The Septuagint

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I have been reading about Bible history and the argument about whether or not Christ quoted from the Septuagint or the Hebrew scriptures. One answer I read indicated that Christ quoted from the book of Wisdom and I would like to find this quote. Can you help me? I would like to be able to defend the Church position on these books which Protestants believe were “added” by the Church. Thanks so much!
 
Shellee said:
I have been reading about Bible history and the argument about whether or not Christ quoted from the Septuagint or the Hebrew scriptures. One answer I read indicated that Christ quoted from the book of Wisdom and I would like to find this quote. Can you help me? I would like to be able to defend the Church position on these books which Protestants believe were “added” by the Church. Thanks so much!
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Hi, I have a JB and in looking through the gospel of Mathew there are several cross references to Wisdom and Sirach
Matt.5:11 is from Wisdom 2:16
There are several from Sirach
Matt5:7, 14,

There are probably more but I stopped at just this one.

I hope this helps a little. They will probably say that the quotes are not exact words but Jesus did use the Hebrew Scriptures.

God Bless
 
Thank you but doesn’t the Church say that Jesus used the Septuagint - the Greek translation, not the Hebrew, which contains those books or am I misunderstanding your comment?
 
Shellee said:
Thank you but doesn’t the Church say that Jesus used the Septuagint - the Greek translation, not the Hebrew, which contains those books or am I misunderstanding your comment?
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Some of His OT quotes were from the Septuagint Greek translation and others were from the Hebrew. 🙂
 
Why would the Messiah to the Jews want to quote any other text than the Hebrew one? That has always puzzled me.
 
Shellee said:
Thank you but doesn’t the Church say that Jesus used the Septuagint - the Greek translation, not the Hebrew, which contains those books or am I misunderstanding your comment?
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Hi Shellee. I am sure that the question of which Scripture did Jesus quote is not going to be tidy or one-dimensional. Jesus made His commentary applicable to the audience to whom He was speaking. An example would be that in His only discourse with the Sadducees, who did not believe in angels or the immortality of the soul and only accepted the Torah, He quoted Scripture from the Hebrew Torah the account in Exodus that disproved them. His ministry was to meet the people where they were, so I’m sure the answer will vary as to Hebrew or Greek depending on the audience that He was addressing.

The argument about ‘taking them out’ or ‘adding them it’ is not an argument at all, it is a simple matter of historical fact. The Councils of Hippo and (3) at Carthage in AD 393,397,405,411 were decisive in establishing the Canon of Scripture. It remained this way until the Protestant Reformation where as the years progressed, they were removed from different versions of Scripture. An example would be KJV removed them in 1885 at the behest of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Hope that helps.
 
‘With regard to whatever is in the Septuagint that is not in the Hebrew manuscripts, we can say that the one Spirit wished to speak to them through the writers of the former rather than through the latter in order to show that both the one and the other were inspired.’

St. Augustine
 
I heard a very illuminating sermon on the Septuagint this past December.

Greek was the international language at that time, and the apostles most likely had scribes and followers who composed their teachings into writing and transmission to the various churches.

But in regards to the Septuagint, the priest said that 200 years before Christ, Emperor Ptolemy of Egypt wanted to build the biggest library in the world and he wanted an authentic copy of the books of Sacred Scripture. He selected 70 rabbis who came to Egypt and were separated from each other and asked to compose the books. It is assumed they had their own scribes. When they were completed, all books were compared to each other, and what was miraculous is that of all the 70 rabbis, every book was identical to each other, word for word! We cannot but say this is a miracle of the Holy Spirit.

This interpretation of Scripture anticipated the Messiah as we know Him. The apostles and St. Paul also followed the Septuagint.

Two hundred years after Christ, Jewish rabbis came together to have their Hebrew version, the Mazoretic, that had some parts that did not anticipate the Messiah as Christians. When they were forming their books likewise, there was alot of disunity and disagreement among them. One could say, well when you have 2 Jews arguing, it is like there are 3. Anyway, their books were completed.

And this interpretation had parts those could be accepted by those of the Septuagint, and as people lived among one another, it is natural there is like an osmosis of ideas back and forth.

Martin Luther wanted to go back to a ‘pure’ understanding of Scripture and lost faith in the Church’s stand of apostolic succession. He wanted to remove some books that supported his particular theology. Of course, he followed that which prophesized the coming of the Messiah.

Our Lord drew from OT prophetic statements to reveal He was that Israel had anticipated.
 
Shellee said:
Thank you but doesn’t the Church say that Jesus used the Septuagint - the Greek translation, not the Hebrew, which contains those books or am I misunderstanding your comment?
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Jesus likely could speak Greek and some Latin as well as Aramaic, since he lived is such a pluralistic region.

His local scriptures at the synagogue and those in the Temple were Hebrew, but the Apostles used the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the Hebrew.

It was not believed that the Deuterocanonical books existed in Hebrew or Aramaic until the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Church accepted this collection as authoratative from the TEachings of Jesus but Protestants rejected the DC for various reasons, one being that some of the strongest sects of Jews of Jesus’ day did not recognize or accept any writings as Sacred that did not appear first in Hebrew.
 
tabycat said:
Some of His OT quotes were from the Septuagint Greek translation and others were from the Hebrew. 🙂
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This remark might mislead some, because the English translations of the Septuagint and the Masoretic texts agree in places. So, you can’t say this authoritatively. You can only say authoritatively that Jesus was quoting from the Septuagint.

I say all this because I recently obtained a copy of the English translation of the Septuagint published as The Orthodox Study Bible (amazon.com). The text published there is the New King James edition, except where the Septuagint differs – and this study Bible does not give you a clue to where the text differs, except for sure in the books that are not in the Masoretic Bible.

There is a preliminary essay on what the Orthodox Church is, etc. and it has never defined the canon of its scripture. This volume has even a couple MORE books than the Catholic Bible, and apparently the Septuagint has a Psalm # 151.

Spoiler alert: Whereas in the Catholic and Jewish Bibles the mysterious word in the Psalms “Selah” has a meaning which is unknown; in the OSB it is rendered as “Pause.”
–due to the Septuagint Greek translatioin.
 
Wasn’t Jesus God? Jesus is the Word! Jesus would say, ''As it is written…", referring to whomever penned it. Whatever language it was, He created it (unless it was foul language;)). He had scholars amazed at His teachings and did not have to quote anyone. Christ was the Author all along!
 
This post on my blog might help you with this. The Deuterocanonical Books of the Catholic Bible

Besides, you don’t have to just take the church’s word for it. It seems even some n-C scholars make a point of it.

The Deuterocanonicals were part of the same Alexandrian text used by the Jews in Israel & the whole Med world at the time of Christ.
MOST (some 90%) of the NT quotes of the OT are from The Alexandrian text.
Grab a copy of Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament: A Complete Survey by Gregory Chirichigno and Gleason L. Archer (Jan 26, 2005)
 
Even_So said:
Wasn’t Jesus God? Jesus is the Word! Jesus would say, ''As it is written…", referring to whomever penned it. Whatever language it was, He created it (unless it was foul language;)). He had scholars amazed at His teachings and did not have to quote anyone. Christ was the Author all along!
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And this comment of yours has to to do with this topic exactly how?

We are not talking about Jesus, but about the scriptures and they are not one and the same and to infer such is tantamount to deifying the Bible?

Do you worship your Bible?
 
Even_So said:
Wasn’t Jesus God? Jesus is the Word! Jesus would say, ''As it is written…", referring to whomever penned it. Whatever language it was, He created it (unless it was foul language;)). He had scholars amazed at His teachings and did not have to quote anyone. Christ was the Author all along!
Click to expand...
Christ was not born with God-like omniscience. He subdued His divine nature to live as we live. That means He learned how to speak the languages of the time, learned from the teachers of the time, and quoted the sources from which He learned.

Regarding the topic, Jesus and the apostles did use the Septuagint. While Hebrew scriptures existed, there was no Hebrew canon. The Hebrew Bible was only canonized by the Masoretes centuries later.
 
I am so excited about all the responses! I can’t wait to dig in to each and every one of them! Thanks so much for all the (name removed by moderator)ut!
 
Thanks for clarifying, Guanaphore…Yes, Christ spoke Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek most likely as it was the international language then.

And yes, the Hebrew text, I misspelled Masoretic, was done about 200 years later, this the version Luther used, because he completely was completely severed from the Church and desired a ‘pure’ version.

Another name for Septuagint is LXX, meaning ‘The Seventy’ rabbis who miraculously transcribed word for word the entire books without communicating with each other 200 years before Christ.
 
Christ began His ministry in Galilee. In Galilee, Christ came to those who were sick, lame, or coming back to Israel from exile. The forefront of Christ’s ministry is healing and restoration.

The Romans identified people through their origins. The Romans named the Israelite Christian followers of Christ as Galileans.
 
Shellee said:
I have been reading about Bible history and the argument about whether or not Christ quoted from the Septuagint or the Hebrew scriptures. One answer I read indicated that Christ quoted from the book of Wisdom and I would like to find this quote. Can you help me? I would like to be able to defend the Church position on these books which Protestants believe were “added” by the Church. Thanks so much!
Click to expand...
I keep hearing that argument from Catholics, that Jesus either quoted or used the LXX. There is no basis for this claim. As a Palestinian Jew, Jesus would have used the Hebrew. Even if Galilee were multicultural as it were, Greek would not be the vernacular of the region for the Jews.

What IS true, is that the New Testament AUTHORS quoted from the LXX, which makes sense, because the NT books were written in Greek, and so it was only logical to quote the prevailing Greek text at the time.

And no, while there are parallel phrases here and there, there are no quotes in the NT from the Deuterocanonical books. That does not in any way detract from their canonicity. Just because there are similar phrases does not make it a quote. Quotes are explicit: “It is written”, “what the prophet said”, “it is written”.
 
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