Capstone Bible
  1. Library
  2. Topics
  3. Septuagint

The Greek Old Testament, Third Century BC Onward

Septuagint

Also called LXX, Greek Old Testament

The translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, begun in Alexandria around 250 BC — the version most New Testament writers quote, and the reason Catholic and Protestant Bibles have different tables of contents.

Siglum
LXX
Type
A translation tradition rather than a single object. It survives in hundreds of manuscripts, from second-century BC papyrus scraps and Judean Desert fragments to the great fourth-century parchment codices
Language
Koine Greek, translated from Hebrew and Aramaic
Contents
The Hebrew scriptures in Greek, translated over roughly two centuries by many hands of very different skill — some books rendered almost word for word, others, notably Job and Proverbs, freely paraphrased and considerably shorter. Greek manuscripts also carry books not in the Hebrew Bible: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel
Written
The Torah c. 250 BC; the remaining books over the following two centuries Traditional dating
Origin
Alexandria for the Torah; the later books were translated elsewhere by different translators over the following two centuries
Found at
Not applicable. The Septuagint was never lost and never found — it was transmitted continuously, first by Greek-speaking Jews and then by the church
Found in
Not applicable
Found by
Not applicable
Now held at
No single object. The fullest early witnesses are Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican Library and Codex Sinaiticus in the British Library
Facsimile
View the manuscript

Seventy Translators, or Seventy-Two

The name comes from the Latin for seventy, and behind it is a story. The Letter of Aristeas, a Greek document written in Alexandria some time in the second century BC, tells how Ptolemy II Philadelphus wanted a copy of the Jewish law for his great library, sent to Jerusalem for scholars, and received seventy-two elders who completed a translation of the Torah in seventy-two days. Later retellings improved on it: Philo has the translators working in separate cells and emerging with word-for-word identical texts, a miracle guaranteeing the Greek's authority.

Historians treat the letter as a piece of advocacy rather than a report — it is written to commend the Greek translation to Greek-speaking Jews, and it postdates the events it describes. What is not in doubt is the plain fact underneath it: the five books of Moses were translated into Greek in Alexandria in the third century BC, and over the next two centuries the rest of the Hebrew scriptures followed, in a series of separate efforts by different translators of very different skill. Some books are rendered almost word for word; others, notably Job and Proverbs, are freely paraphrased and considerably shorter.

The Bible the Apostles Quoted

By the first century, Greek was the working language of Jews across the Mediterranean, and the Septuagint was simply their Bible. When the New Testament writers quote the Old Testament, they most often follow the Greek — including at points where the Greek differs from the Hebrew we have. The most discussed example is Isaiah 7:14: the Hebrew says almah, a young woman of marriageable age; the Septuagint's translators, two centuries before Christ and with no Christian argument to make, chose parthenos, virgin. Matthew 1:23 quotes the Greek.

That pattern has a practical consequence for anyone comparing an Old Testament passage with its New Testament quotation and finding they do not match. Usually nothing has gone wrong: the writer is quoting a Greek Bible, and modern Old Testaments translate the Hebrew. The Septuagint's own vocabulary also shaped Christian language permanently — christos for messiah, kyrios for the divine name, diatheke for covenant, ekklesia for assembly. The theological vocabulary of the New Testament was largely built in Alexandria before the New Testament was written.

Why It Has More Books

Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament also carry books not in the Hebrew Bible: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel. Because the early church read the Old Testament in Greek, these came along with it. At the Reformation, Protestants returned to the Hebrew canon and set those books apart as the Apocrypha; the Council of Trent affirmed them as scripture for Catholics; Orthodox churches include these and a few more. The disagreement is old, real, and entirely traceable to which collection a tradition inherited.

One thing the Dead Sea Scrolls settled is worth knowing here. Before 1947 it was often assumed that where the Greek differed from the Hebrew, the Greek translators had been careless. Some of the Hebrew manuscripts from the caves turned out to match the Greek where it differs from the traditional Hebrew — including a copy of Jeremiah in the shorter form the Septuagint has. So a good number of the Septuagint's differences are not translation errors at all; they faithfully render a Hebrew text that really existed. That makes the Greek Old Testament a witness to the Hebrew Bible's own history rather than a distortion of it, and it complicates any simple account of which version is the original.

Scripture references

Sources

Further reading

More topics

Capstone Bible is a free interactive study app — a map of every place in this library, a zoomable timeline of biblical and church history, the Bible text with every name in it linked to its article, reading plans and personal notes.

Open Capstone Bible