Septuagint books

[DictatorCzar]

So did the original Septuagint have the deuterocanical books?? I heard Catholic scholars saying yes, but Protestant scholars said the original Septuagint only included the Torah. I’m not sure, because there are different versions of the Septuagint. Because Protestants keep saying the original Septuagint only has the Torah. So what books did the Original Septuagint include? Because there are versions including the Torah only and the deuterocanonicals.

 

[Prodigal1984]

Yah it did.
It actually contained more.
Some of which are considered scripture by Orthodox Christians such as 3 and 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151.
Some also included additional books that aren’t regarded as scripture by any Christian community as far as I know, such as the Psalms of Solomon and the Book of Odes ( which is mainly just a compiling of Old Testament scripture verses).

The Apocryphal Letter of Aristeas speaks about the compiling of the Septuagint by Greek speaking Jews in Alexandria.
The Septuagint was originally a collection of scrolls, it didn’t have a uniform amount of books in it. Thus why some will contain different amounts of texts than others. Remember back then this would have cost a lot of money.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon2.html

 

[JohnR77]

http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon2.html

This Protestant document makes an error.
My words added in
[ brackets, and bold.]
The first sentence below is poorly worded.

It states :

The Protestant Apocrypha includes all of the books normally included in manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate.

[Besides the disputed books, was the author saying that the 66 Books, Genesis to Revelation is Apocrypha ??? I do not think he intended that. ]

But three of these (1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh) were omitted from the list published by the Council of Trent when it fixed the Roman Catholic canon.

[The following speculation is false]

(Apparently these omissions were unintentional.

[ the following verse shows the misunderstanding of the author of this Protestant paper.]

The “Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures” specified that the books were to be recieved “as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate.”)

Decree of the Council of Trent (1546). “The holy ecumenical and general Council of Trent . . . following the example of the orthodox Fathers, receives and venerates all the books of the Old and New Testament . . . and also the traditions pertaining to faith and conduct . . . with an equal sense of devotion and reverence . . . If, however, any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said [72 (73)] books entire with all their parts, as they have by custom been read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate, …”

[ the verse
“as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate”
is referring to
“with all their parts”
meaning all the chapter and verses of those 72 (73) books as they are contained in Latin Vulgate, as some have contested some verses as not belonging in original. The Catholic Church has never proposed that supplemental material in Bibles, such as 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, or dictionaries, or indexes or table of contents, or Jerome’s commentary, etc were part of Sacred Scripture, the Bible. ]

 

[JohnR77]

So did the original Septuagint have the deuterocanical books?? I heard Catholic scholars saying yes, but Protestant scholars said the original Septuagint only included the Torah.

The Jewish Scholars first translated the first five books, the Torah into Greek.
After a rest the work was finished and the other books were translated as well.

 

[Prodigal1984]

Well in the Vulgate they are known as 3 and 4 Esdras because Ezra and Nehemiah were 1 and 2 Esdras. It was Protestant Bible translators who made that strange move in the now confusing numbering incoherency.
They were usually in the Vulgate and eventually were integrated into the Old Testament, I also think the list is wrong because I think what Trent did when Luther was attacking the deuterocanonicals is they went back to ancient texts and saw those three weren’t in the list and then those three got relegated to the appendix of the Vulgate as not scripture but as worthy to be read. Most people have the false assumption Trent made all of the classic Protestant apocrypha scripture, but these three it didn’t. But they are still used in liturgy and theres nothing wrong with reading them.

 

[DictatorCzar]

How did you know? Is there a source?

Because I know scholars from each of the 12 tribes made the septuagint. I’m not sure about everything though.

So which is the most accurate Septuagint?

 

[DictatorCzar]

So I know there were 70 translators. But did it take about 200 years to translate the Septuagint? Did they have to replace the translators because of old age?

 

[DictatorCzar]

I heard he Septuagint was starting to be compiled around 282Bc and it was finished in around 150 BC so did it take them that long?

 

[Prodigal1984]

http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/letteraristeas.html

The Letter of Aristeas is usually reckoned with the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, and some parts are probably not true, but this is the closest writing we have to describing how the Septuagint came to be.
According to this they finished it in 72 days, which I find hard to believe.

 

[DictatorCzar]

Yeah, many historians who know about the letter of aristeas say it’s false.

 

[Prodigal1984]

That really doesn’t concern me much.
A lot of historians say a lot of the books in the Bible are false.

 

[Dovekin]

I heard he Septuagint was starting to be compiled around 282Bc and it was finished in around 150 BC so did it take them that long?

The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, named for the 70 translators who translated the Torah. As other scriptures were translated by the 70 and others, they circulated with the translated Torah and collectively it was still called the Septuagint. That does not mean the 70 translated all of it, or only the parts translated by the 70 should be called Septuagint.

 

[RaisedCatholic]

As others have posted, according to the Letter of Aristeas, the original Septuagint only translated the first 5 books of the Bible (the Law of Moses) into Greek. This was affirmed by Philo of Alexandria around A.D. 35, when he referenced it. This letter was written sometime before the New Testament era, most likely in the first couple of centuries B.C. Trent Horn from Catholic Answers also made a statement in his audio podcast last year (2018) that the first Old Testament “canon” to be translated into the Greek was the “Hebrew Bible” (sometimes referred to as the “Protocanon” - the same books in Protestant Old Testaments):

Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger (Trent Horn - audio podcast)

We know these books were in the Septuagint in Jesus’ day, since He and the New Testaments writers used terms to describe these Old Testament books, like “It is written,” “Have you not read?”, “the Scriptures say,” “the Law & the Prophets,” etc. The New Testament does reference other books, like St. Jude referencing 1 Enoch & calling it a “prophecy,” but none of them use one of these “qualifying” terms used to describe Old Testament books. Hope this helps!

 

[BartholomewB]

We know these books were in the Septuagint in Jesus’ day, since He and the New Testaments writers used terms to describe these Old Testament books, like “It is written,” “Have you not read?”, “the Scriptures say,” “the Law & the Prophets,” etc.

The expression “the Law and the Prophets,” which occurs several times in the Gospels, refers to the Jewish canon as it stood at that time, before the third part, “the Writings,” was added many years later.

That doesn’t mean, however, that individual books in that third section were held to be unsuitable in any way. The first book in the Writings section is Psalms, frequently quoted in the NT, even though, as far as anyone knows, it had not yet been formally incorporated into the Biblical canon in the time of Jesus.

The Law ( Torah ): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

The Prophets ( Nevi’im ): Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve (the minor prophets from Hosea to Malachi)

The Writings ( Ketuvim ): Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and at the very end, 1 & 2 Chronicles.

 

[po18guy]

Septuagint as Torah? Who are you listening to? It sounds as though they are confused and have also confused you. Why would it be called the Septuagint (“the seventy”) if it was only the Torah? The Torah is credited to Moses and He was one, not seventy. Web definition:

(in Judaism) the law of God as revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures (the Pentateuch).

Torah Jews, such as the Sadducees, rejected the prophets, yet Jesus quoted the prophets constantly. Thus, the Septuagint clearly held other writings.

As to the Septuagint collection, one of the Books in the collection is the Wisdom of Solomon. That was believed to have been written as few as 50 years prior to the birth of Christ. Chapter 2 of Wisdom gives perhaps the most detailed, clear and concise prophecy of Christ in the entire collection.

 

[Dovekin]

Septuagint as Torah? Who are you listening to? It sounds as though they are confused and have also confused you. Why would it be called the Septuagint (“the seventy”) if it was only the Torah? The Torah is credited to Moses and He was one, not seventy. Web definition:

The Torah is in Hebrew.

The 70 translated the Torah into Greek, which became known as the Septuagint for the translators. The Prophets and eventually the writings were then also translated and circulated with the Torah, and collectively continued to be known as the Septuagint. Even some materials written in Greek and Aramaic became part of the Septuagint.

 

[Gorgias]

po18guy:

Septuagint as Torah?

Why would it be called the Septuagint (“the seventy”) if it was only the Torah?

The 70 translated the Torah into Greek, which became known as the Septuagint for the translators.

This!

It’s not “the 70 [books]”, it’s “the 70 [translators]”!

(And, it’s not even that it necessarily only seventy translators – that’s just what the traditional story about the number of translators claims.)

 

[JohnR77]

Wisdom of Solomon. That was believed to have been written as few as 50 years prior to the birth of Christ. Chapter 2 of Wisdom gives perhaps the most detailed, clear and concise prophecy of Christ in the entire [ Old Testament] collection

Yes.

See Prophetic verses in Deuterocanonical Books

And, whatever, the date the books in question were written they could not have been included into the collection of Sacred Scripture until after it was written. And it could not have been translated until written.

So, naturally we would see a progression.

The translation of the Septuagint itself began in the 3rd century BC and was completed many years later, initially in Alexandria, but in time elsewhere as well.

After the Torah, they took a break as mentioned above.

The final books written, the Deuterocanonical Books, were included, and translated, as time permitted.

Some Protestants claim there was a silent period, which “coincidently” occurs when the Deuterocanonical Books were written.

 

[JohnR77]

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

River of Inspiration - The Protestant Claim of the Silent Years

I scanned in an image that represents the argument of the Silent Years. You can find a similar image in some NIV Bibles.

Notice the discontinuity in how the river is completely dammed up and then some how the river flows again only to be completely dammed up again after the Book of Revelation. It doesn’t look natural or right. Rivers don’t flow like that.

The Catholic view shows how it was during these so called “Silent Years” is when the Deuterocanonical Books were written. The deposit of Public Devine Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle. No new water to be added to the River. No new doctrines allowed, only clarification of what was passed down by Christ and the Apostles. And God continues to guide His Church with authoritative declarations on

1. What is the Bible ? What Books belong in it ?
2. What is the criteria for determining those Books?
   Why not a different set of criteria? Who decides the criteria ? And
3. What does the Bible mean ? Infallible declarations are given guided by the same Holy Spirit who also worked through fallible sinners who penned the Books of the Bible.

Without that guidance there is no authority to define the above.
( except of course yourself but where in the Bible does it say that you personally have the authority to decide what criteria you should use to determine the answers to the above questions ?

 

[BartholomewB]

Is the illustration from a Protestant Bible? No deuterocanonicals …