts than they were to the established MT.

This is a little complicated. See, at the time of Jesus there was still no single ‘standard’ text of the Scriptures. In Palestine, for example, what would become the ancestor of the MT (proto-Masoretic / proto-Rabbinic) was apparently the more common version (hence the reason why it became the later standard), but you also had scrolls which are closer to the Greek (proto-Septuagintal), texts which are closer to the later Samaritan version of the Torah (proto-Samaritan), and maybe a few other more.

It’s likely that Jesus could have read and/or quoted from these non-proto-MT texts, but we can’t know for sure. Because the gospels are not tape recordings.

Speaking of which, the Greek texts themselves were not in any single version. The thing is, Jews in Palestine have already noticed that the Greek versions did not agree exactly with the (proto-MT) texts they were using, so from time to time - both before the time of Jesus and after - you had people who tried to ‘correct’ these Greek translations to make them closer to proto-MT.

 

[patrick457]

You might have “the” answer in a preceding post. I would point out some collateral evidence in 2 Tim 3:16-17 (or maybe I Tim): where the author says “all scripture is inspired by God and useful …”

The writer was writing in Greek to a Greek-speaking audience and when he said “all scripture” they knew what he was talking about – the Greek Septuagint.

No, to be exact, he was talking about the books of the Old Testament - and/or (maybe) the Greek translations of those books. Which at the time St. Paul would have been writing, was likely not yet classified into a single category called ‘Septuagint’. (Both the term and the concept were invented by later Christians.)

I’d just like to remind folks here: the idea of ‘Scripture’ or ‘Bible’ - note the singular - really came from later generations of Christians. (For the Jews and the earlier generations of Christians, there was ‘the Scriptures’ - note the plural.) It’s kind of tied up to the concept of the canon. You might say that ‘the Septuagint’ as we know it today - the collection, I mean - is also a by-product of early Christian canon-making: it was when Christians made the canon that all these different Greek translations and original Greek works were ‘collected’ into this single group.

The Septuagint was written for Jews who no longer understood Hebrew and lived largely outside Palestine. It was composed between 250 BC and 100 BC.

There are actually many theories as to the origin of the Greek translations, though many scholars would agree on the basics: the Greek Torah is the oldest Greek translation of the books of the Hebrew ‘Bible’; translation of other books came after that; the Greek Torah and some other translations were likely made in Alexandria in Egypt.

At first the Greek Torah and likely some other books served a subservient, dependent role to the Hebrew text: as you say, the translation could have been made to serve the needs of Greek-speaking Diaspora Jews. We don’t know exactly what those needs are (Synagogue use? Teaching tools? The Ptolemaic requirement that oriental law codes be translated to Greek?), but it’s likely that these translations were to be used along with and as a stepping-stone to the Hebrew text. (That’s why some of the Greek translations - the Torah among them - were very literal, some even slavishly so to the point that they’re essentially an interlinear.)

In time, however, the Greek Torah became considered as a free-standing, even divinely-inspired equal of and replacement for the Hebrew text in its own right. (You might say that there’s probably a sort of similarity with modern-day KJV-onlyists and their view of the KJV: the translation becomes considered as being of equal status to the original text. ) That’s why a century after the Greek Torah was made, the legend of the seventy-two translators was devised in order to legitimize this whole idea of its special-ness.

I noted in one of my last posts that the early Christians took to considering many of the Greek Jewish sacred literature they encountered - especially if they differed from the Hebrew text - as being part of the versio septuaginta ‘version of the Seventy (translators)’. Because they were using these books in their debates against Jews (and because the Greek texts were the default version of choice for many early Christians), they were probably trying to extend the special/inspired status associated with the Greek Torah with these ‘other’ books as well. Y’know, to give them legitimacy. That’s why we now often apply ‘Septuagint’ to the OT books (not just the Torah, although the original legend was about it only) in Greek.

 

[patrick457]

My apologies, then. I read something somewhere to the effect that that every book of the Old Testament was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls except for one, and in the context of what I was reading at the time, I assumed it was referring to stuff in Hebrew.

I think the confusing part is its reference to ‘Old Testament’. When many authors - usually non-Catholic ones - speak of the ‘Old Testament’, they usually just refer to the Hebrew Bible (i.e. the 24/39 books, minus the deuteros). Was this a Catholic author that you’ve been reading?

Speaking of which, yeah, almost every book in the Hebrew Bible were found in Qumran and the other sites in the Judaean desert. The only books that were not found were Nehemiah (which was usually considered to be one book with Ezra anyway) and Esther.

 

[patrick457]

Luke 12:16-21 is a reference to Sirach 11:18-19.

(snip)

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.

Sirach is one of the more famous ‘popular’ literature at the time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the NT makes many allusions to it. It’s so famous, even later Jews still revered ben-Sira’s name. (In fact, the teachings found in the Mishnah and the Talmud are quite similar to ben-Sira’s thought - you might say that they are a continuation of the philosophy ben-Sira represents in his book.)

Christians even elevated the book to the status of sacred writing - Scripture - and gave it the name Ecclesiasticus ‘the Church’s book’. The Jews meanwhile went the opposite direction: while Christians elevated the book, they took great pains to emphasize that Sirach ‘did not defile the hands’ - i.e. was not ‘sacred’. It may be famous and influential, but they never considered it / discouraged any idea of it being on an equal status with the sacred writings.

(I’m thinking Christians are the innovators here - considering more and more books to be ‘sacred’ - while the Jews tried to keep things ‘as they were’, limiting the number of ‘sacred’ writings to the de facto standard: what would be the undisputed 24/39 books.)

 

[JohnR77]

.
To demonstrate that Jesus and the Apostles used the Greek Septuagint it is best to focus on those quotes or allusions that go directly to the Deuterocanonical Books. As seen above some people will argue that the quotes from the larger and fuller collection of Septuagint were actually originally from the Hebrew text and then just reworked for editorial purposes from the Greek by the New Testament translators.

However, I have a problem with the list by Jimmy Akin below

You were able to get to the link at the bottom of the article (www.cin.org/users/james/files/deutero3.htm) ? Hmmm…

The very first one on the lists is as follows :Matthew 4:4 Wisdom 16:26

Matthew 4:4
But he answered, “It is written,
‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”

Wisdom 16:26
“so that thy sons, whom thou didst love, O Lord, might learn
that it is not the production of crops that feeds man,
but that thy word preserves those who trust in thee.”
Yet, this is NOT a quote from Wisdom. It is a quote from Deuteronomy, which the Book of Wisdom which was written much later picks up.

Deuteronomy 8:3
“… man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

The same problem is repeated again and again.

In my opinion, a much better list of quotes are those that ONLY go back to the Deuterocanonical Books.

See

defendingthebride.com/bb/deuterocanonical3.html

Also see the prophetic passages from the book of Wisdom. They are very strong.

defendingthebride.com/bb/deuterocanonical3.html#proph

Again, these allusions are not proof of canonicity, but they do represent strong evidence that the Deuterocanonical Books are inspired by their sheer frequency and how they were used.

As for contrast between the more modern? “Hebrew Canon”, and the Alexandrian Canon see the following link. I write “modern” because I do not accept the argument - " ** Old Testament Canon was closed by Ezra the prophet. Since Ezra died before the Deuterocanonical books were written"**.

defendingthebride.com/bb/deuterocanonical.html#jews

.

 

[patrick457]

I’d like to highlight a few OT quotes and allusions from the gospels here.

First off, Zechariah 9:9.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (ESV)

I’d like to focus on two gospels in particular which quote this passage: Matthew and John. Interestingly enough, they both use different versions of this same text - which brings about a rather key difference in how they portray Jesus’ triumphal entry.

In Matthew’s version of the triumphal entry, you have this:

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.

Matthew’s version of the quote generally agrees with the Greek (‘Septuagint’) version of Zechariah (to be exact, his quote is a combination of Isaiah 62:11 - “Tell the daughter of Zion” - and Zechariah 9:9), down to its mention of “a donkey and a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (The only difference is that Matthew uses the word onos ‘donkey’ for the first instance of ‘donkey’, while Greek Isaiah uses hypozygion literally ‘beast of burden’ for both.)

The Greek at this point translates the original Hebrew rather literally. In the original Hebrew, poetic parallelism (where two poetic terms are used to describe the same thing) seems to be used here; so “a donkey” and “a colt” refer to the same animal, the “and” that appears in the original text notwithstanding. (You might notice that the ESV quote of Zechariah above helps its readers by omitting the redundant/misleading - for English readers - “and.”)

You might notice this in other gospels, where Jesus only rides one donkey. (cf. John below.) In Matthew’s case, however, apparently he was trying to depict a literal fulfillment of the prophecy, so he had Jesus somehow managing to ride (!) two donkeys. (Matthew has this penchant for doubling stuff - he sometimes refers to two where the other gospels say only one, so two blind men, two demoniacs, two false witnesses against Jesus. Maybe this has something to do with that as well?)

Compare Matthew’s with John:

Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written:

‘Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.
Look, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey’s colt!’

John’s version of the quote has one similarity with the Hebrew vs. the Greek Isaiah (the Greek word for ‘donkey’ used here, onos, is closer to the Hebrew than the word used in both Greek Isaiah and Matthew: hypozygion.) But beyond that, it’s different from either version. Note that John’s version of the quote gets at least the original sense of the text right by omitting the confusing parallelism and referring only to a single animal (“a donkey’s colt”).

 

[jas84173]

The New Testament never quotes the Deuterocanonical books. However it never quotes books such as Judges or Ruth either. I don’t think just because they don’t quote them means they should not be in the Bible. In fact I believe all of the books in the Septuagint including 1 and 2 Esdras, 3 and 4 Maccabees, and Prayer of Manasseh should be in our Bibles as they are in the Eastern Orthodox church. Also, if you want to say books that are quoted in the New Testament should be in the Bible, why is the book of Enoch not in the Bible? I believe it is quoted twice in the New Testament, and other times in the Old Testament. In fact many books are spoken of in the Old Testament that we no longer have. I hear Protestants say the apocrypha wasn’t in the New Testament so it doesn’t belong in the Bible, okay so should Judges and Ruth be taken out too? Or the Song of Songs, which even though is a beautiful love story, I never have really understood why it is a “Inspired” Book. And also Enoch should be in the Bible with that mind set.

 

[patrick457]

As for contrast between the more modern? “Hebrew Canon”, and the Alexandrian Canon see the following link. I write “modern” because I do not accept the argument - " ** Old Testament Canon was closed by Ezra the prophet. Since Ezra died before the Deuterocanonical books were written"**.

defendingthebride.com/bb/deuterocanonical.html#jews

This is just a bit of advice on my part (feel free to take it or leave it), but re. this part:

The Jews in Ethiopia to this day still follow the same identical canon which is found in the Catholic Old Testament which includes these seven Deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).

To be more exact, the Ethiopian Jewish canon is similar to the Ethiopian Orthodox OT canon: it includes the same books accepted in Ethiopian Christianity but not in other Churches (for example, the Meqabyan books - not the same books as Greek 1-4 Maccabees.)

And I would actually advise against making the whole “Ethiopian Jews have a ‘Septuagintal’ canon” argument as proof that pre-Christian Jews already had that ‘canon’. Because first, the whole issue of the Ethiopian canon (both Christian and Jewish) aren’t still studied in-depth - there’s still much that we don’t know about them.

And secondly (this is the most important thing), it’s actually likely that the Ethiopian Jews had adopted the OT canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox.

The thing is, there was this interchange between Jews and Christians in Ethiopia, especially in the Middle Ages: you can see it in literature (where either Ethiopian Jews appropriated Christian literature or Ethiopian Christians appropriated Ethiopian Jewish literature) and in customs. (Many of the distinctive customs practiced today by Ethiopian Jews are likely derived by them via the Ethiopian Church. For example, Ethiopian Jews have monasticism, which no other Jewish community has.)

I mentioned this in a former post, but it’s really only in the 15th century onwards that Ethiopian Jewish literature flourished. It’s likely that before that, they were not a ‘book’ culture. In fact, during the time of Emperor Dawit I (1382-1413) there was a monk named Qozmos who was kicked out of the monastic communities in Lake Tana because of his ascetic practices that even the monks there found extreme. He eventually found refuge among a group of Ethiopian Jews ('ayhud). In exchange for their hospitality, Qozmos is said to have written the Orit - the Torah + Joshua-Judges-Ruth - for them.

And they said to him, ‘Are you able to write?’ And he said to them, ‘Yes’. And they brought him honey and milk and he wrote the Orit for them. And they gave him water over which he prayed a prayer and they sprinkled it and their sick were healed. And these treacherous people spoke to each other saying ‘Is it possibly the one about whom the prophets spoke: “A man from the east will come, the Son of God?”’ And they all said, ‘Truly this is he.’

Qozmos eventually led the Jews against the Christians of the town of Emfraz in 1388, burning churches and killing clerics along the way. Dawit had to send troops to quell the uprising.

In fact, it was another Christian monk who is credited for shaping Ethiopian Jewry. Abba Sabra, who lived in the time of Emperor Zar’a Ya’qob (1434-1468), was forced to flee his monastery after committing a crime and sought refuge among a community of Ethiopian Jewish. He tried converting them to Christianity, but he was the one who ended up converting. It was Abba Sabra who is credited with introducing monasticism to Ethiopian Judaism and organizing their prayers and music.