The Septuagint
Introduction: What Is the Septuagint?
The term Septuagint refers broadly to the ancient Greek versions of the Old Testament originally produced for Greek-speaking Jewish communities and later adopted by the Christian church. The term comes into English through the Latin word for the numeral seventy, septuaginta, a reference to the number of translators who, according to the tradition preserved by Philo, were the first to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Consequently, a common abbreviation for Septuagint is the Roman numeral seventy, LXX. This designation is first found in the phrase “from the seventy” included in scribal notes in the earliest Christian manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament.
How and When Was the Septuagint Produced?
The beginning of the ancient Greek version of the Hebrew Bible is believed to have been in Alexandria, Egypt, during the reign of the Hellenistic king Ptolemy Philadelphus (285–247 BC), when a translation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch, was apparently produced. About AD 150, a document known as the Letter of Aristeas was written that describes the origin and production of this first translation as a defense of its authority and accuracy. Aristeas explains that King Ptolemy was gathering a copy of every book known at that time and commissioned a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures for his library in Alexandria. While the historical accuracy of the Letter of Aristeas is questionable, the extant Greek version of the Pentateuch does exhibit vocabulary that is consistent with an origin in third-century Alexandria. The motive for the translation certainly involved the needs of the Greek-speaking diaspora community of Jews (i.e., those Jews who had been scattered across Asia Minor and the Mediterranean world).
Aristeas claims that from Jerusalem six elders from each of the twelve tribes of Israel were chosen to produce the translation and were sent to Alexandria by the high priest Eleazer along with Hebrew scrolls from the temple. This tradition that seventy-two translators were originally involved in the work conflicts with Philo’s later claim that seventy translators worked independently for seventy days and produced identical translations of the Pentateuch. In both cases, the number of translators is no doubt symbolic. The former, seventy-two, indicates that the translation was produced by representatives of all Israel, and therefore should be read by all Israel as its authorized version. The latter number, seventy, is likely an allusion to the number of elders who assisted Moses in the administration of the law (Exodus 24), expressing the view that subsequent translators of the law are also assisting Moses in its administration. The tradition preserved by Philo that the seventy worked independently and yet produced identical translations is his claim to the divine inspiration of the Septuagint, and therefore a defense of an authority for the Old Greek translation that is at least equal to or superior to that of the Hebrew Scriptures or to subsequent competing Greek versions.
The Greek translation of the Pentateuch probably does date from the third century BC in Alexandria, but it is unknown precisely when and where translations of the other books of the Hebrew Bible were produced. Nonetheless it is clear that over the next few centuries the remaining books of the Hebrew Bible were also translated into Greek. By the beginning of the New Testament era, the entire Hebrew Bible had been completed and was in widespread use. Keep in mind that this was a collection of scrolls (bound books, called codices, were not in use yet). The term Septuagint is usually used in reference to this collection of scrolls.
Stela depicting Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt. Aristeas claimed that the Greek translation of the Old Testament occurred during his reign.
Over the next two hundred to three hundred years, however, additional Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible were also produced. These are referred to as “versions.” The Christian scholar Origen (ca. AD 185 to ca. AD 254) knew of as many as six Greek versions for many of the books of the Old Testament. In addition to the original Septuagint/Old Greek version, Origen knew of three additional major versions by name—those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. Moreover, for the book of Psalms and a few other Old Testament books, he also knew the versions now referred to as the Quinta, Sexta, and Septima. Because Aquila’s version was produced to closely follow the Hebrew text that had become the standard text in the early second century, Jewish communities tended to adopt Aquila’s version over the older Septuagint/Old Greek version, which continued to be used and preserved by Christians. Origen himself produced a revised version of the Septuagint for the Christian church that brought its text closer to the Hebrew text used at that time. Later, Lucian of Antioch (died AD 312) produced yet another version. One question of scholarly debate is whether these versions were produced by revision of an existing text or new translation of the Hebrew.
The modern edition of the Septuagint (Rahlfs-Hanhart, 2006), binds together the Greek version of each of the canonical Old Testament books along with a number of additional books commonly known as the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books, perhaps giving the appearance that the Septuagint is composed of a broader canon than the historic Protestant canon. The earliest Christian codices do include some of the apocryphal books bound together with the canonical books, but the apocryphal books as a corpus do not appear to have been accepted as canonical Scripture by either Second Temple Judaism or the Christian church.
The Septuagint and the Early Church
Though originally produced within Judaism, the Septuagint and other Greek versions are an important part of the heritage of the Christian church because the New Testament writers frequently quoted one of the Greek versions of the Old Testament. Therefore, the Septuagint and other Greek versions produced before Christ form the most direct literary and theological background for understanding the New Testament. Even though the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is the canonical text for the Protestant churches, methodologically sound exegesis of the New Testament writings must look to the Greek version of the Old Testament where it has been used in the New. As the early church expanded outside of Palestine, the vast majority of Christians could read the Old Testament only in a Greek translation, which, together with the Greek New Testament, stood as the Bible of the church for more than a thousand years. With the exception of a few individuals, such as Origen and Jerome, the church soon lost the ability to read the Hebrew Scriptures until the time of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, when the study of Hebrew was revived in the church. When the Roman Empire split in two at the end of the fourth century, the Eastern church continued to read the Greek versions as their Scripture, and the Greek Old Testament remains the canonical text in the Eastern Orthodox churches yet today.