I would not call the Septuagint “the Bible of the apostles” without explaining what I meant by that description. The apostles’ use of Greek Scripture does not show that they all possessed one fixed volume or approved every translation choice in it. Dismissing the whole collection as a corrupt rival to the Hebrew Scriptures would also ignore what the evidence can show. I keep the Masoretic Hebrew text as my Old Testament base while examining the Greek carefully.
What the Septuagint Actually Is
The Septuagint brings together ancient Greek translations of the Old Testament made at different times by different people. Their approaches to the Hebrew sources vary: some follow the wording closely, while others explain an expression or translate its sense more freely. We need to recognize those differences before deciding what a particular Greek reading can tell us about its Hebrew source.
LXX is the Roman numeral for seventy, and the name recalls an ancient account of seventy-two Jewish elders translating the Law of Moses for an Egyptian king. In its earliest form, the account concerns the Torah, also called the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. Later retellings extended the claim to other books and sometimes described miraculous agreement among the translators. These are human accounts to be examined, not inspired biblical history. The NETS general introduction explains the name and the collection’s varied origins.
The translation of the Greek Pentateuch is commonly placed in Alexandria in Egypt during the third century BC. Greek-speaking Jews needed Scripture in the language they used, and translations of other books followed in subsequent centuries. As these writings circulated, their vocabulary became familiar in Jewish communities and later among Greek-speaking Christians. New Testament writers could therefore use expressions many of their readers already recognized.
Translators have to make judgments because Hebrew and Greek differ in sentence structure, idioms, and the range of meanings a word can carry. When a translation follows its source closely, we may be able to infer the Hebrew wording behind it. A freer rendering may instead show how the translator understood that wording. Those are both useful kinds of evidence, but an ancient interpretation does not automatically establish that the translator had a different Hebrew text.
The Hebrew manuscript a translator worked from is sometimes called his parent text. It may have differed from the wording later preserved in the Masoretic tradition, which would help explain a different Greek reading. Other differences could arise from the way a passage was translated or from later copying and revision of the Greek. To choose among those explanations, we have to examine the actual wording and the translation method used in that book.
The major surviving Greek Christian codices were copied centuries after the Pentateuch was first translated. A codex is a bound book rather than a scroll. Across those centuries, scribes copied and corrected the Greek, sometimes revising it toward Hebrew texts. Modern editors compare those manuscripts and decide which readings to print. A printed Septuagint brings together the results of those decisions; it is not a photograph of one first-century apostolic Bible.
The age of a surviving copy also needs to be distinguished from the age of its wording. A medieval Hebrew manuscript can preserve a much older consonantal text. An earlier Greek manuscript can contain a translator’s interpretation or a revision made after the original translation. Being the older physical object does not settle which reading is earlier.
I can consult that Greek evidence without allowing it to replace the Masoretic base. It may clarify an expression, preserve an ancient interpretation, or draw attention to a genuine textual question. Describing those possibilities accurately is part of responsible Bible study.
Why the Hebrew Text Remains the Base
Paul describes Israel’s privilege in receiving God’s revealed words.
What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.
By oracles, Paul means the words God had revealed and entrusted to the Jewish people. They received and transmitted the Old Testament through their worship, teaching, and scribal work. Those writings are chiefly Hebrew, with some Aramaic portions, so that history gives us reason to take the received Hebrew tradition seriously. Paul is describing a real privilege, without naming a later manuscript or declaring every copyist incapable of error.
The Masoretes were Jewish scribes and scholars who carefully transmitted the text during the early medieval period. Hebrew had been copied mainly with consonants, and they supplied vowel points and accents to guide its reading while preserving the older wording. Marginal notes and copying checks also helped guard the text. Adding those reading marks did not turn the Old Testament into a medieval composition. Earlier manuscripts show substantial continuity with its Hebrew wording, alongside differences that still need to be examined.
The Masoretic Text controls my Old Testament quotation, explanation, language work, and chronology. I consult Greek evidence in that setting, rather than silently substituting a preferred Greek line for the Hebrew reading. Jesus’ description of the Scriptures also directs us to the received body of writings that testified about Him.
Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms fit the Hebrew arrangement of Scripture, with Psalms standing prominently within the Writings. Jesus said that what was written concerning Him had to be fulfilled, then opened the disciples’ understanding. He was identifying the Scriptures’ witness to Himself, not endorsing every rendering found in a later Greek codex.
Because the New Testament was written in Greek, its writers could use a translation familiar to Greek readers. They could also translate the Hebrew, adapt a citation to its new sentence, or combine related passages. Under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, an apostle could explain a passage rather than simply reproduce an existing translation. We therefore find citations that closely match surviving Greek forms, others nearer the Hebrew, and some that differ from both.
I receive the New Testament wording as inspired in the passage where it appears. Paul’s words in Hebrews have authority because the Holy Spirit inspired Hebrews. Agreement with a Greek Old Testament rendering does not transfer that authority to every other line of the translation collection. We need to examine what the inspired writer actually says and what his citation establishes.
What the Major Passages Show
Isaiah’s promise concerning Immanuel shows how a Greek rendering can agree closely with an inspired New Testament interpretation.
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.
The Hebrew word almah describes a young woman of marriageable age and is entirely suited to a virgin. Greek Isaiah uses parthenos, the word Matthew uses when identifying the fulfillment in Mary’s conception.
So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”
Matthew identifies the virgin conception as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy and explains that the Son’s name means “God with us.” His inspired account establishes the virgin birth. The earlier Jewish Greek translation agrees with that fulfillment, but its choice of a word cannot tell us everything the translators understood about the event still to come.
I do not need to claim that either word could never be used more broadly in another setting. Context determines how a word is being used, and Matthew gives direct testimony about Mary’s conception. We can defend the virgin birth from that inspired testimony without stretching a dictionary definition beyond what it supports.
Psalm 22 raises a question about the wording of the Hebrew text itself. The line concerning the sufferer’s hands and feet needs to be compared with the ancient Greek and surviving Hebrew evidence.
For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots.
The NKJV quotation above preserves the traditional Christian rendering “They pierced My hands and My feet.” The Masoretic consonants and vowel points ordinarily read “like a lion” before “My hands and My feet,” which leaves an abrupt expression. Some understand the image as a lion attacking or pinning the sufferer’s hands and feet. The NET note discusses that reading and the grammatical difficulty it presents.
The ancient Greek verb is rendered “they dug,” which Christian translations associate with piercing. A Hebrew fragment from Nahal Hever appears to end the disputed word with waw rather than the Masoretic yod. These are two Hebrew letters whose shapes can be similar in ancient handwriting. This study of the fragment argues for that final letter and gives us reason to consider a verbal reading. The spelling, grammatical force, and weight of the different witnesses still need to be evaluated; identifying the letter does not settle every question about the line.
That evidence does not prove that medieval Jewish scribes deliberately erased a prophecy about Christ. To make an accusation of sabotage, we would need evidence of intent, not just two different readings. I should not admit that an allegation cannot be proved and then repeat it as though it explained the manuscripts. Defending Scripture requires care about what we say happened to its text.
The question about that Hebrew word must also be kept distinct from what the Gospels tell us directly. John records Jesus showing His wounds after rising bodily and Thomas responding to Him as Lord and God.
Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus showed Thomas His hands and side, and Thomas confessed Him as Lord and God. His wounds and bodily resurrection do not depend on our resolving every question about the Hebrew line. Psalm 22 also describes the sufferer’s mockery and the dividing of His garments before turning toward vindication and worldwide worship. We can recognize that Messianic witness without inventing a plot to suppress it.
Jeremiah presents differences that extend beyond a single word to the length and arrangement of the book. Notice the seventy-year promise in this Masoretic passage. That promise is also present in the Greek.
For thus says the LORD: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place.
Greek Jeremiah is roughly one-eighth shorter than the Masoretic book and places the oracles against the nations elsewhere. Its shorter length does not mean that the seventy-year promise was deleted. That promise appears at Greek Jeremiah 36:10, corresponding to Hebrew 29:10, as the NETS translation of Jeremiah shows. The different chapter number should not be mistaken for a missing promise.
Hebrew fragments from Qumran agree at important points with the shorter form, showing that a shorter Hebrew text of Jeremiah circulated in antiquity. Emanuel Tov’s study of Jeremiah discusses those agreements. This gives us evidence for a different Hebrew parent text, rather than a basis for assuming that the Greek translator arbitrarily removed thousands of words from the Masoretic book.
Other material really is absent from the shorter Greek form, however, including Jeremiah 33:14-26. Here is part of that passage as quoted in the NKJV:
‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the LORD, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: ‘In those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David A Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In those days Judah will be saved, And Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ “For thus says the LORD: ‘David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel; nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before Me, to kindle grain offerings, and to sacrifice continually.'”
I receive this promise as inspired Scripture, including what God says about David and His covenant faithfulness. Its absence from the shorter Greek form is a real textual difference, but it cannot cancel the Davidic covenant taught elsewhere or God’s fulfillment of His promises in Jesus. The evidence of a shorter Hebrew source also gives us no basis to assume that a Greek translator was trying to remove a prophecy about the Messiah.
Differences in Genesis require us to ask what each number measures. A father’s age at his son’s birth and the years he lived afterward contribute to his total lifespan, but a change in the first figure need not change that total.
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.
The Masoretic record gives Adam 130 years before Seth’s birth and eight hundred afterward, totaling 930. A common Greek reading gives 230 before Seth and seven hundred afterward, again totaling 930. The birth falls a hundred years later in that Greek sequence, but Adam does not live longer.
We cannot apply Adam’s pattern to every generation, and Greek manuscripts also differ from one another at some points. The resulting longer chronologies still measure time in thousands of years, rather than the millions or billions required by evolution. I retain the Masoretic numbers without claiming that someone who prefers a longer Greek figure has thereby become an evolutionist. The related study on lifespans in the MT and LXX follows the calculations more fully.
Luke’s genealogy brings a further question into this comparison. Between Shelah and Arphaxad, he names a Cainan who does not appear in the Masoretic Genesis 11. His name needs to be considered with the received New Testament text in view.
the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Luke includes that Cainan in Jesus’ ancestry. His name appears in the Textus Receptus, the traditional printed Greek New Testament underlying the NKJV, and in the received Byzantine manuscript tradition. I retain that reading rather than remove the name to protect a simpler chronology. The study on the Textus Receptus explains the received text more fully.
Masoretic Genesis 11 goes directly from Arphaxad to Shelah, while many Greek Genesis manuscripts include Cainan. I keep the wording of both Genesis and Luke, even though it leaves textual and genealogical questions to consider. Ancestral lists can be selective, and we cannot fully reconstruct every stage of transmission. Those limits do not obscure Luke’s identification of Christ’s actual human ancestry, nor do they justify deleting a name to make a chart easier to draw.
Stephen’s account of Jacob’s household also uses a number familiar from Greek forms of the Old Testament.
Then Joseph sent and called his father Jacob and all his relatives to him, seventy-five people.
Acts gives seventy-five people, while Masoretic Genesis 46 gives seventy. Greek Genesis includes additional descendants of Joseph’s sons and gives a total of seventy-five. Before calling the two totals contradictory, we need to examine whom each list counts. The Hebrew total includes Joseph and his two sons already in Egypt, so it is not simply the number of people who physically traveled down together on one occasion.
I receive both inspired counts and compare the membership of the lists. In the Hebrew reckoning, sixty-six becomes seventy when Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph’s two sons are included. The Greek list extends Joseph’s family further. The UBS translators’ discussion of Acts 7:14 proposes adding sixty-six from Canaan to the nine descendants counted in Greek Genesis 46:27, leaving Jacob and Joseph outside that reckoning. That is an explanation of how the totals may be compared, not a claim that both lists count exactly the same people. A reconciliation needs to state how it handles descendants, wives, the family’s head, and those already in Egypt. I should explain those decisions instead of merely announcing that the numbers agree.
We should acknowledge the correspondence between Acts and Greek Scripture without making it prove more than this example shows. Seventy-five belongs in the inspired text of Acts, and seventy remains the inspired count in Genesis. Agreement with a Greek number here does not require replacing every different Hebrew number elsewhere.
Paul’s use of Psalm 40 in Hebrews 10 brings the discussion to Christ’s coming and His obedient offering of Himself. Here the difference concerns the body prepared for the Son, rather than a family name or a numerical total.
Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come– In the volume of the book it is written of Me– To do Your will, O God.'”
In Hebrews, Paul writes “a body You have prepared for Me,” using wording found in the Greek Psalter tradition. Masoretic Psalm 40 speaks of ears God has opened or dug, an expression concerning a servant fitted to hear and obey. Hebrews gives the inspired explanation of the Son coming in a real body to do God’s will. I would not rewrite the inspired New Testament wording to make it match the Hebrew expression.
The passage contrasts ritual offerings that could not remove sin with Christ’s obedient offering of His body once for all (Hebrews 10:8-10). I receive Paul’s explanation because Hebrews is inspired, even though I cannot reconstruct every step linking the Hebrew wording, Greek translation, and apostolic citation. Greek editions and manuscripts have their own history, so comparing one modern printed Greek text with one Hebrew edition cannot establish everything about the wording Paul used.
Paul’s inspired citation gives us reason to acknowledge its connection with Greek wording, but it does not give every line in the Septuagint the authority of Hebrews.
What the Manuscripts and Canon Show
Which books a manuscript contains is a different question from which words appear in one verse. Some large Greek Christian codices bind Jewish religious books commonly called the Apocrypha alongside Old Testament books, but their contents and order vary. They cannot establish that the apostles accepted one fixed pre-Christian Greek volume with a single table of contents.
Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, and Maccabees can help us understand ancient religion, history, and language, but I do not receive them as inspired Scripture. Their usefulness and their place beside biblical books do not establish inspiration. We recognize the same principle when maps and study notes share the covers of a modern Bible without becoming Scripture themselves.
The New Testament may echo expressions found in these writings, and those similarities deserve to be acknowledged. No clear quotation formula, however, identifies one of these books as Scripture. Resemblance does not by itself establish recognition within the canon, the collection of books received as God’s Word. I receive the Hebrew Old Testament canon, its Law and Prophets with the Writings completing the collection, as the standard by which later works are tested.
A book’s place in the canon does not settle every question about how its wording was copied. The Dead Sea Scrolls provide much earlier Hebrew evidence for that work of transmission. Discoveries near Qumran, northwest of the Dead Sea, began in 1947. Many readings resemble the older Hebrew form known as proto-Masoretic. The Great Isaiah Scroll is recognizably the same book, including its Servant passages, while also preserving differences in spelling, grammar, and actual wording.
Other scrolls sometimes agree with readings associated with the Samaritan Pentateuch or a Hebrew source behind the Greek. Jeremiah is a prominent example. Scholars call this textual plurality: more than one form of a book circulated in that period. Neither “the scrolls prove the MT” nor “the scrolls disprove the MT” adequately describes all the evidence.
The scrolls show both careful transmission and genuine variation. We should examine the actual agreements and differences instead of inventing a percentage and applying it to every word or every biblical book. The related study on the Dead Sea Scrolls considers what the manuscripts preserve and what damaged fragments cannot establish.
God inspired Scripture and has preserved His Word. The surviving copies give us evidence by which to identify and examine differences; finding a variant does not mean that Scripture disappeared. I keep the received Masoretic base and consult ancient versions as secondary evidence. A proposed reconstruction needs more than novelty or ingenuity before it can claim to improve the wording.
Psalm 12 gives us confidence in God’s truthfulness and faithfulness amid a corrupt generation. The LORD’s pure words stand against the flattering lips and proud speech of men, and He promises to arise for the oppressed. Some use that psalm as though it predicts a later manuscript edition without visible copying differences, but it names neither the Masoretes nor the Greek translators. It does not identify a future printed edition or make that technical comparison its subject.
I can trust the purity of God’s words without making that psalm answer a technical question it never addresses. Claims about particular manuscripts still need manuscript evidence. God’s preservation gives us reason to examine that evidence honestly instead of treating every difficult line as a threat that must be hidden.
How Christians Should Use the Septuagint
The Greek Old Testament can help us understand ancient Jewish interpretation and the religious vocabulary familiar to New Testament readers. Where a translation closely follows its source, it may also give evidence of the Hebrew wording behind it. A freer rendering needs to be examined according to the translator’s method. We should not treat an interpretation as though it were a word-for-word record of a different Hebrew manuscript.
Before teaching from a variant, I need to identify the edition I am citing, the manuscripts that support it, and the way that book was translated. If more than one explanation fits the evidence, I should acknowledge that limit. Saying “the Septuagint says” without those details leaves the reader unable to tell why the wording differs, how early it is, or whether it appears in every Greek manuscript.
When an apostolic citation agrees with Greek wording, explaining the connection plainly helps the reader follow what the text actually shows. Concealing that agreement would weaken our defense of Scripture. We must also preserve the authority of the inspired citation without giving every translated line the same authority. No essential Christian doctrine depends on selecting an uncertain Greek variant against the Masoretic text.
Clear passages teach the Trinity, Christ’s full deity and humanity, His virgin birth, bodily resurrection, and future bodily return. They also teach salvation through His blood by grace through faith. Jeremiah’s shorter Greek form cannot cancel God’s covenant with David, and a disputed word in Psalm 22 cannot cancel the Gospel testimony to Jesus’ wounds. We read a difficult passage alongside the rest of Scripture.
The Law anticipated Christ’s coming, the Prophets described His suffering and saving work, and the Psalms spoke of His resurrection and reign. Greek translation helped carry that witness into the ancient world. Understanding its place should direct us to the Savior those writings proclaim.
Jesus is the eternal, uncreated Son, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin and completely sinless. His atonement rests on His perfection and His voluntarily giving Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice. Wicked men tortured and crucified Him, and He willingly shed His innocent blood and died. His saving sacrifice through His blood and death was complete before His burial and bodily resurrection. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct divine Persons who acted in perfect unity in our salvation.
Christ died for the whole world, and God genuinely offers salvation to every person, though His grace can be resisted. Everyone who repents and believes in Jesus receives forgiveness and justification, God’s declaration that the believer is righteous before Him. God gives that person new birth, and the Holy Spirit permanently indwells and seals the believer, whose salvation is eternally secure. That assurance gives no permission for lawlessness, and an empty profession of Christian faith does not establish that someone has been born again. Obedience follows as the fruit of that life, never as payment that earns salvation or keeps us saved.
I also need to submit to the passages I understand. Resolving a disputed reading must not become an excuse for postponing repentance or disregarding a plain command. Accuracy in teaching and obedience in conduct both belong to receiving God’s Word.
My Final Thoughts
I keep the Masoretic Text as my Old Testament base and receive the New Testament citations as inspired in their own settings. The Septuagint is valuable secondary evidence, and its books and manuscripts need to be examined individually. I can acknowledge an agreement or a difficult reading without surrendering that position or inventing an explanation I cannot defend. Careful study should make my teaching more accurate and direct me to trust and obey the Christ whom Scripture reveals.