The Book That Turned The World Upside Down

The disciples of Jesus turned their world upside down and the book they used to do it was the Old Testament! The interesting thing is that, just as we do today, they used a favorite translation more often than they used the original Hebrew and Aramaic. That translation was a popular version in Greek, called the Septuagint, meaning Seventy (abbreviated LXX, and named for the 70 elders who supposedly made the translation around 250 BC). Yes, by the end of the First Century the disciples had added the New Testament to their spiritual arsenal, but the NT depended completely upon the OT for its authority. The early Christians used the Septuagint with such powerful effect that “by the 2d century [AD], Jewish scholars, reacting to the widespread co-opting and polemical use of the LXX by Christians, began to produce editions intended to ... conform to the Hebrew text that had by then become normative in Palestine.”* In other words, Christians were making so many converts among the Jews using the Septuagint, that the Rabbis began changing the translation to weaken its testimony to Jesus of Nazareth!

Thankfully, today we have editions of both the Septuagint and the original Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures of the OT, powerfully verified by the Dead Sea Scrolls and other manuscripts. The preservation of these Scriptures is crucial because the authority of the NT depends upon them just as much today as it did in the early centuries of Christianity. Anyone who intends to teach or preach the NT with authority and depth, must master the strategic ideas of the OT and should access both the Hebrew and Greek editions of the OT, at least by way of the user-friendly Bible software now available.

* David Noel Freedman (ED), The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Doubleday, 1992: Septuagint.

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 5:17 PM