What if textual critics were to operate from an presupposition of Faith, rather than assuming merely mechanical and psychological explanations for the transmission of texts? They might take to heart the fact that a majority of commentators in the Early Church accord divine inspiration to the Septuagint, and make textual-critical decisions accordingly. Isaiah 7:14 prophesies the virgin birth of Christ. St. Simeon was one of the translators of the Septuagint, and he nearly translated this verse incorrectly, using the phrase young woman in his translation instead of using the word virgin. However, thanks to divine intervention, he made the proper word selection. An angel appeared to him, providing the correct translation. I wonder how well this tradition figures into the theories of modern textual critics? By default, modern textual critics permit little or no consideration for divine inspiration. Instead of presupposing the truth of the Christian faith, their underlying assumptions ignore the supernatural. They assume that each and every textual question should be determined according to their theories regarding scribal errors, translation difficulties, and other factors which frequently influence the transmission of ancient texts. For 2000 years, the Orthodox Church has accepted the authority and divine inspiration of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, otherwise known as the Septuagint (LXX). As Gabriel Martini noted in his article, Is the Septuagint a Divinely Inspired Translation?, the vast majority of Early Church Fathers held to his view, including St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and St. Augustine of Hippo. Meanwhile, for the past 500 years, most Protestants have relied on the Masoretic Text when translating the Old Testament. Unfortunately, the Masoretic Text is riddled with numerous errors from beginning to end. I wrote about some of the problems with the Masoretic Text here: theorthodoxlife.wordpress/2012/03/12/masoretic-text-vs-original-hebrew/ Of course, there are a number of passages where the Septuagint and Masoretic Text do not differ significantly from one another. In those cases, it is not readily apparent whether the New Testament author was quoting from a Greek or Hebrew copy of the Old Testament. But things get interesting whenever the Septuagint and Masoretic Text diverge. Dr. R. Grant Jones identified a total of 78 passages where the New Testament quotes from the Septuagint, in disagreement with the Masoretic Text, and only 6 passages where it could be argued that the NT author might have favored a Hebrew text. Even if we were to stop here, that tips the scales 93% in favor of the Septuagint. I believe this data is enough to settle the case. Jesus and the apostles favored the Septuagint, quoted authoritatively from the Septuagint, and they treated the Septuagint as being divinely inspired.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 16:52:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015