The Septuagint and the Bible question

[Huiou_Theou]

(To use a very rough analogy: it would be like a local neighborhood hosting a get-together party. It’s not like the president or the local mayor or governor has any direct say or would say anything about what goes on in the party. I mean, when was the last time your local bishop gave you any directive or ruling for your bedtime family rosary? )

He wasn’t my local bishop, and it wasn’t exactly the bedtime rosary.
But just a week and three days ago, I did get a letter from my priest because his bishop was coming to a little get together. We tend to pray our rosaries around 7:00PM, just a few hours before the kids go to bed. But – In that letter my new (and well intentioned priest) told me that rosaries are supposed to be group prayers, and they should have meditations which stick to information in printed sources. ( He obviously doesn’t know me well, yet, and I think he was probably panicking when he thought the bishop might overhear my meditations. )

You see, I do a scriptural rosary, and the priest apparently didn’t realize that I followed the format from Pope John Paul II; and that the “meditations” I give are generally excerpts from our last three pope’s homilies and direct quotes from bibles with imprimaturs, eg: Quotes from pope’s mediations during rosaries they prayed at various times of the year and which were published in a booklet. Notably, one of the two booklets I read from the week before I got the lecture was “Praying the Rosary with Pope Francis.” Not exactly heretical matierial… but I think what triggered the backlash was that I read/paraphrased three sentences from one of Pope John Paul’s homilies on Mary being a woman who didn’t respond back to the angel Gabriel instantly, but rather “pondered these things in her heart.” The feast day was the annunciation, so I thought PJP II’s words were appropriate.

None the less, my local priest who had read the meditations before I even said them; (I emailed him a paraphrase/condensation before hand) was fine with them that week, but the following week when the bishop was about to come he suddenly wrote me a lecture on how the rosary was supposed to be done.

So, I’m afraid your analogy hits a little too close to home.

The rosary is supposed to be a layman’s prayer; it’s not supposed to be “liturgy.”
I mean, the rosary was originally given as a way for a layman who could not do the “liturgy of the hours” or “the divine office” (eastern name, same prayers); It encouraged a normal person to meditate on all 150 psalms in a very condensed/abbreviated fashion. (That’s why there were originally 10 beads x 5 mysteries/set x 3 sets of hail Marys, One for each psalm… The rosary wasn’t intended as a liturgy, but something for the common person to do at prayer meetings, or home, or wherever they had a few minutes to pray. )

People pray the Rosary at different times, whether before bed, when they get up, or just before mass or Holy Mysteries. And it’s not like there is an absolute format one must follow for the meditations. Even regarding the liturgy itself: St. Paul didn’t say, that people in church had to pray only words someone had said before them, or that everyone must follow a script; but St. Paul did demand that any words of encouragement, words of prophecy, or inspirational hymns ought to be done in an orderly fashion. We ought not interrupt each other.

Yet, St. Pauls’ wisdom did not occur to the priest when his bishop was about to descend. I eventually told the parish priest that I simply didn’t want to lead any of the rosary. It was too much stress.

In a rough analogy, The leaders of the synagogues in Jesus’ times would also have had similar pressures applied to them. They may not have been “formal” or “hierarchical decrees”; but none the less, a person can be destroyed and brought low through a social pecking order almost as effectively as through juridical decrees, or governmental interventions, or police actions. Fear of public humiliation or ticking off a superior is a powerful motivator.

 

[patrick457]

In a rough analogy, The leaders of the synagogues in Jesus’ times would also have had similar pressures applied to them. They may not have been “formal” or “hierarchical decrees”; but none the less, a person can be destroyed and brought low through a social pecking order almost as effectively as through juridical decrees, or governmental interventions, or police actions. Fear of public humiliation or ticking off a superior is a powerful motivator.

That’s the thing.

Synagogue assemblies were not formal ‘liturgies’. And as I noted, local synagogues back then were autonomous, self-regulating: practice, maintenance, and attitudes reflect the desires of the local community.

It was common in older (19th-early 20th century) scholarship to imagine that the Pharisees ran everything in the Galilee, that everybody was under their thumb. But upon reappraisal, this view was found to be unsupportable. Case in point: the relationship between Antipas and the Pharisees.

While Antipas was generally observant of Jewish law in public, he decorated his own palace in Tiberias with images of animals (at the time of Jesus, the commandment against graven images was interpreted by Jews in a strict, iconoclastic sort of way: abstract designs and depictions of plants are tolerated, but depictions of humans and animals are not.) Given the other things we know about Antipas, does anyone seriously want to propose that the Pharisees encouraged Antipas to break two of the ten commandments (graven images, adultery) and also to execute a revered prophet (John the Baptist)?

If anything, while Galilean Jews were as far as we know faithful Jews, loyal to Jerusalem and observant of the Mosaic Law (contrary to what a few authors have claimed; in fact, Galileans were probably more culturally/religiously conservative than Judaeans), they were not particularly loyal to the Pharisees or accepted all their rulings. In fact, even in the 2nd century, the Galilee did not accept the predominantly Judaean Pharisees’ or Rabbis’ leadership, which led the Rabbis to calumniate Galileans. (The Rabbis tried to control Galilean Jewry purely in religious matters, but Galileans wouldn’t accept any interference even there: for agrarian peasants, the Rabbis’ idealism in things like tithes just didn’t click.) Jesus wouldn’t have been the first Galilean to have run-ins against Pharisees; many Galileans wouldn’t have liked them butting in, telling them what to do either. Jesus just happened to be one recorded example.

A side effect of that scholarly idea is the thinking that synagogues were Pharisee-run institutions. The Rabbis did become significantly involved in synagogue affairs from the 3rd century onwards, but at the time of Jesus, assemblies were mainly autonomous, local, and non-sectarian. (In fact, the Rabbinic sources contain various criticisms of synagogue practices, indicating that even by the 2nd century, the synagogue was still not a center of Rabbinic activities or control.)

If anything, the Pharisees’ powerbase were in Judaea, in Jerusalem especially (but it’s not like they were the only ones in power there). It’s worth noting that John speaks of the fear of ‘synagogue expulsion’ (aposynagogos) in the context of Judaea/Jerusalem. (And of course, there’s also the likelihood that John was consciously retrojecting the later kind of aposynagogos - believers in Jesus being ‘excommunicated’ by the Rabbinic authorities - onto the early 1st century.)

 

[Huiou_Theou]

That’s the thing.

Synagogue assemblies were not formal ‘liturgies’.

And, neither was my rosary… you seem to be overlooking that. I mean a rosary is not liturgy in the sense of adoration, for we don’t adore Mary. etc. The only tie the rosary has to liturgy is that some people (like me) enjoy meditations based on scripture.

And as I noted, local synagogues back then were autonomous, self-regulating: practice, maintenance, and attitudes reflect the desires of the local community.

I’m not really sure what that means. To me, I simply think you’re reinforcing my point that
they were living examples of a social pecking order ?

Every community has know it all-s and publicity mongers…even in Jesus’s time.
But I’m having a hard time following your thoughts, as they seem to lack any middle ground.

I mean, the reading of scriptures is generally known as the liturgy of the word…
Therefore, read this:

usccb.org/bible/luke/4 Eg: luke 4:16-29.

Etymologically liturgeos merely means a public work.
So, right there in Luke (not an anachronistic writer, assuredly) Luke has Jesus reading the law and the prophets in a public setting. That alone is a very clear example of liturgy. And since the Pharisees accepted the prophets, and apparently the Sadducees did not… that implies a preference of at least one synagogue.

The passage of Luke doesn’t support that an adoration/worship service with any kind of sacrifice was happening, so don’t over-interpret what I’m saying; Synagogues were not altar oriented spaces; But there is a gray area that you seem to be overlooking regarding what liturgy is.

Also: I’m not heavily into scholar’s opinions; rather, I like to read what they say and compare it against primary sources. Trying to apply all these other scholar’s opinions that you’ve read to me is a mistake. I really don’t tend to collect scholars opinions.

If anything, the Pharisees’ powerbase were in Judaea, in Jerusalem especially (but it’s not like they were the only ones in power there). It’s worth noting that John speaks of the fear of ‘synagogue expulsion’ (aposynagogos) in the context of Judaea/Jerusalem. (And of course, there’s also the likelihood that John was consciously retrojecting the later kind of aposynagogos - believers in Jesus being ‘excommunicated’ by the Rabbinic authorities - onto the early 1st century.)

sigh. And I’m not claiming Pharisees were a lone power.

I don’t really care in this particular discussion if John was writing apocalyptically and writing stylistic anachronisms, or whether he is accurately recording future prophecies. What matters is that (very often) synagogues were storage places the law; and these same synagogues began to expel Christians. The word Synagogue is comparable to pedagogue. There’s only a nuance shift between the two words, for pedagogue implies children who are under food being “guided”, wheras syn-agogue, means a guiding together of anyone at all. In one sense synagogue merely means congregation, but specifically in the sense of a flocking and guiding together.

They Synagogue is very clearly a place of learning where people read and discussed the law (Torah) and the prophets. Examples exist in scripture.

In later Judaism, after the fall of the temple, the Synagogue would expand into formal places of prayer. So, I’m not trying to say all that exists in the synagogue today existed from the start.

I’m merely pointing out that they became a de-facto Jewish method of preserving the scriptures by the very fact of being where the scriptures were studied.

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Also, regarding your comments about the Sadducees and the temple; Those don’t really make sense to me.

If the Sadducees were really were stuck in the “older forms” of the religion as you say, then it would follow that they would want to go back to the tent of meeting; for Moses never allowed that a temple should be built. The temple is, itself, an innovation of the later religion through David. And the temple of King Herod is an innovation above and beyond that of David, being larger, positioned differently, constructed differently, etc.
So, it’s still a “liberal” interpretation of the law of Moses to have a Herodian temple.

Or again, one of the most detailed writings in Moses was about the construction of the Ark which is God’s place of presence in the temple. If someone really was interested in the older religion, then the ark really should have been the center of their focus.

So, I don’t see how the Sadducees, if they were truly trying to preserve the old religion could miss the implications of the ark’s very construction. They should revere the ark and everything it’s existence demonstrated;. Yet – if you read about the ark, what do you see adorning it?

Statues, and not statues of mere messengers … Moses commanded that two Golden Statues of angelic beings should be made and placed upon the ark. For God sits enthroned upon the Cherubim and is surrounded by the Seraphim. ( sit/chair is hedros in Greek ) So, there on the ark, on the seat of God, the statues of angels are placed.

I mean, they are graven and placed on the central most item of temple worship …
and yet the Sadducees refuse to believe angelic beings even exist ?!

That’s what I mean by the Sadducees being fundamentalist in the sense of reductionist. They ignore what they don’t WANT to see.

Exodus 37:7 (Part of the Torah)
“Two cherubim of beaten gold were made for the two ends of the cover;”
usccb.org/bible/exodus/37

I mean, the Sadducees had to be inventive to deny the existence of Angelic beings or spirits, when Moses commanded their image be set upon the very mercy seat (hedros) of God, and the ten commandments, were placed under that seat (eg: Kata-hedros also known as Cathedral.)

Perhaps the Pharisees simply ignored the Psalms which record that everyone was COMMANDED to bow down toward the temple while the ark was present in it and the Sadducees were more in the right about statues not being a sin in and of themselves.
For Clearly: No one thought it idolatry to bow down before statues placed upon the ark. Idolatry required something more.

No, I’m pretty certain the Sadducees lost most of their religion long before they lost the temple. Their religion was already perverted by their lusts and the ark was already lost.

So, when Jesus says the Pharisees have come into the “Chair” (hedros) of Moses.
I really don’t see how you come to the conclusion that means the Pharisees were mere interpreters of the Law. That’s not at all what Moses and the chair were about. Moses certainly wasn’t just an interpreter, he was an actual negotiator via the tryinsting place of the chair.

The “chair” is a sign of authority ; and the Sadducees ignored not only the carvings of angels as being explicit in scripture, they rejected the very notion of the authority of God and his invisible, spiritual, nature as he sat on that chair.

I mean, even the word syn-hedros, which you so kindly point out is the Greek word for sanhedrin is dripping with the very notion that the council was made up of priest-kings able to tell people “what to do.”, notice Syn-Hedros is a compound Greek word? It is made up of two parts – “syn” and “hedros” – literally, “together-chairs”; That’s the very description of a ruling body.

If in practice, the Pharisee authority was undermined by the Sadducees, well that’s no surprise to me.

But I find it very difficult to see the Sadducees as true old-time religion types; for there were clearly some liberal religious innovations which the Sadducees accepted, and some major fundamentalist reductions and corruptions and oversimplifications of earlier religion that both became enshrined as their characteristic traits.

 

[patrick457]

Perhaps the Pharisees simply ignored the Psalms which record that everyone was COMMANDED to bow down toward the temple while the ark was present in it and the Sadducees were more in the right about statues not being a sin in and of themselves.
For Clearly: No one thought it idolatry to bow down before statues placed upon the ark. Idolatry required something more.

The reason why the Jews were really iconoclastic at the time of Jesus was due to a sort of active reaction against Greco-Roman culture.

In the Old Testament period, the ban was understood to refer only to idolatry or to images of the divine. (That didn’t stop many people though from making actual images of Yhwh or symbols of Him or other ‘graven images’ at the folk level.) There was no stigma against art itself, although you might say that the ban might have had an impact on Israelite art as a whole: the Israelites never really any had a distinctive art style of their own but simply borrowed templates from their more influential neighbors (Egyptians, Assyro-Babylonians, Phoenicians) without any real variation. That attitude continued for some time after the Exile. (There was even a Persian-era coin that seems to depict Yhwh.)

But then the Greeks came. It was around that time that the Jews as a whole began to reinterpret the commandment in a stricter, nigh-iconoclastic way: no making of any figural depiction of any living thing whatsoever. That’s why Jews protested when Herod put up the golden eagle or when Pilate brought the figural standards/shields to Jerusalem. That’s why the local coins only depicted plants or inanimate objects or other abstract symbols. Even the Greco-Roman style aristocratic/priestly houses in Jerusalem didn’t have the artworks you see in Pompeii: the closest one house came to a figural depiction were frescoes of birds, but that’s it.

This strict interpretation was the norm for about two to three centuries until the Jews became more tolerant again (cf. the 3rd-century Dura-Europos synagogue or the later Byzantine-era synagogues in Israel).

Oh yeah, I should note: there was no Ark in the second Temple. The Holy of Holies was an empty space, and Josephus claimed that by his time, no one knew what the cherubim looked like anymore.

 

[patrick457]

Huiou Theou, we’re kind of derailing, so I’d steer back on track a bit and answer the OP.

What confused me is why are there books in the Septuagint that didn’t make it into the Catholic bible if that is true? I was always under the impression the Latin Vulgate was translated directly from the Septuagint

No. The Latin Vulgate Old Testament was not translated from the Septuagint.

The only Greek books Jerome really translated were the Psalms, and the ‘extra’ parts of Esther and Daniel. The protocanonicals were translated from the Hebrew, and Tobit and Judith were translated from late Aramaic versions/paraphrases of those works. The other OT books (Maccabees, Baruch, Sirach, Wisdom) were not translations by Jerome but pre-existing Latin translations that were compiled with his actual works.

(Jerome did try to make a translation out of the Septuagint, but he ditched the project in favor of his Hebrew translation - which was done because his friends were pestering him to.)

but books missing in the Catholic bible which are present in the Septuagint are Thr prayer of Manessah 1 and 2 Esdras,( which i have read are in appendixes to the Vulgate), and also 3 and 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151.

You’re right. The Prayer of Manasseh is an appendix to the Vulgate.

Now the thing is, the Latin 1-2 Esdras is not exactly identical to the Greek 1-2 Esdras.

• Greek 1 Esdras (aka Esdras A’) is basically a pastiche of Ezra and a little bit of 2 Chronicles and original material. This is what is known as 3 Esdras in the Vulgate.
• Greek 2 Esdras (Esdras B’) is a mechanical translation of Ezra-Nehemiah (counted as a single book, as was traditional in Judaism).
• Latin 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras refer to Ezra and Nehemiah (counted as separate books), respectively. You might say that the reason why Ezra and Nehemiah are considered to be separate books in our modern Christian Bibles is due in part to Jerome’s influence.
• Latin 4 Esdras is another work entirely: it’s a late 1st-century AD apocalypse attributed to Ezra. In fact, 4 Esdras seems to consist of three separate material combined into one: the actual apocalypse (4 Esdras proper; chapters 3-14); and two late - probably 3rd century - additions (6 Esdras - chapters 15-16; 5 Esdras - chapters 1-2).

What I don’t understand is how the early Catholic church decided some of these books in the Septuagint were scripture (the Deuterocanonical books), and some are considered apocryphal by the Catholic church yet regarded as canon by Eastern Orthodox churches because they were in the Septuagint? I know this is complicated most likely but someone must know who decided this and when?

Well, here’s the thing to keep in mind: it was only pretty much in the West that the canon of the Old Testament really became an issue. Historically it wasn’t much of a big issue in the East. (It’s telling that the 4th-5th century synods of Hippo and Carthage were held in the Latin West, and not in the Greek East.) What really happened is: while the Latin Church(es) were busy defining which book is inspired and which is not, the East was generally just content to stick with the collection that had been passed down to them.

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Oh yeah, I should note: there was no Ark in the second Temple. The Holy of Holies was an empty space, and Josephus claimed that by his time, no one knew what the cherubim looked like anymore.

I also noted that the ark was gone in my previous post.

(one last jab) I especially noted that because I don’t see how people who are old time hard core throwback oriented would have been utterly devastated and destroyed by the loss of a building which was an innovation, but utterly unfazed by the loss of the ark which was the center of worship… I mean, The original temple was lost and destroyed when the Jews were in Babylon some 486 years before Christ. There was no temple for over 40 years, and when around 1/3 of the Jews in exile lived to emigrate back to Jerusalem/Judah they had to rebuild the temple almost from scratch. The Sadducees ancestors had already been through the loss and destruction of the temple once before. I really don’t see what difference it made that an “innovation” was destroyed.
The temple wasn’t available in the “oldest parts” of the religion in the first place.
That’s why I don’t think the Sadducees really cared about following the “old ways” with exactitude. Even the depictions we have of the menorah, on Titus’ arch, show that it’s feet had been modified in the new temple era and was not a faithful production of what Moses prescribed. The second Temple menorah had a hexagon for a base and not “feet” as required by Moses. The general lack of complaint by the Sadducees for all these ritual imperfections shows they cared about the temple mostly for ulterior motives; eg: The temple was a bottleneck through which all worship money had to flow and could be easily skimmed…

So, back to the OP.

The exile is important to understand the development of the scriptures as well; I mean in terms of the Septuagint, and the Hebrew scriptures.

I know the Hebrew people took copies of the Torah to Babylon, and also their oral traditions. Also, there is ample evidence that the permanent rise of the synagogue in Jewish culture was essentially caused by the lack of a temple while in exile at Babylon.

People needed a place to find hope, to meditate on God’s promises and to pray. So – The Synagogue came into prime importance and permanent existence during the exile, even before the time of Jesus and the Maccabees.

Hardly a generation after people began to return to the Jerusalem from the exile, Alexander the Great conquered the whole world. And he chose to force everyone to speak his version of Greek (barbaros! ) as the official language of his empire. So the translation of the Torah and many other important writings into Greek was a consequence of Alexander unifying the known world under one language.

The synagogues, then, began having both Hebrew and Greek copies of their scriptures and sacred writings depending on the needs of the local community; especially outside of Jerusalem.

Since sacrifice was never possible in a Synagogue, according to the laws and promises made by David; a synagogue was oriented to prayer and study of the Torah, and other writings. There was no canon, and no “official” heirarchy, so there was a tendency to bring any kind of writings which gave the Hebrew People hope, or which they viewed as important, into the synagogue. The Torah was not the only writing they had there.

Consider, Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah; and Isaiah is not part of the Torah. However, Isaiah is the prophet who not only told the Jews they were going into exile, but Isaiah also prophesied about the conditions and times in which they would return from exile. So, although Isaiah was not part of the Torah, Isaiah was something which Jews in the diaspora/exile desperately wanted to know about as a source of hope.

 

[patrick457]

So, back to the OP.

The exile is important to understand the development of the scriptures as well; I mean in terms of the Septuagint, and the Hebrew scriptures.

I know the Hebrew people took copies of the Torah to Babylon, and also their oral traditions. Also, there is ample evidence that the permanent rise of the synagogue in Jewish culture was essentially caused by the lack of a temple while in exile at Babylon.

People needed a place to find hope, to meditate on God’s promises and to pray. So – The Synagogue came into prime importance and permanent existence during the exile, even before the time of Jesus and the Maccabees.

Hardly a generation after people began to return to the Jerusalem from the exile, Alexander the Great conquered the whole world. And he chose to force everyone to speak his version of Greek (barbaros! ) as the official language of his empire. So the translation of the Torah and many other important writings into Greek was a consequence of Alexander unifying the known world under one language.

The synagogues, then, began having both Hebrew and Greek copies of their scriptures and sacred writings depending on the needs of the local community; especially outside of Jerusalem.

I’m commenting on this first.

You’re absolutely right, although to be more precise, we don’t exactly know when and where the synagogue as a thing had its origins. It common to think (even today) that they might have originated during the Babylonian exile, but it’s also possible that they originated after that time and from somewhere else. AFAIK virtually everyone agrees however that the synagogue was not from Palestine: it was originally from the Diaspora and then made its way back to the homeland.

Since sacrifice was never possible in a Synagogue, according to the laws and promises made by David; a synagogue was oriented to prayer and study of the Torah, and other writings. There was no canon, and no “official” heirarchy, so there was a tendency to bring any kind of writings which gave the Hebrew People hope, or which they viewed as important, into the synagogue. The Torah was not the only writing they had there.

Exactly. Now the thing is, not every synagogue would have owned every copy of the Jewish sacred literature (after all, most written media were expensive): there was no ‘Bible’ in the sense that these writings were not compiled into a single volume yet (Christians would be the ones who would invent that, in the 4th century onwards). What you had was a mini-library: stacks of scrolls.

We know from the NT and the Dead Sea Scrolls that there are three works in particular which were very popular in Jesus’ day: the Psalms, Isaiah, and Deuteronomy. So it’s possible that many synagogues would have had at least one or more of these books. (Since Deuteronomy was part of the Torah anyway, it’s almost a given that it would be there.)

In fact, in a few cases, they might not even had complete works at all but just a single scroll or two containing collection of snippets from different writings (usually sharing the same theme): what is called a florilegium. In other words, kind of like the same thing as our lectionaries.