The LXX and Septuagint are names for Greek versions (translations) of the Hebrew Old Testament. Ryan Reeves offers what might be considered a “typical” Western Evangelical view of the LXX:
“The Septuagint is quite possibly the most important translation of the Bible. It is the oldest translation of the OT into another language...most of the direct citations of the OT in the NT match the Septuagint, not the Hebrew Bible (or Masoretic Text [MT]).”
Many, if not most, Western evangelicals believe that a somewhat “official” Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament harks back to the 3rd-century B.C. Reeves recognizes, however, that there is no such thing as the Septuagint, but that what is available are rather eclectic critical texts (e.g. Brenton, Rahlfs) that attempt to reconstruct what they believe was the original Greek Old Testament, using the extant Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament.
On the other extreme are those who believe that the LXX or Septuagint is a Christian-era development – that is, no LXX (Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) existed before perhaps the 1st-century A.D.
Frank Welte, a writer at Hope for Israel Ministries, a radical and heretical (denying the deity of Jesus) Hebrew Roots movement, says:
“So the only LXX we have today stands exposed as a corrupt forgery!”[i]
Several “King James Onlyists” agree with this view of the LXX, without holding the other odd and heretical views of Hope for Israel Ministries – which ministries is not a KJVO group. Welte also states that, “A translation from the original text CANNOT possibly be better than the original.”
Samuel C. Gipp represents a view held by some King James Onlyists. In “Was There a BC Septuagint,” he asks and answers:
“QUESTION: What is the LXX?
“ANSWER: A figment of someone’s imagination.”
Doubtless many KJVOs are influenced on this point by Peter Ruckman. In 1996, he published The Mythological Septuagint. In it he rails against an early LXX, but also admits to two B.C. fragments, writing:
“Ryland Papyrus 458 and Fouad 266 are the only ‘B.C.’ fragments found in 2,400 years of babbling about a B.C. LXX which ‘the apostles quoted’: none of them quoted Rylands 458 or Fouad 266. (The Mythological Septuagint, Peter S. Ruckman. Pensacola, FL: BB Bookstore, 1996, p. 55.)
Earlier in The Christian’s Handbook of Manuscript Evidence (Peter S. Ruckman, Pensacola, FL: BB Bookstore, 1970, pp. 48-51), he only mentioned the Ryland fragment as early. I think that Ruckman is correct that there are no New Testament quotes from anything in the Rylands fragment (but there might be one to consider in the Fouad fragment).
As best I can find, in general scholars seem to think there are about 10 fragments of part of Greek Old Testament translation that predate the time of Christ. LXX scholar Alfred Rahlfs (1865-1935) system identifies and numbers 10 manuscripts that are believed to be from the centuries before Christ. In his numbering system these are older manuscripts: 801, 802, 803, 804, 805, 819 (4Q LXXDeut), 847, 848, 942 (Fouad 266), and 957 (Rylands 458). 801-805 are fragments of, respectively, Leviticus 26:2–16; Leviticus 1:11, 2:3–6:5; Numbers 3:39–4:16; Baruch 6:43–44; Exodus 28:4–7. 819 is a fragment of Deuteronomy 11:4. 847 is fragments of Deuteronomy 10:22; 11:1, 10,11, 16; 31:26–19; 32:2,4; 33:14–19, 22–23, 26–27. 848 is fragments of Deuteronomy 17:14 to 33:29. 942 is fragments of Genesis 3:10–12; 4:5–7, 23; 7:17–20; 37:34–38:1; 38:10–12. 957 is fragments of Deuteronomy 23:24–24:3; 25:1–3; 26:12; 26:17–19; 28:31–33; 27:15; 28:2. The manuscripts are paleographically dated (i.e., by analysis of the writing), the oldest being Rylands 458 (2nd century BC) and Fouad 266 (1st century BC).[ii] I have not checked to see whether anything that can be read on these scraps of papyri varies from the Hebrew Old Testament and have been quoted in the New Testament, though I do not expect it.
The complete and almost complete manuscripts of the Greek translation of the Old Testament are from the 4th and 5th centuries (Codices Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus).[iii] They did not exist as such at the time the New Testament books were written. I have shown in an earlier post that the Vaticanus LXX corrupts Psalm 14 by adding into it verses that Paul quoted in Romans 3 from various books of the Bible.[iv]
In between the extremes stands those who suspect that some books of the Old Testament (especially that Pentateuch) were translated before the time of Jesus Christ, while recognizing that the current full manuscripts are at best edited versions of earlier translations. I will look at the comments of one important Reformed scholar tomorrow (John Owen). Today I conclude with some comments about the view of Paul Ernst Kahle (1875-1964). Paul Kahle was certainly no King James Bible man, and likely not even conservative. He was a German scholar of Semitic philology, Near Eastern and Far Eastern cultures and languages (an “orientalist”) who edited later editions (1937, et al.) of Rudolf Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica. He was a high-class scholar whose view on the LXX is out of step with other high-class scholars and many wanna-be scholars. I could not find his original, but take these comments from John Reumann:
“One of the most intriguing theories is that of the late Professor Paul Kahle, a renowned Semitics scholar (1875-1964), who argued that there never was any LXX, at least until Christian times, and that our Letter of Aristeas is propaganda for a revision of the Greek Bible which was made in Alexandria. Kahle claimed that there were no ‘official’ translation undertakings in Judaism such as Aristeas suggests, but rather a number of local attempts—in Alexandria, in Ephesus, in any town with a sizable group of Greek-speaking Jews. These translations naturally differed in quality, and there was no standardization. But about 130 B. C., the theory continues, Jews in Alexandria revised the competing ragged renderings which were circulating in their area of Egypt, and put out a sort of ‘Revised Standard Version,’ intended to be the norm thereafter. The Letter of Aristeas was an attempt to give this revision authority by cloaking it with antiquity. Hence also the curse on anyone who would change a word of it. But even this attempt at standardization, Kahle thought, did not bring order from the chaos. Different Greek renderings continued to circulate. And so, when Christians (who increasingly after the year A.D. 50 were Greeks who knew little or no Hebrew) employed the Old Testament, they inevitably borrowed from the varied Jewish Greek translations—the Pentateuch as it had been revised at Alexandria, the book of Daniel as it had been translated at Ephesus, and so forth, until they put together an Old Testament in Greek, complete now, which they called the ‘Septuagint,’ after the title from the Aristeas legend. On this reading of the evidence, the LXX is a Christian compilation, and The Letter of Aristeas is a fiction designed to further the use of a revision in Alexandria about 130 B.C.” (The Romance of Bible Scripts and Scholars: Chapters in the History of Bible Transmission and Translation, John H. P. Reumann. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965, pp. 15-16.)
Kahle’s view is interesting, and could account for some of the early fragments, while recognizing that the LXX as it currently stands is a revision from early Christian times. Whether any LXX existed before Christ or not, or whether any New Testament writer quoted from such (if he did), is of no great consequence to me. If God chose to inspire a writer to quote (or say the same way) as some previous translator, that is God’s prerogative to do, and mine to accept. However, I think most claims of NT quotes from the LXX relate to what is found in the 4th-century manuscripts, which could have been edited to match the New Testament (Psalm 14:3 certainly was). Let’s see what John Owen has to say on the morrow.
[ii] For the sake of discussion, I accept the papyri dating as likely reasonably accurate.
[iii] I realize there is a vocal, and perhaps large, element within King James Onlyism who believe Sinaiticus is a late forgery. I leave this for others to argue about. It is a bad manuscript, whether it is from the 4th century or was forged by Constantine Simonides.
[iv] This is one of the more egregious examples of meddling with the Old Testament translation. In commenting on Psalm 14:3, John Gill writes, “Here follows in the Septuagint version, according to the Vatican copy, all those passages quoted by the apostle, Romans 3:13-18; which have been generally supposed to have been taken from different parts of Scripture; so the Syriac scholiast says, in some ancient Greek copies are found eight more verses, and these are they, ‘Their throat,’ &c.” When he comments on Romans 3:13-18, Gill takes no notice of the LXX, but rather shows where the verses are quoted from in the Old Testament (Psalm 5:9; Psalm 140:3; Psalm 10:7; Isaiah 59:7-8; Psalm 36:1).
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