Why does the Septuagint matter today? Our speaker is Christian McShaffery, who serves as the pastor of Five Solas Church in Reidsburg, Wisconsin, and he served there since its founding in 2004. He's a graduate of the Worsham College of Mortuary Science. He earned a Master of Divinity degree at Mid-America Reform Seminary in Indiana. He has several involvements. He manages or is a member of several organizations, including KepPure LLC, Text and Translation Webzine, the Bonson Institute, for which he serves as vice chairman, and he is the stated clerk of the Presbytery of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and he's also on the Board of Visitors for the Seminario Reformado de las Americas. His most recent book is titled, A Place to Hide, Equipping Ordinary Moms to Survive a Public Shooting. He is married to Kelly, They have six children and are anticipating the wedding of their eldest next month. And so with that, we welcome Christian and look forward to hearing from him. Imagine the world as we know it today, destroyed by nuclear holocaust. A remnant of men managed to survive. Eventually they begin to rebuild, but it takes centuries New nations are eventually formed. An entirely new language evolves. And yes, there are still Christians because God's word, the gospel, and Christ's church are indestructible as promised. Like the faithful in every former age of men, these saints have genuine interest in the scripture and naturally desire to have a translation in their own language so they get to work. First, they set out to compile all the manuscripts and versions they can find. They know that the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts are most valuable, being the locus of divine inspiration. But most of what they find are versions. Namely, versions in English. So they quickly come to realize that this was the most prominent international language of the former age. As they translate, they came on occasion to words, they encountered words that were difficult or debatable, and there was one man on the committee who was always quick to say, trying to resolve the matter, saying, but the English says, but knowing that these believers understood that the scriptures were originally penned in Hebrew and in Greek, one might have expected the other members of the committee to say, interesting, brother, but so what? But they didn't. Instead, they reconsidered their renderings in light of this old translation that was at one time so widely used. And here's the worst part of the scenario, which will lead us into the main point of this lecture. When the man said, the English says, he was not referring to any single authorized or printed edition of Holy Scripture, but to the entire corpus of English translations that existed for some five centuries. Now I know it's hard for us to imagine the destruction and rebuilding of all things civilized, but that of course is not the main point of the illustration. It is intended to expose the folly of looking to ancient versions in order to identify the authentic or original text of Holy Writ. I chose English as the example because you know how meaningless it would be today for a man to say, but the English says when attempting to resolve a textual discrepancy or difficulty. The English, really? Which one? The Protestant one that contains 66 books, or the Catholic one that contains 73? The English, you say. Which one? The one based on the received text, or the majority text, or the eclectic text, or maybe the statistical restoration project, I think it's called. The English, which one? the one that follows a formal equivalent manner of translation, or one of the many that use a dynamic equivalent translational approach, or maybe one of the admitted paraphrases. The English, which one, of what provenance, who translated it, and why? Where and when was it translated? Why was it translated? What was the motive? How many churches used it? Did any churches, in fact, use it? Now, when it comes to our English versions, we can answer a lot of those questions because all of that information is conveniently printed right in the preface. But with the so-called Septuagint, it is simply not so. The title itself, The Septuagint, is an unfortunate and even misleading misnomer. It gives the impression that it is a single printed volume, when in fact, and we have learned this today, it is not. It is a vast corpus of ancient Greek literature that includes many different books from many different locations, written in many different editions by different people for many different purposes. So in order to answer the question that has been assigned to me by the society, I think it might be best first to answer a more foundational question being this, why Or to what extent do any versions matter? Not just the Septuagint, but why and to what extent do any versions matter? And they do matter, by the way. They matter a great deal because they give us access to the word of God. But they do not and cannot matter as much as most people think in this modern or post-modern age. Explain why versions matter. Versions or translations of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are important because they prove the authority and the power of the Lord Jesus Christ as the governor of all nations. As he said, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, go ye therefore and teach all nations. baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world, amen. With these words, the Lord Jesus Christ authorized and empowered his church to take and to teach his word to every kindred and tongue and people and nation. And since the languages of these nations were confused by God at the Tower of Babel, the mission of the church necessarily assumes the work of translation. When God first divided the nations, it appears that there were 70 languages. By the time Christ came, there were many more. Today there are thousands. So this assigned task, teach all nations, was no small task. It may have seemed even somewhat impossible. But just as God was pleased to confuse the languages in the old covenant, he was also merciful. Merciful to prepare the old world for the new covenant by, you might say, consolidating the languages. When the prophet Daniel revealed the succession of global empires, he predicted one king who would essentially solve in advance the challenge of bringing the gospel to the nations in the first century. It was Alexander the Great. to be sure he was no friend to the people of God. He was in fact hated by them for erasing their culture, slowly but surely. It was called Hellenization, and it spread, just as Daniel prophesied, toward the four winds of the heaven, so much so that by the time Jesus and the apostles began to preach the kingdom, most of the known world spoke the Greek language. Even before that time, the Jews had begun translating their Hebrew scriptures into Greek, so it was no great surprise then that the New Testament was penned in that same international language. Translations then, and this positively speaking, prove God's kingdom come. all the ends of the world shall remember, and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee." That was the prophecy, that was the promise, and its veracity is proven every time the scriptures are translated into a man's mother tongue. That's why translations matter so much. At the same time, all of this is still something of an under the sun matter because God's word in the original languages never changes. It has been forever settled in heaven. This attribute, this attribute of scripture called immutability does not properly belong to translations. because none of them are identical to one another, and none of them are superior to the inspired original. Considered, not all translations are equal. This is just as true today as it was in the ancient world. There truly is no new thing under the sun. We are familiar, for example, with the broad spectrum of translational approaches that are employed by scholars today. They range from word for word, to thought for thought, to loose paraphrases, and the same kind of diversity can be observed in the ancient Greek translations of the Old Testament. The earliest versions that were translated by Jews who settled in Palestine and in Alexandria during the Diaspora are generally regarded as most careful and most accurate when it comes to reflecting the underlying Hebrew text. And this should make perfect sense to us because it appears that these earliest versions, especially of the law, were probably intended for actual use in the synagogues. Piety. It is always a great aid to integrity in translation. More, these early translations were, or the early translators were presumably more conversant in the ancient Hebrew language than later generations because again, Hellenization slowly but surely erased the identity of the ancient Hebrew race. Now, as it is with all translations, each successive version or recension has its own strengths and its own weaknesses. The general approaches have been conveniently categorized as, first, the Pentateuchal tradition. It recognized, it seems, the earliest versions recognized that these are something of a standard because this approach is very careful. It sought to preserve the meaning of the Hebrew text. It even sought to preserve, in many occasions, the word order of the Hebrew text. We also then have, secondly, the periphrastic tradition, and this, implied by the name, was obviously not as careful or conservative. It did not hesitate to change word order. or to introduce new vocabulary. It would even add, remove, or relocate entire sentences. Thirdly, we have the revisional tradition, and this later movement sought to correct the errors that were introduced by the periphrastic tradition, bringing renderings back into a more careful and accurate representation of the Hebrew text. Now, though these categories are helpful, and indeed they are, do realize that they do not describe three particular versions or editions of the Septuagint. There were many more than that. And again, not one was identical to another. And this is exactly what we would expect to see when examining translations, whether ancient or modern. This is also why we cannot rely on translations to identify any kind of shared archetype or less reconstruct the inspired original. The church father Origen attempted something like that in his Hexapla, setting the Hebrew text and a translation of it, and then the most popular editions of the Septuagint in columns so that he could identify and perhaps resolve discrepancies. But he was honest with what he found. And here I quote, now there is plainly a great difference in the copies. either from the carelessness of scribes, or the rash and mischievous correction of the text by others, or from the additions or omissions made by others at their own discretion, proving, again, all translations are not the same. That is also to say, not all translations are equal. Some might even reflect the kind of carelessness or mischievousness which Origen describes so long ago. And this can be mentally jarring to the average reader of scripture. I mentioned how the periphrastic tradition would add entire sentences at times. So imagine sitting in church, worshiping God, reading along with the pastor, particularly in Psalm 145, and while verse 13 in your version ends with the phrase, thy dominion endureth throughout all generations, the pastor continues reading and says, the Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. Curious, you ask the pastor after worship, and he explains. that verse fell out of the Masoretic text and has been recently restored by consulting the ancient versions. That is the prevailing theory in modern textual scholarship. The Hebrew Masoretic text from which our Bibles used to be translated is regarded as late because it is chronologically, but it's also regarded as corrupt a corrupted form of the text. So what the scholars counsel is this, we need to look to the older, even ancient translations to discover what was most likely the original reading. This is a relatively new way of using the Greek Septuagint. If you consult the old theology books, and here I'm speaking of Protestant and Reformed authors, the Protestant and Reformed systematicians, the role of the Septuagint was mainly philological. That is, helping when it came to understanding the historical development of words and syntax. Example. when discussing the mode of baptism, R.L. Dabney took the Greek root bapto and the verb baptizo and traced the usage of those words through history, including in his survey, the lexicons, Homer, Hellenistic and classical Greek, and of course, the subdugent. This is a good, this is a proper use of ancient versions. They can give us a sense of how certain words were used in the ancient world, but you will not find a classic Reformed theologian who suggests that the Septuagint is in any way superior to the Hebrew text of scripture. Nevertheless, this is where scholarship is headed today. And I am going to suggest that it is a conspicuous departure from the Reformed tradition, because all of the Reformed maintained this next principle, sola scriptura. But first this. I said no translation is equal to another. Consider also that no translation is superior to the original. Every faithful translation of Scripture does carry with it divine authority, but here we must also make a careful distinction. The doctrine is titled Authoritas Divina Duplex, and it literally means there is in Scripture a twofold divine authority, one of the things and one of words. The originally inspired text of scripture contained both. The things that are taught and the words that are used to teach these things are both immediately inspired by God and authoritative in an equal and absolute sense. Translations, on the other hand, and also by very definition, lose one aspect of that authority because they take the divine words and transmute them into another form, into a different language. For example, you can confess the Lord is my shepherd in many different languages and the meaning, the thing, the doctrine remains unchanged. It is the word of God. The authoritas rerum, the authority of the thing, remains unaltered. However, the authoritas verborum, the authority of the words, is lost because the name Jehovah no longer appears in the same characters or external accidents that were penned by the author, David. Now, does that mean we should forsake the use of translations? God forbid. But it does mean that when there is some lack of clarity or when there is some controversy, we must make our final appeal to the inspired original rather than to any version. But again, modern scholarship is heading in a different direction, the opposite direction, with its assumed corruption of the Masoretic text, and with its infatuation with ancient sources, we are presently witnessing, as I said, the potential forfeiture of one of our most cherished doctrines as the Reformed. sola scriptura, that the Bible alone is the final judge of all controversies of religion. That was a shared conviction of all the Reformed and all the Protestant Orthodox. And today, if you asked, most Christians would undoubtedly agree. But here's the deeper question. If the Bible alone is the supreme judge of all controversies, which Bible? This was a question that had to be answered in the times of the Protestant Reformation, because the Protestants and the Papists preferred two different versions. The Protestants preached the gospel from versions translated from the Hebrew and the Greek, but the Papists used and taught from an older version, the Latin Vulgate, and the Romanists were adamant Quote from the Council of Trent. If anyone does not accept these books in their entirety, with all their parts, as they have customarily been read in the Catholic Church, and as they are found in the Old Vulgate edition, let him be anathema. The Protestants were also adamant. The Old Testament in Hebrew. And the New Testament in Greek being immediately inspired by God and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages are therefore authentical. This difference has never been resolved. It is what continues, amongst other things, to separate us from the Church of Rome, but it is also what separates us from many other religions and sects. We, as the Reformed, look to the Hebrew, and Greek for the authoritas divina duplex. And the importance of maintaining that conviction can be demonstrated in a variety of apologetic contexts. We'll now explore that with some examples. The Septuagint and Apologetics. Uninspired versions of the word of God have been in circulation for over 2,000 years. And it seems that in every passing generation, someone uses them to challenge or undermine or even contradict the Hebrew scriptures. Hence, the need for apologetics. For those who are not familiar, the term itself, apologetics, comes from the Greek language, apologia, which literally means a word in defense. a speaking in defense of our Christian faith and hope, and there are, of course, many different approaches to Christian apologetics. Some are more philosophical, some are more evidential, but the best Christian apologetic is one that begins and ends with the self-attesting authority of Holy Scripture, the doubly divine authority of Holy Scripture. But again, it brings us back to the question, which form of scripture? Which form? The original Hebrew or one of the translations of it? Let me show you some examples of what happens when you confuse the two. First example, the Jews. Chronologically speaking, the unbelieving Jews were the first to oppose our Christian faith. And one of their most common accusations was this. The Christians have tinkered with scripture. The Christians have modified the Old Testament. One notable example is found in Isaiah chapter seven and verse 14 where the Lord promises to give a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Now, the Christians, of course, would say, look, even Isaiah the prophet foresaw the virgin birth of our savior. But the Jews pointed to the Septuagint and said, it's just that Greek version that gave you that idea by mistranslating Alma with Parthenos. Now sadly, in defending the virgin birth, some of the earliest apologists, like Justin Martyr, defended the perfection, or at least the usefulness of the subtuagent, rather than simply saying, all virgins aside, Matthew, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, interprets Alma as Parthenos, so the correct interpretation is indeed a virgin, shall conceive. Interestingly, modern liberal scholars use the same example and argument to accuse Christians today of inventing the virgin birth due to this alleged and ancient mistranslation. Next example, the Aryans. The Aryans were an anti-Trinitarian cult of the fourth century AD, and the challenge they raised against our holy Christian faith was this, there was a time when the sun was not. In order to prove that from scripture, they pointed to Proverbs chapter eight and verse 22, in which we are given to hear the voice of the pre-incarnate Son of God The Lord possessed me. In the beginning of his way, before his works of old, the Lord possessed me. The Septuagint reads differently here, using the phrase kurios ectase me, which is the Lord created me. Athanasius did offer an apologetic against this heresy, but he did so by granting the Septuagint's translation, and then arguing that it's only the Lord's humanity that is in reference there. It is only the humanity of Christ that was created. A better approach would have been simply to say this, the Septuagint is but a translation. Come now, and let us go to the source. Come, let us debate the Hebrew verb kanah. Next example, the Greek Orthodox. Eastern Orthodoxy is an ancient form of Christianity. It developed very early in history, and it has remained largely unchanged to this day. And interestingly, for the purpose of this conference, it is the only branch of Christianity that I know that claims the Septuagint as its Holy Bible. Now, Greek Orthodox scholars are honest enough to admit that their Bible is actually a critical edition of codices Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Vaticanus. containing sections which may or may not be original, and which may or may not therefore be fit for use in worship and piety, and they are completely comfortable with that level of textual uncertainty. In fact, they see it as something of the essence of their faith. They regard our desire, the Protestant desire, to possess a single authoritative text as woefully misguided, One of their priests puts it this way, quote, to try to establish such a text is an attempt to circumvent tradition. The actual life of the holy scriptures in the church through the last 20 centuries, it cuts us off from the richness and depth of that tradition. Any apologetic therefore that begins and ends with scripture will not, probably not be effectual with a Greek Orthodox person. Because scripture is simply not their first and their final authority. The same is true of our next example, Roman Catholicism. Like the Greek Orthodox, the Roman Catholic Church uses a different Bible than the Protestants. Their Bible has seven extra books in the Old Testament, Tobit, Judith, First and Second Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch. In defense of these books, Catholic apologists will point to this subdugent as proof that they were inspired because of their early inclusion in the canon. As for the Hebrew Masoretic text, which does not contain these books, Catholics claim that it is a corrupted witness to the original. They did this, by the way, all the way back in the times of the Blessed Reformation, insisting, in fact, that the Reformers, if they truly were interested in returning to the sources, should have preferred the earlier Septuagint rather than to the later Masoretic text. But in such claims and challenges, the Roman Catholics are disingenuous. For even if we were to agree on a common text base and allow for the inclusion of the apocrypha, a deeper disagreement would still and ever remain, that being sola scriptura. And the Church of Rome is honest. It does not regard scripture as the final judge of all controversies of religion. So in some sense, only in some sense, debating matters of canon and text with them is ultimately ineffectual. The same can also be said of our next example, the Muslims. The most common charge that the Muslim brings against Christianity is that our scriptures are corrupted and that they can't be trusted. They not only point to the variance in the extant manuscripts, but interestingly and ironically enough, they even argue along the same lines of Bart Ehrman's theory of orthodox corruption. However, street evangelist Sheikh Uthman Ibn Faruq employs a very simple argument for the superiority of the Quran over scripture, an argument for the authenticity of the Quran, and it's this, a single language. A single language of inspiration, transmission, and preservation. Muslims, you see, believe that the Quran was revealed to Muhammad and preserved, and I do quote, word by word, letter by letter, even the pronunciation is preserved, unquote. And speaking of our Bible, the sheik says, this book is based upon some of the writings that are based on some of the writings of some of the writings of some of the writings that might have been the followers of Jesus, but it's definitely been corrupted. His proof? For such corruption, it is this. The Bible was originally written in Hebrew. Jesus spoke in Aramaic. The apostles wrote in Greek. You read in English. The Muslim, you see, sees this dislodging of scripture from its inspired verbal form as inherent corruption. And here I find it interesting that it is only confessional bibliologists who are able to offer this simple apologetic word by word, letter by letter, even the pronunciation preserved. Yes, we have that in the Masoretic text. We're the only ones who can say that because we're the only ones who believe it anymore, even and sadly amongst conservative branches. of reformed Christianity. And this leads then to my next example, the modernists. Most modern Christians, it breaks my heart to say it, most modern Christians do not believe that every word in every letter, and much less the very pronunciation, Hebrew vowel points. They don't believe that these things have been perfectly preserved throughout the ages in scripture. They will indeed speak of a general preservation, but never to the extent that we have all of God's words all in the right place in any single printed edition of the Holy Bible. And this is why, back to the discussion of versions, This is why there are so many footnotes in our modern versions. They're intended to alert the reader to an alleged uncertainty in the text, presumably so that the reader can then go and weigh the options and make an educated and pious decision. Without introducing a new example, let me here refer back to one previously mentioned. Proverbs 8 and verse 22. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way before his works of old. The English standard version includes the Arian alternative in a footnote, leaving the reader to decide whether possessed or created is the correct reading. But it is hard for me to find this anything but disingenuous. because the footnote says only this, Septuagint, created. Most Christians don't even know what the Septuagint is. And even if they did, the footnote does not equip them. It does not give them the information they need to research the matter. Which Septuagint? Palestinian? Alexandrian, Aquila, Theodosian, Symmachus, Lucian, these footnotes do not enlighten. They only undermine the authenticity and the authority of the Hebrew original. The experts know this and they are not alarmed by it because again, in their minds, the Hebrew text is but one of many witnesses to what God may have spoken through the prophets. In fact, the more witnesses, the better. By all means, unearth more. This is what keeps the academy funded. This is also what keeps the esoteric mind so perpetually titillated. Next example, the esoterics, I will call them. And here I admit, Septuagintal studies, it is such a small and specialized field of bibliology. There are not many men in the world who understand the intricacies and complexities of this corpus, this vast corpus of ancient literature. A few do, however, and sometimes they seem like the men Paul encountered at the Areopagus. Men who spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. The difference being some modern scholars seem to spend their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some old thing. That is one of the reasons they prefer the Septuagint to the Masoretic text. The assumption being, actually it's an established canon, is this. Quote from Hort, the shorter the interval between the time of the autograph and the end of the period of transmission in question, the stronger the presumption that earlier date implies greater purity of text. In other words, older is better. And sometimes I fear that this inordinate interest in obscure antiquity it sometimes leads men beyond the bounds of ordinary text critical investigation. And a prime example might be the late Dr. Michael S. Heiser. In Deuteronomy chapter 32 and verse eight, it is written that God set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. He did that with the nations being 70, He did that with particular interest for his elect, the 70 of Jacob's kin that went down to Egypt. So I might say simple enough, a prime example of biblical symbolism and parallelism. That is, however, until a linguistic parallel was found in ancient Ugaritic mythology, which states that the head of their pagan pantheon fathered, guess how many gods? 70. His name was Ale, so they are called the Sons of Ale. And here we might stop and say, well, what in the world does Ugaritic mythology have to do with the study of Holy Scripture? Not much. That is, unless you see the Septuagint as superior to the Masoretic text. While some editions of the Septuagint, namely Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, agree with the Masoretic reading, Bene Israel, most read Angelon Theou, angels of God, which certain men see as interpretive for sons of God. This has proven too enticing for the esoteric and unrestrained mind, and it has resulted in a new doctrine called the Divine Council Theory, namely that these angels or sons of God are a pantheon of divine beings who administer affairs in the cosmos under the leadership and authority of the Most High God. Now, for those who have never heard of such a thing, Or for those who are thinking, oh, this sounds a bit far-fetched, it's actually right there in your English Standard Version, and not in a footnote. The Septuagint-influenced reading, Sons of God, has been adopted into the main text, and the Masoretic text has been relegated to a footnote. Conclusion. This is but a sampling of what happens when you grant to versions the authority that properly and only belongs to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. And again, there have always been translations. There have always been versions, and that is not a bad thing. It is proof of God's redemptive love for the nations of this world, the nations that he once scattered in judgment, And granted, there were even plenty of versions available in the days of Jesus, but he had only one book in mind when he said, verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. It is only the Hebrew text that even contains jots and tittles. which alone possess the inspired attribute of authoritas verborum, so his promise applies most directly and perfectly to no version, however so ancient. Let us therefore hold fast, brothers and sisters, Let us hold fast to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, immediately inspired by God, kept pure in all ages by his singular care and providence, and printed today in those versions which are based on the Masoretic text of the Old Testament. Amen.