An Introduction to the Septuagint

An Introduction to the Septuagint:

What is it, and why is it important?

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            Have you ever had a math problem or a riddle that you couldn’t solve?  Then you asked for a hint, and when you got it, everything began to make sense, and you solved the problem.  And then from now on, you were able to see certain kinds of problems in a new way, and you understood them.

            The Septuagint does this for the Bible.  The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic.  The New Testament was written in Greek.  The Septuagint is a translation of the Old Testament into Greek, which was done about three hundred years before the ministry of Jesus.  Greek was the English of the ancient world, from the time of Alexander the Great (330ish B.C.) through the first few centuries of the Common Era.  And this was the Bible of the early Church.

When they quoted from the Old Testament, almost every time they quoted from the Septuagint (LXX).  How do we know this?  Hebrew and Greek are very different languages.  Hebrew has a very simple sentence structure, while Greek is fond of the subordinate clause and is essentially not dependent on word order to understand the text.  Because Greek has such a complex language structure, it is easy to see when a person is alluding to another text.  The odds of using the same complex phrases are small.  So it is generally very easy to know if they were quoting from the LXX or translating from the Hebrew.

Knowing that they used the Greek Old Testament, we soon find that the language of the LXX saturated the language of the New Testament writers.  We find that there are hundreds of places in the New Testament where it is obvious that they had a particular Old Testament passage in mind when they wrote it.  So the New Testament passage offers light on the Old Testament passage, and the Old Testament passages offers light on the New.

            At the same time, when they read the New Testament, they would have easily recognized the Old Testament passages alluded to by the various words and phrases used.  How do we know this?  The Biblical writers and the believers of that day knew their Bibles far better than we do today.  And how do we know this?  By looking at the Old Testament passages that they quote either in their oral speeches or in their writings.  We memorize and quote the great promises of the Old Testament, maybe even whole psalms.  They quote all kinds of passages that we didn’t even know were in the Bible until we looked them up, passages that we hardly even read.

In addition, the LXX provides a wealth of background information on the use of the words found in the New Testament.  Word meanings are clarified and understood better when they are seen in multiple usages.  When we see the same New Testament words used in the Old Testament, we can often understand these words in different ways.

           

Some examples of the value of the LXX

Mark 1:4 (NASB95)  ⁴ John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

            The word ‘baptism’ doesn’t appear in the Old Testament, but here it is introduced as if everyone knew what this is all about.  Commentators refer to almost every instance of washing or the use of water to find some connection.  But the word occurs twice in the LXX, once in a metaphorical use, and once to describe Naaman’s dipping into the Jordan River to be healed, or cleansed, from his leprosy.  The imagery is unmistakable and powerful.

Matthew 18:15-17 (NASB95)   ¹⁵ “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. ¹⁶ “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. ¹⁷ “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

            I can imagine the disciples asking Jesus afterwards: Master, what is a church?  This is the first use of the word ‘church’ in the Bible, and there is no explanation what it means.  According to theologians, the (or, a) church didn’t even come into existence until Pentecost.

            But from the LXX we learn that the Greek word for church, e)kklhsi/a, occurs over a hundred times in the Old Testament and translates the Hebrew word hfdf(, which means ‘congregation.’