• NT citations that are from the Septuagint wording, not the Hebrew wording.
• NT citations that are from the Hebrew wording, not the Septuagint wording.
• NT citations where both Hebrew and Septuagint wordings are the same.
• NT citations which can't be found in either the Septuagint or the Hebrew wording.
• NT citations which don't fit into one of the above categories.

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I don't know whether this has come up before, but I'm interested in the extent to which the NT writers drew on the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT) rather than - or alongside - the Hebrew and Aramaic versions.

Over on another site (which shall remain nameless) I've seen a spat between the Orthodox - who believe the Septuagint to be particularly inspired - and a Reformed Baptist who insists that all the OT references in the NT are from the Hebrew or Aramaic apart from those used by the writer to the Hebrews.

Against that, people have been citing RC sites which claim that around two-thirds of the OT quotes in the NT come from the Septuagint.

Why is any of this important?

Well, it's a matter of canonicity as far as the Reformed Baptist guy goes ... if we accept the Septuagint then, shock, horror ... we might end up accepting the Deuterocanonical books as well ...

Also, I s'pose, it's a sola scriptura versus Holy Tradition thing.

Personally, I'm not sure it's any big deal. Some of the more moderate Orthodox say that the 'Septuagint maximisers' within their own tradition are akin to the King James Version Only brigade within Protestantism.

I have some 'non-aligned' material here about biblical scholarship and the historic background and that suggests that the NT authors appear to have been bilingual - they wrote in Greek but thought in Aramaic - and that they drew on the Septuagint stylistically particularly - although in a bilingual written culture they would use whichever version best suited what they were trying to say ...

Which is my rather simplified take on these things.

Am I missing something? Is it important and why?

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Oh, meh.


You've got more problems than that.

First of all, I can't supply the catalog though I have no doubt someone better informed will pop up to do it momentarily, but AFAIR there are Septuagint quotations all through the New Testament, not just in Hebrews.

But wait! (as the Ginsu knife commercial says.) There's more!

Anyone wanting to create an unholy fuss over the matter (doctrinally or canonically) will have to deal with a whole shitload of issues (that's an academic term).

First of all, when Jesus (or other quoted character) is described as quoting the OT, is the version given... Jesus' own actual words-as-if-you-heard-them-with-your-own-ears (that is, he's speaking in Greek) or are they the result of the evangelist scratching his head and saying, "Hey, I remember he quoted from Deuteronomy chapter whatsit right here. Oh Maggie darling, would you hand me that copy of the LXX so I can just check the exact wording?" If the latter, then the choice of LXX (or not) could have been the evangelist's/Holy Spirit's. Jesus might even have been (and probably was, in fact) speaking Aramaic.

Second problem: Ancient writers weren't nearly as uptight and anal about reproducing exactly precisely the selfsame words the person spoke, let alone the exact Bible version they may have used. Which is sensible when you don't have a tape recorder. Nor are they particularly uptight about providing proper reference citations. There's even a lovely spot in the New Testament where the writer says, "As somebody says somewhere" and goes on to add a quote from Psalm 8! (I think it's in Hebrews).

Third, the OT books were just that, separate books, to a much greater extent than they are for us today when we almost always get them all bound together. A person might easily have a copy of one book in the LXX version, another in a particular Hebrew textual tradition, and so forth. AND quote from them--not based on "After serious study, I think these are the best versions in existence" but rather based on "The only copy of Isaiah I have access to is the one at our local synagogue, and I had to borrow Ezra from Joe down the street. Fortunately, I memorized Deuteronomy when I was a wee tyke in Hebrew school, so I don't have to go find that one." It makes for a very varied quotation experience.

If you were lucky, and rich enough, to own most or all of the Old Testament books, you might easily have them copied from random sources. Shorter books might appear bound together / copied on the same scroll. And the appearance of two or more books together would tell you very little about their authority or value, beyond the obvious fact that someone thought it was worth commissioning a copy. A copy of a noncanonical book might end up cheek-by-jowl with a canonical one, not because the owner or scribe considered them to be of the same theological significance, but simply because the second book was the right length to fill out the rest of the scroll.

All of which means that we have to be darn careful about drawing grand doctrinal conclusions from data on quotation sources. As in, don't do it.


 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Ok Lamb Chopped, that makes sense to me.

I'd thought of the direct quotation issue and also the fact that the OT canon was probably more 'porous' and not so well defined in the 1st century as it later came to be ...

Sure, a general consensus of the Law, Prophets and Psalms, but there were all manner of midrashes flying about not to mention the Book of Enoch etc etc.

It strikes me that both our Orthodox friends and my Reformed Baptist contact are both, in their different ways, making rather heavy weather out of this ...

Or am I missing something?
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I think they've both got some misunderstandings going on. Which is pretty natural, as very few people ever stop to ask themselves, "Did this culture handle texts with the same unwritten rules that my culture is used to?"

It's just not a question that most people even know enough to ask. Rather like the kids who ask "What kind of underwear did people wear in eighteenth century America/England/wherever--briefs, boxers or long johns?" They know enough to figure out that things were probably different back then from now; but they don't know enough to realize just how different things can get--or to anticipate that the correct answer may be "none at all."



It's why you (general you) really want to be humble as much as possible when you're arguing with someone else about stuff coming out of a different culture or time. It's the assumptions you make without even realizing it that do you in, nine times out of ten.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Sure, I often say to this Reformed Baptist chap that he seems to think that the Apostles were 16th century Reformers only dressed in togas rather than ruffs and doublet and hose - or Geneva gowns ...

Conversely, the Orthodox seem to regard them as 9th century Byzantine clerics only in togas rather than Byzantine court get-up.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
On the porosity of the canon--

I think the OT was pretty well fixed by Jesus' time--they'd had four hundred years of prophetic silence, and that probably helped to draw a line under the Old Testament. I think we can see pretty clear evidence of the division between canonical and noncanonical by considering what Jesus and the NT writers quote as authoritative (I mean, as opposed to Paul referencing a couple of Greek poets for instance). There are scads and scads of quotations and references from what we now consider the OT canon, to the point where I've heard some people call the NT basically a tissue of quotations from the OT. But there is almost nothing that clearly originates in an extracanonical source though it's being treated like canon. There's maybe one in Jude (that reference to the devil and Michael disputing over Moses' body) but that's basically all there is--and it shows up in one of the handful of NT books that is itself doubtful in terms of whether it belongs in the canon (one of the antilegomena).

So all that suggests to me that in Jesus' day there was a fairly firm canon--that people pretty much knew what was "in" and what was not--and you can see the distinction in the way they handle quotations and references. The canon wasn't closed--there was enough elasticity that the early church doesn't seem to have had any trouble with the concept of adding the NT to the OT--but then, for a lot of Christians the canon is not officially closed even today. My own Lutheran church is one of them. Formally we admit the possibility of another canonical book turning up and being recognized as such even now, in the 21st century--though in practice we think it as likely as pigs flying. But we can't rule it out, because God hasn't spoken on the subject.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Sure, I often say to this Reformed Baptist chap that he seems to think that the Apostles were 16th century Reformers only dressed in togas rather than ruffs and doublet and hose - or Geneva gowns ...

Conversely, the Orthodox seem to regard them as 9th century Byzantine clerics only in togas rather than Byzantine court get-up.

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Yeah, we all do it. It's one of the basic human psychology problems that underlies culture shock as well. That gut feeling of "they can't possibly be as different as all of THAT." Surely there must have been beer cans SOMEWHERE on that Galilean fishing boat!
 

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Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 
Whether or not the NT uses the LXX when referencing the OT seems to me to be a seperate question to the role of the LXX in the Church. The NT uses the LXX on a number of occassions (how many, I can't remember), either quoting it directly or loosely. Clearly the early Church preferred the LXX, even in Jerusalem (Pilgrimage of Egeria), seeing it as an inspired translation, a new step in revelation preparing the Greek world for the coming of Christ.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Clearly the early Church preferred the LXX, even in Jerusalem (Pilgrimage of Egeria), seeing it as an inspired translation, a new step in revelation preparing the Greek world for the coming of Christ.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Just to muddy the waters still further--

We've been talking as if the Hebrew text is a single thingy, but in fact, there were variant text families then just as there are variant text families of the Greek NT text today. A lot of these got wiped out, which is probably why we tend to forget them--but the Septuagint reflects some of those variants (which is why scholars love it, as it gives you a great window back in time) and the Dead Sea scrolls would be from a different family.

Not that there were freakin' huge variants at any time, but even the change of a single letter is interesting and sometimes enlightening.

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quote:

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I think the OT was pretty well fixed by Jesus' time--they'd had four hundred years of prophetic silence, and that probably helped to draw a line under the Old Testament.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
Is there a catalog somewhere of:

• NT citations that are from the Septuagint wording, not the Hebrew wording.
• NT citations that are from the Hebrew wording, not the Septuagint wording.
• NT citations where both Hebrew and Septuagint wordings are the same.
• NT citations which can't be found in either the Septuagint or the Hebrew wording.
• NT citations which don't fit into one of the above categories.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Autenrieth Road, I have not read it myself, but I've seen this book quoted quite a bit: GK Beale & DA Carson "Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament". From using the "look inside" feature, I reckon it will certainly answer your questions at length, though perhaps not in a convenient list form.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Eh? I don't quite understand your point. The Church did see it as inspired. As an example Blessed Augustine relates how the Church viewed the LXX in City of God, believing in the tradition of the Hebrew translators as proof of its inspiration.

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quote:

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Originally posted by goperryrevs:
Right, but Jerome had a very different view. Which shows that, then, as today, there were a wide range of views on a wide range of issues.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

But there is almost nothing that clearly originates in an extracanonical source though it's being treated like canon.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:


Well, it's a matter of canonicity as far as the Reformed Baptist guy goes ... if we accept the Septuagint then, shock, horror ... we might end up accepting the Deuterocanonical books as well ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

Sources really aren't a problem the same way quotations could be, because both Old and New Testament books are very up front about relying on previous sources

In any case, the usual argument is that it's the canonical writer's use of the source that is inspired, and not necessarily the source itself.

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quote:

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
Well, quotations usually get justified by similar arguments (in that it is the use by Jude of that particular part of Enoch that is inspired, not the entirety of Enoch itself).

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