The Septuagint — New Testament, Part 1

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Cory J. Mahler. And I'm still Woe. On today's Stone Choir, we are beginning the conclusion of our Septuagint series with our closing argument, which is the entirety of the New Testament. Going to give you another brief recap as we've been doing in the previous episodes just to help you keep your bearings. Episode ninety-nine was a context window where we talked about how this is just going to be a huge long story. Not really convoluted, but it could seem that way, if you don't have it all sort of laid out, so making the case that it's okay if you don't have this all in your head at one time. Episode one hundred, the first episode of the Septuagint series proper was

1:20 on the Near Eastern history, where we talked about what God's people had before the Septuagint, how the Septuagint came about, how Jesus' ancestors used the Septuagint exclusively by his day, how the early church used the Septuagint exclusively for the first 400 years, and then how for over a thousand years after really the time of Augustine and Jerome, the church fell away from Greek first of all in the West, and as a result, Jerome's unilateral decision to use Hebrew meant that the underlying Greek text was entirely lost, such that by the time we get to the Reformation, which was where we wrapped up the second historical episode, no one cared about any of this. And so we point out in the European history episode, the only

2:13 time the Septuagint came up was when we talked about it. And the reason when we began there was that if we had begun here, if we had begun with our closing argument, which is all you need, once we get done with this episode in the next episode, there can be absolutely no doubt that Jesus and the apostles exclusively use the Septuagint as their scripture. And And so why aren't we doing the same? It's very simple. But if we had begun here, it would have been incredibly disorienting and upsetting for people because then it would raise the question, well, how do we get here? What's going on? And so we laid out the historical case, and then we laid out in the middle portion, which we've now concluded, specifically focusing on

2:55 the Old Testament, what are some of the changes? And we highlighted a few different categories of changes beginning with Christology, and then moving on to wisdom literature, and then concluding with a couple examples from Astra and Job and the timeline changes of different classes of changes that were made by the rabbis to scripture to demonstrate that there's a lot more going on here than just a couple cherry-picked verses, and it's very important that we understand why why it matters for us to be concerned about the textual basis for our Bible. Because certainly since Jerome and absolutely since the Reformation, pretty much everybody in the West has only been using something based on what the

3:39 rabbis gave us. And so we had to make the case for why we have to listen to Jesus and the apostles, even over against all the nonsense that has happened historically. Because by the time we get done with this closing argument, you will either be convicted that you must also use a Septuagint, or you will hate it and you'll hate all greep and you'll want to go through your Bibles and rip out all the places, some of which we mentioned last time, where your Bible uses Greek left and right, even while claiming to be based on the rabbinic text. So the structure of this episode, the next episode is going to be a little bit different than the ones that we've done previously For us, this is going to be kind of a speed run

4:21 through a lot of content. And it's going to be about as close to reading the phone book as we ever get. And that's a very deliberate choice. What I mean by that is that the structure when we're presenting the examples from the New Testament, we're gonna give the full verse from the New Testament and for the most part we're just gonna hone in on the couple changes where there's differences between the Septuagint and the Rabbinic text. And then we're gonna make the case why it can only possibly be that the New Testament author is relying on the Septuagint and cannot possibly be relying on the Hebrew. So So in the New Testament there are somewhere over three hundred quotations of the Old Testament.

5:03 When you say quotation, we have a certain thing in mind. We have the notion of here's a verbatim quote, you know, a string, you know, eight, twelve, fifteen words, you know, a verse, a phrase, something that's lifted from one place and put into another. We think quotation, that's usually what we think. Quite a few of them are exactly that. However, there are also cases where the New Testament authors paraphrase scripture, and there are cases where they allude to scripture, but it's not necessarily a hundred percent sure that it's a quotation. So we are ignoring the latter two categories, we're ignoring cases where there are paraphrases and cases where it's just kind of an illusion, even when some of those are also examples that Corey and I

5:43 would argue, those were also based on the Septuagint. But what we're focusing on here is strictly the strongest form of the argument. So what that's going to be is a case where you have a passage from the Old Testament referenced by one of the New Testament authors, which of course ultimately is always the Holy Ghost. When you look at one of those senses or phrases that's taken from the Old Testament and reproduced in the New, as we've talked about in the past, when we're dealing with translation, a lot of certain types of phrases are going to be simple enough that there's really only one obvious way to translate from one language to another. The kind of cheesy example I gave in an earlier episode was

6:24 he hit the ball. If you were to translate those sentence he hit the ball from English into any of fifty other languages, it's virtually always going to end up being identical in that language to what I've just said in English, without any variation, because every language has he, it's going to have a gendered pronoun like that. It's going to have the verb hit, which is very basic. Yeah, I gave the example of it's not strike or smash or anything. It's just he hit. We all know what hit is. It's not descriptive by design. The is a definite article. Many languages lack the, so there'd be a lot of languages where you if you translate it would say he hit ball. And it's just sort of understood by the listener that it's a

7:11 specific ball. It's a the ball. And then ball is non-specific. It could be any type of ball, but every culture has some sort of ball. So you don't know if it's a golf ball, you don't know if it's a baseball, you don't know if it's a tennis ball, you don't know if it's a basketball. Maybe it's a sort of ball that you shouldn't be hitting. But in a sense, when it's translated, it's only going to end up one way. So what we're going to find when we look at the New Testament quotations of the old, most of them are like that. Not that the sentences are quite that simple, but that there's really only one basic way for it to be translated, and even if there's a slight variation in you know nouns or verbs, how they

7:51 come out, it's close enough that it's a reasonable conclusion. So when we're looking at the 300 plus hundred plus examples in the New Testament where they're quotations of the old, we're ignoring all those. If it's pretty much the same, and even if there's a slight difference between the Greek and the rabbinic text, if they're in the ballpark, we're ignoring those two. Even though there are a number of cases, probably at least a dozen or more, where Corey and I would also make the argument that when you look at the very specific wording, way you look at the use of singular versus plural, when you look at the word order, perhaps, and its verbatim from the Septuagint in the New Testament. In some at least some of those cases, we would be

8:35 convinced that that was based on the Greek. And not that it was just translated from some Hebrew for Laga and so it ended up looking the same. We're not going to make those arguments either. We're leaving those out. So I'm going to give you some numbers now for the volume of changes that we're looking at here. This is not an authoritative or exhaustive or exclusive list. This is our list. These are the ones that we feel are the strongest cases that make our point, which is that Jesus and the Apostles are overwhelmingly quoting the Septuagint, and they're calling it scripture when they do it. They're saying this is breathed out by God when they quote the Greek. That is the point that we want to get across.

9:14 So we're gonna leave out some of the marginal or weak arguments, even though we would hold some of those as well. What we're left with is 66 quotes that we're going to be discussing in this episode and the next episode where we believe the specific word choices that are lifted verbatim from the Septuagint can only possibly have come from there and cannot possibly have been based on the rabbinic text. And we'd stand by every one of these that if someone disagrees and tries to make some argument that oh well maybe that was just a translation choice, we're saying up front and we'll probably highlight a couple places, we reject that out of hand. We believe that's nonsense for these. There are other cases where maybe you could argue.

9:59 We talked about in the last episode. If I think it's conclusive and you think it's subjective, at some point it's not really a useful argument to make. So just know that there are more that we would personally consider. There are more that you'll find in some other lists that you would be convinced by. So don't take the 66 that we're using as an example as a complete list. We think it's the strongest list, which is why we're using it. Before we get into the examples where the New Testament quotes the Old Testament from the Greek, we're first going to begin with seven counterexamples, and we're going to put them right up front, seven places where the New Testament very clearly quotes an ancient Hebrew text, and

10:40 it cannot possibly be quoting the Septuagint. Because these are seven examples that someone might throw out to say, well, obviously these guys are lying in the Septuagint thing. Like it could be one or the other. We don't know. Or we really have to use the Hebrew because of this. And we can ignore the Septuagint because of these seven. So we're going to front load those counterarguments. We're going to look at them in more detail than the rest, because they bear examination. If we're telling the truth, if we're making a reasonable argument, do those stand up to scrutiny and what's going on with them? How would you look at them when you're comparing side by side your English translation of the rabbinic text and your English translation of

11:16 the Septuagint, and then you're looking at the New Testament, when they don't line up in favor of an ancient Hebrew text, what is the outcome for that? So look at each of those individually. Before we get to those, I mentioned numbers. I want to run through these briefly just to give you an idea of the scope because two points that we made at now the first historical episode are going to be highlighted by the nature of the verses that we're addressing today in the next episode, the last episode of New Testament quotations. Of the 66 verses that we're going to look at in the next two episodes, I'm going to give you the originating book in the Old Testament. So for Genesis, we have five. For Exodus, we have three quotations.

12:02 For Numbers, we have one. One for Deuteronomy we have four, Job we have one, we have eleven from Psalms, four from Proverbs, twenty nine from Isaiah, two each from Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, and Habakkuk, and then one for Malachi. That adds up to sixty-six. Mention there are two points in the first episode that are highlighted here, if you can remember you're thinking about it. The first, remember the letter of Aristius. That ancient legend that was predates Christ that claimed that the seventy-two rabbis, which is again where the Septuagint gets its name, were sent to Ptolemy, translated the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, incidentally, that's a Greek word, but they only translated the Pentateuch.

12:49 So when you bring up the Septuagint with someone who either doesn't know what they're talking about or is being deliberately maliciously deceptive, they will say, Oh, well, oh you you care about the Septuagint, but you'd know that only means the first five books, because the seventy two translators and blah blah blah so even if you think that the Greek matters, you can only use it for Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The list from the New Testament that we're going to be looking at here, sixty-six examples, twenty percent of them are from the Pentateuch, the other eighty percent are not from the Pentateuch. What conclusion must we as Christians reach? When eighty percent of the quotations in the New Testament are not

13:33 from the Pentateuch, and they're from all over the place. we have the Pentateuch, we have wisdom literature, we have the greater and lesser prophets all represented in this list. What that tells us is that Jesus and the Apostles made no distinction of, well, the Pentateuch translation by the 72, that was inspired. But these other books, we don't know who translated. We can't trust them. They can't be trusted. Jesus and the Apostles condemn that because they explicitly say repeatedly as it is written and then they cite these other books. So do not let someone try to lie to you by using the letter of Aristius and the word Septuagint to say To say, oh, well, that can only mean the Pentateuch. Eighty percent of the examples from the New Testament are not from

14:19 the Pentateuch. 80% of the examples in the New Testament are attesting to the fact that any random page you turn to in one of the Greek codices of the Bible, which included the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament, it's all inspired. That is the conclusion you must reach from that. The other thing worth noting is that two numbers should have stood out there one, eleven from Psalms, which is disproportionate, that's you know, eleven out of sixty six, and then twenty nine from Isaiah. That's forty four percent of the list of the verses we're gonna look at today are from one are from one book and they're from Isaiah. All the authors we're talking about in the New Testament quote Isaiah, it's all over the place.

14:58 This is important because one of the things that we also mentioned in the first episode was there's this Qumran cave thing sort of sitting there on the sideline. And the Qumran Cave, the set of scrolls that were pulled out of there, people use those as examples of look how faithful the rabbis were in preserving the Word of God. And Isaiah's particularly important because the claim is made that the so called Great Isaiah scroll that was pulled out of Qumran was They claim that it was dated between about 125 to 100 BC. So a century prior to Christ, they are claiming the great Isaiah scroll already existed. It is proudly on display today in the terrorist state of Israel. Christians go spend lots of money to visit it in U and

15:49 A and wonder at their participation in Judeo-Christianity. We're not going to waste any time getting into the claims of the validity of the age or origins of the so-called great Isaiah scroll. There is substantial and I think convincing evidence that it is a fraud, at least in terms of its dating. The examples are numerous, beginning with the condition of the thing, relative to everything else in the same caves. It's preposterous that one thing would have miraculously survived in the same condition, and that's the weakest argument for why it's fake, at least in terms of being dated from a hundred years before Christ. It's almost certainly from the medieval period. Which would explain why there are cases where it matches, for example,

16:37 the very first verse that we touched on in the Christological episode was Isaiah 7.14. This is the single most famous example of a discrepancy between the Septuagint and the rabbinic text where all of our Bibles very proudly reject what is in their Benic text and replace young woman with virgin, because that's a prophecy of the virgin birth. That prophecy, that virgin birth prophecy is missing from the great Isaiah scroll, which if it's a medieval example, if it's from the medieval period, it's not a forgery, it's just it was you know much newer than they're claiming. The forgery aspects would be the false claims of its dating. For our purposes it doesn't matter if it's real or not. We don't care if it's over a century before Christ or six

17:24 centuries after, because it reproduces Isaiah seven fourteen exactly the same way the modern rabbinic text does, which is to deny the virgin birth and call her a young woman. As we pointed out in the Christological episode, Isaiah himself uses the Hebrew word for virgin, I think five times, if I remember correctly. And then here in this one place he says young woman. So all the claims that, oh well, young woman could be virgin, and so you know, we who knows? It's fine, it's okay to translate it that way. It's blown up by the fact that Isaiah himself didn't do that in his own book. So we've previously dealt with that verse, but just remember the great Isaiah scroll, regardless of its date, preserves the blasphemous reading that all

18:09 your Bibles fix. Now, what's important about Isaiah being quoted here is this there is a single quote in the entire New Testament of Isaiah that is referencing a Hebrew forelaga. So we're going to get to that in the first seven we're going to talk about in just a minute. Matthew quotes Isaiah from a Hebrew foraloga, not calling that the rabbinic text, because if Matthew is vouching for it, then that means it's scripture. We'll give the details of that verse. What's important is that Matthew also quotes the Septuagint twelve times, and seven of those are from Isaiah. So even if you want to predicate your argument for the rabbinic text on, well, Matthew quotes Isaiah, so that means the Isaiah scrolls

18:55 are legitimate, Hebrews are legitimate, it's all fine, no one needs to worry about the Septuagint thing. Matthew by himself shoots down that argument because of the sixty six quotes we're looking at, twelve of them are from Matthew. Of the twenty nine Isaiah quotes, seven are from Matthew. So I'm highlighting these numbers up front to give you a sense of the scope of the conclusiveness of the argument that we're making here. We're not cherry picking, we're only picking the strongest examples, and there's 66 of them. That's overwhelming evidence. And so we're going to begin with seven examples, which is one tenth as many, where a Hebrew forlaga is quoted in the New Testament. This is something we'll talk about more in the bonus episode

19:38 where we talk about what a future translation needs to look like, but basically these are no problem for Christians. In a Bible that is based on the Septuagint, the appropriate thing to do is to leave both of them alone, to leave the New Testament quotation of this ancient Hebrew text alone, and to leave what is in the Greek Septuagint alone, even when they differ. We don't need to harmonize things, is one of the worst things that these translation committees have been doing to our Bibles in some cases behind our backs. In some cases they don't even footnote it. And even if they do footnote it, most people don't read the footnotes because you know you don't care unless you have some specific

20:15 reason to look. But when you're just reading through your Bible it's not going to occur to you to check every verse, is this lifted from the Septuagint and not actually from the rabbinic text. You just assume that it's all there because you know what you're reading. You think you do. That's a problem. We as Christians don't need to harmonize God's word. God can say the same thing in more than one way. And the gospels themselves are our conclusive argument for that. That's not a stone quarter argument. The entire Christian church has always dealt with the fact that when you look at the four gospels, they tell the same story in slightly different ways. God intended to do that. He has four different witnesses for the same story.

20:53 So the events are not in exactly the same order, the quotations are not exactly the same, the details are not exactly the same. You could make a reddit to your argument that some of them have to be wrong. We as Christians don't worry about that. Guys have spent two thousand years trying to you know sort of align everything to figure out well obviously they're not wrong, but years where they're you know missing each other by inches because they're saying different things at different times. We as Christians don't worry about that. So if we have been content to leave four gospels that say the same story in four different ways alone, we can certainly leave alone seven verses in the New Testament that quote a lost Hebrew

21:35 text when the Greek text that we're going to be using for our Old Testaments doesn't say exactly the same thing. So as we go through those, just keep in mind, this is fine. This is not something we need to worry about because it's something the church has never needed to worry about. This set of seven verses is far smaller than the so called discrepancies just among the synoptic gospels. Never mind all the other places in scripture where things don't exactly line up. And we touched on that in the timeline episode, pointing out the 400 years versus 430 years versus 450 years. You can have a cogent, rational explanation for some of these things without just saying, well, it's all fake. It's not real God.

22:14 God, God's not real because these numbers don't add up. Christians don't do that. So saying this up front, because there's nothing here for us to worry about. The good news, and one of the most reassuring things about the fact that we have sixty-six verses that are from the New Testament that are very clearly based on Greek and not based on Hebrew is that that leaves over three quarters of them that they're basically the same, which goes to my translation point earlier. When you have simple sentences or even some fairly complex sentences, it's often going to be the case that when you're translating either from Greek into English with a Septuagint or from the rabbinic text into English, which is what our Bibles are, you end up with the

22:59 same result in English. It's gonna come out the same way because a reasonable translation of the sentence only turns out in a couple of very kind of obvious ways. So when you've been reading your New Testament in the two hundred and you know odd nearly two hundred and fifty other cases where the New Testament quotes the Old Testament and it doesn't match distinctly either the rabbinic text or the Septuagint, it's because they're the same. That's reassuring. That's really good news. That overwhelmingly, what is in the Old Testament, even in our Bibles that should not have been used, the Word of God has been preserved overwhelmingly. So this is something that should not undermine it or call into

23:43 question anyone's faith, but it means we have to be careful with God's things. We have to treat them carefully in a way that they've not been treated carefully by previous generations. They're just hand waved all the stuff away, as though it didn't matter. I'm glad that I mentioned in the previous episode about Astra and Job that by no means are the things that we're highlighting the most important or most interesting things that are going to be discovered in the Septuagint. Since then, it's come to my attention that Jeremiah is more radically different than either of those. Jeremiah has been completely rearranged by the rabbis to tell a totally different story. When you read through Jeremiah in the Septuagint and you read through

24:23 it in your Bible, the order of events has changed in such a way that the story is different, which makes sense. You could take any story and chop it up into pieces and tell of that order, and you can tell a different story. And if you're really slick, maybe it makes sense. Oh, and by the way, the rabbinic text is also about one seventh longer. So it's another example of a book that's just it's not the same. So we have centuries of Christian theology, of scholarship ahead of us, looking at the Greek as though it's the Word of God and not looking at anything else. It should have been going all along. Hopefully, and God willing, this is going to be the beginning of that period in the history of the church.

25:05 The good news is that we're still Christians because God has preserved his word and preserved his faith in us, even in spite of these deficiencies. That's no excuse not to do a better job. What Corey and I are doing here with this series is not acting as professors, we're not even acting as docents. We're a couple of guys who are turning on the light, we're pointing to the middle of the room, we're saying, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord, and we're pointing at the Septuagint. And that's it. We as a church have to go to the center of the room, we have to look at the Septuagint collectively, and we have to figure this stuff out together as a church, which is what God has always intended for the church.

25:44 From the very beginning, from the earliest days of the church, that is how it has always worked. Christians work together to understand these things. We argue about them, we fight over them, we make the best arguments, and we let those prevail in submission to the word of God. So as we wrap up this Septuagint series with this in the next episode in the New Testament as our closing argument. Just keep all that in mind because as I said, as we go through these individual examples, it's pretty much going to be a speedrun. There will be a little bit of editorializing here and there, but there's not going to be a ton of commentary from us because the point is not to exegete these verses, the point is

26:24 not to derive different or new theology or argue about any specific doctrinal point. The point is very simple. The New Testament quotes a Septuagint, it cannot possibly be quoting the Rabbinic text. Their Christians must quote the Septuagint and not quote the rabbinic text. Bottom line, that is the argument we're making. One last verse that I want to use as an exhortation to all of us in this matter is from 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3 does not quote the Septuagint, but 2 Timothy 2 does. The verse here has nothing to do with the Septuagint or quotes or anything. But in this epistle, Paul is writing to his friend and his pupil Timothy, who's a fellow worker with him, and he's addressing a man who, as best we know, was probably born somewhere around twenty

27:19 AD. This letter to Timothy was probably written right around sixty five A.D., give or take Timothy would have been about forty five, roughly, not exactly, but roughly at this time. So Paul is writing to a man whose father was Greek and whose mother was a Hellenized Jew. We know the names of both Timothy's mother and grandmother because they're in scripture. His grandmother's name was Lois and his mother's name was Eunice. They were faithful Christians who raised him as a Christian. I'm saying Christian here advisedly, even though Christ had not yet been crucified, even though officially the church had not yet been inaugurated, because Lois and Eunice raised raised Timothy to believe every word from the

28:07 mouth of God, such that when the Christ came and fulfilled all the prophecies, these people all pointed at it and said, Yeah, this is it, this is the Christ who is the man who was promised. This is the anointed one of God. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This Jesus is the one we've been waiting for. So they were always Christians because they were anticipating the promise which when they saw fulfilled, they believed it. Timothy's genealogy and this address of Paul to Timothy is crucial because as a Hellenized Jew and and the son of a Greek father, Timothy was only reading and speaking Greek. He may have known some Aramaic, but his studies would have been in Greek.

28:51 So keep that in mind when you hear this quotation. Paul writes, but as for you, addressing Timothy, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So when Paul says to Timothy, how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are the scripture breathed out by God, he's talking about the Septuagint.

29:35 That was all Timothy had. That was all Eunice and Lois had. They were using the Greek. This exhortation of Paul, who is remember the Hebrew of Hebrews, he had exceeded all of his peers in his learning of the Phariseal Oracles. He was a Greek scholar. He made his arguments in Greek. In fact, as we go through this list, there's only a single case in this episode in the next episode, where Paul does not quote the Septuagint, there's a single case where he quotes a Hebrew foreloga rather than the Greek. There are dozens of cases where Paul quotes the Septuagint. So it is unambiguous that Second Timothy three is talking about the Septuagint. All scripture is breathed out by God in Greek. That is the conclusion that must be reached by what we lay

30:29 out here today. Just as a brief aside, before we get into the examples where the Hebrew forelaga is cited over the Septuagint. With regard to the details in the four Gospels, for those who are familiar with history who studied the area, this will be absolutely nothing new that I'm saying here, but for those who are less familiar with it, the fact that they are not exactly identical proves their historicity. Because if you are forging something, you actually wind up with something that is too perfect to be true. This is again similar to what Woe said in a previous episode about numbers. Human beings when forging things do certain things that don't happen naturally so you can detect that they are forgeries.

31:21 That is not present in the Gospels. For those who are parents, you can think of a more concrete example. If you have multiple children, something happens, they tell you the story. They will not tell you identical stories, even if they are not trying to deceive you. If they're trying to deceive you, then of course they won't, but Or they might tell the same exact story, if they're all trying to deceive you. But if they are telling you a true story of what actually happened, they are going to give you their own perspective. And so there will be some slight differences. The fact that the Gospels are not identical is actually an argument for the truth of Scripture. Because it completely destroys the academics who will try to argue that

32:04 oh they're all based on this supposed text that came before them, of which we have no extant copies, no one is ever even found in fragmentary form, and so they're all just based on that and they're all copies of that. If they were copies of that, we would expect precision, exactness, an identical nature as between them with regard to details, and we don't find that. And so it is actually an argument for them being historical, for them being accurate. It is a good thing that we don't have basically exact copies, because that's not how these things work. When someone tells a story, he's going to tell it to some degree from his perspective, and it will be different from another man even telling the same story, even a man who was in the

32:46 same place at the same time. But then moving on to our first section of this episode, the seven examples where you have the citation in the New Testament that matches the Hebrew forlaga more closely than it matches the Greek. Again, there are only seven of these, and we're going to have many more because sixty-six total over the two episodes. But we're going to have many more where of course the Greek is what is matched more accurately more thoroughly than some Hebrew forlogue, which we do not have access to that, notably. So the New Testament authors are citing something we don't have, but they're doing it inspired by the Spirit, and so of course we rely on it. Again, as Woe said in his introduction, we should not try to

33:35 harmonize these. We should not take what we have in the New Testament and change what is in the Old Testament. We should not take what is in the Old Testament in the Septuagint and change what is in the New Testament. God has given us things that are very close but are not identical. And that is entirely fine. God is of course permitted to do that. Sometimes you have a reinterpretation of a prophecy with someone writing one of the New Testament authors. Again, God is permitted to do that. We are not permitted to change the Word of God because we would like them, if you are so inclined, to match perfectly. So the first example is Matthew two fifteen, citing Hosea eleven one This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet,

34:23 out of Egypt I called my son. And then in the Old Testament the ESV, and out of Egypt I called my son, whereas the Septuagint in this case has, and out of Egypt I recalled his children. So there's a slight difference there. I'm very glad that this example is first, as I said, we're usually not going to give commentary, but it's worth giving more for these seven examples because going into this, I didn't know what I was gonna find. I didn't know like, am I a jerk? Am I an idiot? When I look at these examples where the Hebrew four logos quoted in the New Testament, or they can completely blow up the argument we've been trying to make this whole time. Because while we'd done some of this research, we had some of

35:04 this put together, we hadn't assembled and finished our argument completely. So I didn't have like detailed notes on each of these examples to meticulously make the case we're gonna make here. I wasn't sure what I was gonna find when we began preparing specifically for this episode. When you look at Hosea eleven, the full beginning of that in the Septuagint is because Israel was an infant and I loved him, and out of Egypt I called his children, which obviously be Israel, you know, would is Jacob calling his children would be the Israelites. The fact that the New Testament quotes my son versus his children, that's the distinct difference, which is why it's very clearly not quoting the Septuagint.

35:45 The next verse after that is just as I called them back, so they sued to depart from my face. They were sacrificing to the bales, and used to burn incense to the graven images. So I highlight the brief bit of context around this one verse because Because I think that when you look at Hosea 11 in the Septuagint, not only does it also work, like it's not like we have a case where something has been lost or confused or muddled. Well we have is something that is also true. That's important also true. Not true in exclusion of, but it is also true. In the context of this, is that the Israelites were horrible. They're Baal worshippers, they were idolaters. They were sacrificing to demons. So when God says in Hosea, I called my children, it is

36:37 absolutely true that he was calling these terrible people, among whom the seed of Christ was carried along, which is why when it's quoted in Matthew from the Hebrew 4loga, and God says, I called my son, it is also true. But the seed of Christ was with his children. So it is consistent in that sense. It is not consistent linguistically, but is completely consistent theologically. That's going to be the case with each of these. So as I said, we're not going to give a bunch of rigor morale about all of them, but it's worth noting the distinction in kind when we look at these differences. The next example is also from Matthew, this is Matthew eight seventeen, quoting Isaiah 53, 4. As I mentioned in my introduction, this is the single example among

37:27 all the verses that we're going to be looking at over the next two weeks where the New Testament quotes the Hebrew forelaga for Isaiah versus the Septuagint. There are twenty nine cases where it quotes the Septuagint. So Matthew eight seventeen says He took our infirmities and bore our diseases, which is consistent with the Hebrew foreloga, which is preserved in this case in the rabbinic text. Surely he has borne our diseases and carried our pains. The distinctive reading, which is not present in the New Testament that's found in the Septuagint, says, he bears our sins and is pain for us. So it's fairly clear linguistically, it's not the same word. And yet what do we find theologically? Is Isaiah the suffering servant passage saying he the Christ bears our

38:18 sins less theologically sound than he bears our diseases? No. Frankly, the Septuagint is more Christological and theological in this particular case, which is we're saying is absolutely no reason to go messing with Matthew. The Matthew quote of Isaiah is also correct, because when you think about what infirmities are, infirmities and diseases are products of the fall. The proof of the Christ when he came was the miracles that he performed, the supernatural miracles that Christ performed Performed prophesied in the Old Testament were the proof that this is the anointed one. Those miracles were in the neighborhood of healing the lame, healing the sick, healing the blind, healing the deaf, raising the dead.

39:09 Incidentally all things that would have disqualified someone under Levitical law from being pure enough to enter the temple. All of those were reversed by Jesus physically, for those whom he healed. And yet Jesus did not come as a bread king. He didn't come for free food and free health care. He came to heal our sins. So this is a case where the disease is the lesser form of the underlying sin that is also being resolved. But we can't see our sins being healed. We can't see our sins being forgiven. We can see limbs growing back. We can see healing. The purpose of the supernatural evidence was for us to be able to believe this man who is doing these things with the body can also do these things with the soul?

39:57 Surely he is from God because no one else could do these miracles. So again, in the second case, even though the Septuagint in the Rabbinic text differ in the Hebrew forelogger that's quoted here differ, it is not in any way to the detriment of theology, of Christology of anything. It's making the same point, but it's making it using a different word. And so when Matthew is describing healing of infirmities and all the miracles that Jesus was doing, he was making that specific point in that context. It makes perfect sense. Both are true. And that's crucial. Both of these things are true, which is why we don't have to worry about harmonization. The next example is Matthew twenty six thirty one citing to Zechariah

40:42 thirteen seven. Then Jesus said to them, You will all fall away because of me this night, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. And then from Zechariah, strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, I will turn my hand against the little ones. From the Septuagint, this case the Lexum, strike the shepherds and remove the sheep, and I will lay my hand upon the small. Now there is a difference here, of course, because one is strike the shepherd versus the Septuagint is strike the shepherds. Christ is interpreting this and citing to presumably the Hebrew forlogue, and he uses the singular strike the shepherd, speaking of himself, because he

41:27 is the shepherd who is struck the sheep are scattered. The rest of the verse, of course, matches between the citation here in the New Testament and the Greek Septuagint, other than the fact that Christ says, I will strike the shepherd. There's a difference there in the pronoun. But between these two, it is again a small difference here, but does it change things theologically? No, because this is ultimately a prophetic part of Zechariah, unsurprisingly him being a prophet, being one of the books of prophecy. And so he is speaking simultaneously about multiple things, and there are multiple fulfillments down through history. This is one of the fulfillments of it, of which Christ is speaking specifically of himself.

42:14 The striking of the shepherd is the striking down of Christ, and of course his sheep, his primarily his apostles, but his disciples and others as well, flee in that hour. Because that is ultimately what happens. So this is Christ interpreting this prophecy for his disciples, for his apostles. This is one of those minor differences, again, that we do not need to harmonize, because it is true in both cases. And it's not that we get to harmonize it if there were a problem. There isn't a problem because it's the word of God, because it is true in multiple senses, which is often the case with prophecy. We've seen this in many other places, in many other episodes, where prophecy is not fulfilled once but is fulfilled multiple times.

42:58 And in fact, again, as I said earlier, sometimes in the New Testament, the New Testament authors, or in this case, Christ Himself, will interpret the Old Testament, will tell us how this applies in this particular time and place, how it applies to Christ. This is I think the only example that we're going to talk about in either episode where we even even use singular versus plural as the determinant. If this had been going in the other direction, if this had favored the Septuagint, we would have left this verse out. So that's how stringent we're being here when we're looking at the ones we're highlighting. It's different enough because Jesus was making a specific point, as Corey said, and as I was saying earlier.

43:43 It's consistent, but the specific wording is not identical. So there are a number of cases where we're excluding exactly the same type of verse when we're making our case for the Septuagint because it's marginal, but we wanted to include it here in the counterexample arguments in the beginning, just to show all of our cards, like this is how close it is. You cannot look at these verses and shoot down the Septuagint based upon these quotes of a Hebrew for Laga that's lost. And for the sake of counting, this Matthew 26, 31 is also paralleled in Mark 14, 27. We're not double counting the cases where the synoptics duplicate them. So, you know, if you want to say seven versus a couple more, because there are a few others that are repeated.

44:28 There's a single example that's being quoted multiple places. For our purposes, that's one. The next example is from the end of Matthew, chapter 27, verses 9 and 10. This is quoting Zechariah 11, 12, and thirteen. Matthew reads Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah saying, and they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field as the Lord directed me. So the difference between the Hebrew forlogga here and the Septuagint is at the very end. The cast to the potter is something that we do find reproduced in the rabbinic text. The way that is phrased in the Septuagint doesn't say potter, it

45:22 says drop them in the furnace. So the entire passage in Zechariah is specifically focused on the metallurgy and the use of furnaces and purification. And that was the sentiment that was being expressed there. So as Matthew says very clearly, there was a fulfillment of prophecy with the thirty pieces of silver, and the specific detail about the potter's field Is used as an example of prophetic fulfillment. But when you look at what is in Zechariah and the Septuagint, it also makes complete sense internally. And there's a foundry present near the temple grounds for processing money as it came in. There are theological points that could be drawn from this, the contrast between pottery and the breaking of pottery and silver being melted down

46:13 and reconstituted. We're not focusing on the theological, but this is a clear example of a difference. And again, no harm is done by what is present in the Septuagint. It's just not Just now word for word consistently If we were inclined to go into the theological points, of course we would bring up things like Psalm sixty six where it talks about silver being tried and things like that. This is a theme that is common in scripture. The next example we're moving on to the book of Mark. This is Mark one two, citing to Malachi three one and Isaiah forty verse three. This is also paralleled in Luke seven hundred twenty seven it is the only example, notably in Luke that cites to the four Laga versus the Septuagint.

47:01 And so from Mark. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Now, between the Septuagint and the Hebrew for Laga, and incidentally this is what seems to be cited in the rabbinic text, the salient difference is there's a difference in the verb. In the Septuagint it says observe the way of the Lord. In the foreloga, it says prepare the way of the Lord. So it matches the verb there in Mark more closely than the Septuagint, which has a different verb in Greek. Again, this is another case where the difference is worth acknowledging, but

47:52 there's no violence whatsoever done to the text, which is in distinct opposition to many of the changes that we've seen where the Hebrew is unclear, where it's simply nonsensical. What we find here is that when the New Testament quotes the Hebrew forlaga, we're not finding something nonsensical in the Septuagint, we're just finding something slightly different. And here, in this case, it's even the same sort of notion, the he will look to the way before me versus he will clear prepare a way before me. It's more or less the same sentiment, but the wording is different and it clearly favors not the Greek. Interestingly, Corey mentioned this the Isaiah forty three is also present in this very same verse in Mark.

48:36 That will be coming up in a minute in our Septuagint section, because the rest of the quote is quoting the Septuagint in Isaiah. It's not quoting the Hebrew. So here's an example where in one of these, they're called katanas, where multiple passages are concatenated together, just stuck together as one new thought, or one complete thought that absorbs elements of different passages. Mark is incorporating the Hebrew Forelaga from Malachi and the Septuagint from Isaiah. So again, does this shoot down the idea that the Septuagint is not scripture? I don't think so. They have basically the same meaning in this case, just a slightly different wording. And Mark completes his thought with the Greek.

49:24 And as you can tell, we are being quite stringent in the examples we are giving where the forlaga is cited not against, but instead of or in preference to the Greek. We are not being this stringent with regard to the examples we are going to use where the Septuagint is cited over the rabbinic text. Because the examples where the Septuagint is cited over the rabbinic text, as we already said, often often are egregious. The first one of course we'll be giving when we get to that is one that is well known, beloved by Christians, where we use, even in our Old Testament that supposedly cites to the Rabbinic text, the Septuagint. And so this is a case where there is a change, a slight change, basically a nuanced difference in the verb chosen, but we

50:14 are still including it. That should give you an idea of how few times this happens in the New Testament. And even when it does happen, it is generally a minor matter. The next example of the New Testament very clearly quoting the Hebrew Forelaga rather than the Septuagint is John nineteen thirty seven. This is a quotation of Zechariah twelve ten, and John also quotes this again in Revelation one seven. This is This is the passage where he describes they will look on him whom they pierced. John is describing the moment where Christ is dead and his side is pierced, his heart is pierced in fact by the soldier's spear. Interestingly, this which John repeats in Revelation 1 7, the citation from Zechariah, John is the only of the four Gospels that mentions the

51:10 detail of the spear or of the piercing. The others do not, which is fine, with one gospel saying it it happened. It's not in any way an argument that we're calling in that that into question. I just think it's notable that John says they look on him whom they pierced. He's making a point that is only available in the Hebrew four Laga. What the Septuagint says is something we mentioned in the Christological passage episode. No the difference in the word there between Pierced and the Septuagint says they will look upon me because they danced insultingly, or because they mocked. And we talked before about how both of those were certainly true, but the point that John was making here relied upon Heirst, which

51:54 was present in a Hebrew forelogue. We don't call that into question. Again, we leave it alone. They're both true. We don't harmonize them and we thank God that He's given us these additional details. But I think I mentioned in the Christological episode, I'll mention again here just briefly when we're talking about the notion of dancing insultingly or mocking I'm not a huge C.S. Lewis fan, but I think that the end of the first book where he describes Aslan's death in the way that horde of all those various races jeering and sneering and howling is was a perfect depiction of the underlying Greek word here for dancing insultingly and mocking. That's precisely what C.S. Lewis depicted with the revelry around the killing of Aslan, which of

52:42 course was symbolic of Christ. Both of those have strong purchase in Christian history. We certainly would believe that that sort of mockery was taking place at the cross, but John is relying upon a text where he makes the point about piercing. That's absolutely true. This is another chance to make a point that we have made previously but is worth emphasizing. We do not get to make our choices based upon whether or not we like a verse, or whether or not it is something we learned as children, because undoubtedly, many of us, most of us, know this verse from our Old Testament, which is the Rabbinic Old Testament, most of our examples in most of our Bibles that we have in our homes. just because we have that there does not mean that we get

53:37 to use that as our Old Testament. We have it here in the New Testament, but what we have in the Greek Old Testament does not match exactly. We lose as it were pierced from the Old Testament. But the standard, as we have said many times, is not whether we like it, is not whether or not it matches exactly with the New Testament. Although of course that can be an argument, it is rather what is true. And God has passed to us the Greek, and the Greek has danced triumphantly, and again, undoubtedly they did this. This is a thing that they still do to day when they're particularly happy about something evil they've done, and so undoubtedly they did it here. Just because we happen to like what we have in our current

54:20 version of the Old Testament, which is not faithful to the Greek, is not faithful to the Septuagint, does not mean that we get to keep it. Thankfully, there are vanishingly few examples of this, as should be obvious by the fact that we're now moving on to number seven, which is the final example we have, and this is Romans eleven thirty-five, citing to Job forty one eleven. Or who was given a gift to him that he might be repaid? That of course is from the ESV, and then from Job. Who is given to me that I should repay him? Then from the Septuagint, or who will withstand me and survive? As we pointed out in a previous episode, Job is one of those books where the differences are practically pervasive, because it is

55:12 a fundamentally different book in the Septuagint versus what we have in our rabbinic Old Testament. The same, of course, being true of Esther, and as Woe said earlier in this episode, Jeremiah, there are places where things have changed significantly, Job being one of those. Here we happen to have a citation to the older Hebrew for Laga. Again, we don't have access to that. That was not preserved. God preserved the Greek. But God still knows the Hebrew for Laga. And so God could inspire the authors of the New Testament to use that, to cite to that. Perhaps they had some snippet of it still existing in an Aramaic Targum. And so that is what is used here instead of the Septuagint which has a different wording, because or who will withstand me

56:00 and survive is not the same as who has first given to me that I should repay him. We don't lose anything here, but there is a difference, and it is worth recognizing that difference. But again, this is the last of our seven examples. The rest of the episode is all the times where the New Testament authors very clearly use the Septuagint. And in many of these cases it is a significant difference, not a trivial difference, not the difference of this verb versus that verb where the two verbs are almost identical, but rather a theological, a doctrinal difference, or even just a complete rewording in the Greek versus what the rabbis have handed us. And this is another case where when you look in the context

56:48 of the Septuagint, the phrasing there of who will resist me and endure, which is I think the one I had, Corey, is very similar, but basically the same meaning. Who will resist me and endure actually makes more sense in the context because this is the Leviathan passage. In the Rabbinic based Bibles, this is Job forty one eleven. This is one of those cases where verse numbering is off, so it's really a pain in the butt. In the Septuagint, it's typically going to be 41 verse 2 instead of verse 11. But beginning in another the earlier chapter, this is God describing what in the rabbinic text uses the word Leviathan. Interestingly, there's the word Leviathan never appears in the Greek. This is a passage about dragons.

57:36 The word dracon dragon is used in the Septuagint for this whole thing. So when it's talking about who will give me that I shall repay, almost doesn't make sense in the context of a dragon. I don't you know, whether you're borrowing money from a dragon or you're resisting him, you're kind of in mortal trouble either way. But I just found it interesting that we lose nothing by looking at the Septuagint internally as being consistent. It works perfectly. So as we've been saying all along, like there's no theological damage done by any of these differences. So these are cases where we can thank God that there is another way that this is being phrased preserved in the New Testament, it gives us additional detail and nuance.

58:20 Just as the synoptic gospels give us additional detail and nuance. That's a good thing. God is generous. What we cannot conclude from this is oh man, get rid of the Greek. I need to have a rabbi in here telling me about God. You can't possibly get there from here. And so that now concludes the entirety of all the places in the New Testament where anything approaching what is in the rabbinic text is acknowledged. Every other case from now on is an explicit rejection of the Rabbinic text by Jesus and the apostles. When they're saying it is written, when they're saying scripture says, they are talking about the Greek. We begin with a verse we don't need to say much about because we have right at the very beginning of Matthew 1, verse

59:06 23, Behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. This is Isaiah seven fourteen. We went over that in the Christology episode, so there's nothing new to say. Virgin is a word that was known to Isaiah. Virgin is a word that Isaiah used many times in the Septuagint. Isaiah uses the word virgin here. He does not say young woman. That is a bastardization and a corruption introduced by the very men who denied Christ when he was born. So no surprise. Matthew, again, we're talking about really super Jewish guys here. Some people run around saying that Matthew's gospel was originally written in Hebrew. It's complete nonsense. It's not a new story, but it's one of those cases where

59:53 there's zero evidence for it. The accounts don't really make sense, and they're ambiguous enough that we can't draw any conclusion from it. We can't ever draw extensive conclusions from the text where Matthew repeatedly quotes a Septuagint, as I said twelve times, we're gonna have Matthew quotes here, and he makes wordplay in things that only work in Greek, they wouldn't have worked in Hebrew, they wouldn't have worked in Aramaic. Some of the things that he says that we have preserved in the Greek could not have been translated from one of those languages into Greek. You couldn't get the nuance that's present. So there's not a lot to say about Isaiah seven fourteen beyond the New Testament tells us that he was to be born of

1:00:36 a virgin. The next example is Matthew three three citing to Isaiah forty three as mentioned earlier. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. And then from the Septuagint, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. Essentially identical, whereas the rabbinic text has, clear in the desert a road for the Lord, level in the wilderness a highway for our God. There are some pretty clear differences there, and it is worth noting again that as between the Septuagint and the New Testament in the Greek, these citations are virtually identical. It is very clear that Matthew is citing to the Septuagint in

1:01:28 this case. He is practically citing it word for word. What we would in modern English parlance call an actual citation or a quote. And thankfully this is one of the examples where it basically means the same thing. So no nuance has been lost, but the word choice very clearly can only possibly have been from the Septuagint. Next example is from Matthew 3.17, which is also present in Mark and Luke. This is a quote, and it's using a phrase that's present in Genesis 22:2, and then repeated in verses 12 and 16. Matthew writes: A voice from heaven said, This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. And the Septuagint, which is representing what's quoted here by God the Father from heaven, from Genesis twenty two.

1:02:24 And he said, Take your beloved son whom you love, Isaac. So what we have here is beloved son whom you love. The rabbinic text says, Now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. Now both are true, but in this case the specific phrasing of take your beloved son, whom you love is the Is not only word for word in Matthew, Mark, and Luke from Genesis 22, repeated in verse 2, 12, and 16, but this is crucial because this is a phrase that would have been very, very well known to those who heard God the Father speak from heaven. When he said this is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased, they would have heard echoes of what was said about Isaac very clearly.

1:03:21 And that's simply lost in the rabbinic where you have withheld your son, your only son. So even though it's true, it's not a theological reduction, what you lose is the immediacy of the witness of those who would have heard that. They would have known instantly that this was typology manifest before their very eyes. This is a case where this is actually we've I'm gonna include it twice because it's repeated again in Matthew 17:5 at the transfiguration, which is notable because at the beginning we have the baptism where God the Father says, This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. God repeats that in Matthew seventeen five. This is the quote from Matthew. A voice from the cloud said, This is my beloved Son, with

1:04:08 whom I am well pleased, listen to him. So this specific phrase of my beloved Son was so important that God the Father spoke himself from heaven, not once but twice, first at Christ's baptism and against transfiguration. So the next example is from Matthew four verses fifteen through sixteen citing to again, Isaiah nine through two there's a different versification in your Old Testament. This will be the end of chapter eight, the beginning of chapter nine. The land of Zebulin and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan Galilee of the nations, the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has

1:04:58 dawned. And then from the Septuagint, I'm going to just read the Septuagint in this case because you will see how close these are. These are practically identical. Again, this approach is what we would call a quote in modern English. O land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali, and the rest who inhabit the seashore and beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations, the parts of Judea. O you people who walk in darkness, see a great light. O you who live in the country and in the shadow of death, light will shine on you. And so you can see between these two it is practically identical. This is again approaching what we would call a quote in English. There are some differences with the rabbinic text. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun

1:05:51 and the land of Naphtali. But in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations, and notably this is one of the times where the ESV decides to actually translate that word as nations instead of Gentiles a separate point we've made previously. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on them has light shone. This is one of the cases where there are similarities, certainly, much of it has been preserved, but there are also some pretty significant differences. Not all of that, incidentally, comes through in the ESV translation. Some of it you have to go to Jewish translations of the

1:06:36 Old Testament, of their version of the Old Testament, to get sort of the full sense of what they're saying. Because again, the ESV and others often pull from the Septuagint. Sometimes they will footnote it, sometimes they will not. And so there's actually a phrase in there, in the so-called Hebrew, that we don't get in our version. But the latter hath dealt a more grievous blow by the way of the sea. That is, a phrase that is affixed after the comment land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali. You will find that in Jewish translations of the Old Testament. You'll note that that's not really there in what we have, because it says He has made glorious the way of the sea. Sometimes you will note the translation committees play some games with the

1:07:26 Old Testament, and as we have noted, if it were the case that the Hebrew given to us by the rabbis were the Word of God, then we would not be entitled to use the Greek to fix it. Just as we could not, and certainly will not, employ any sort of Hebrew or anything like that to fix the Greek. We don't get to pick and choose. We don't get to fix the word of God. God has promised to preserve it. He has preserved it for us. In the Greek, that is what we are arguing. But those who want to argue that it is the Hebrew, they aren't behaving as if the Hebrew is the Word of God. They change it whenever they please. They pick and choose from different manuscripts. They pull things from the Septuagint when they don't understand the Hebrew.

1:08:16 And so you'll see here again to go back to the main point that we're making, the citation in the New Testament is what is said in the Old Testament. You have something that is different, not necessarily fundamentally different, in the rabbinic text, but different enough that it is obvious the New Testament author is citing to the Greek because that was his scripture Scripture. So just to highlight the two specific things there because that was a pretty long explanation. The distinctive is sitting versus walking and the region and shadow of death, those are the things that make it very clear that Matthew four, fifteen and sixteen is not quoting the rabbinic. The next example is from Matthew eleven, ten.

1:09:04 This is again quoting Malachi 3-1. Remember that from before Mark quotes Malachi 3-1 from a Hebrew foreloga. Here in Matthew, we have the Septuagint version of Malachi 3-1 being quoted. Now Matthew writes, This is he of whom it is written, Behold I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. So the difference here between the Septuagint and the Rabbinic, where the New Testament preserves the Septuagint, is before your face versus before me. And although those are both kind of conceptually the same, the specific wording can only possibly be from the Septuagint. So again, when you look at the fact that Malachi 3:1 was quoted from Mark, if you think that shoots down the Septuagint, you've

1:09:54 already lost that point entirely because Matthew eleven ten then turns around and quotes the Septuagint for the exact same verse in a very distinct way. The next example still in the book of Matthew and the very next chapter Matthew twelve eighteen through twenty one citing to Isaiah forty two four Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory, and in his name the nations will hope. Between the Rabbinic text and the Septuagint, there is large agreement here.

1:10:47 However, there is a notable difference. What we have here, and the nations will hope in his name, that is from the Septuagint, which is of course aligned with and in his name the nations will hope, it is the same statement. The rabbinic text says, and the coastlands wait for his law. Not the same statement. This is a pretty significant difference. It's very clear that what is being cited here is from the Septuagint, not from some supposed Hebrew text, not from the Rabbinic text certainly that we use as our old testament today. And I think this is a significant example because this is very clearly rabbinic corruption. The reason we included that long, you know, three verses, even though it's only the very end that's different, is that this is about

1:11:40 the gospel being taken to everyone other than Jews as well. So when it changed by the rabbis from in his name the nations will hope to the coastlands will wait for his law. That's neutering the gospel. That is a significant theological reduction that, as we've said in the past episodes, glorifies Jews and excludes everyone else. This was very clearly an evil change. This wasn't simply you know a minor difference or certainly even a translation variance. This was actual malice. And to make sure that I'm clear, when I read that set of verses from the New Testament, I changed the word Gentiles two times to nations, because that is the correct translation. I do the same thing when I record the daily devotions.

1:12:36 I changed the word Gentiles, which is Judaizing, as it is used in modern English, because of course it was fine in Latin, but today it's used for Judaizing. I changed that to the nations. It is worth noting the ESV does play games there and uses the word Gentiles because they are engaged in the exact same kind of Judaizing that the rabbis did by corrupting that section of the Old Testament. The next example we have is from Matthew thirteen, verses fourteen through fifteen, which are a quotation of Isaiah six, nine through ten and this is a passage that's also repeated in Acts twenty eight, twenty six through twenty seven. So we're only counting it once, but it shows up a couple times. I'm gonna read a longer passage here, even though there's only

1:13:24 a small change, because then again the context here is really important for the nature of the change. This is another one of the malicious ones by the rabbis. And in this case, I'm going to be re reading the quotation from Acts rather than Matthew. They're basically saying there's just a slight Slightly more context in Acts. In disagreeing among themselves they departed after Paul had made one statement. The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, go to this people and say, You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive, for this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see

1:14:06 with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn and I would heal them. So this is the very end of Acts, where Paul is speaking to a group of Jews, next thing he does is I'm gonna go to the nations. I'm going to the people that all these other changes are excluding and saying the gospel's not for us. I'm going to go to them instead. You're as evil as all your fathers who are murdering the prophets, who murdered Christ. I'm going to people who are actually going to believe what God says, as he has sent me. The key line is for this people's heart has grown dull, and their eyes have closed, lest they should see and I would heal them. Now what's present in the Rabbinic is crucially different because the

1:14:50 imperatives are changed. What is said in the Rabbinic text is make the heart of this people dull and shut their eyes. Do you see what just happened here? Acts and Matthew, when they quote Septuagint's Isaiah, it's a lamentation from God that their heart has grown cold, that their ears can barely hear, their eyes have closed. When the rabbinic text makes these changes, it blames God. It says that God made the heart of this people dull. God shut their eyes. They're saying they're not guilty at all. God did this to them. It's a wicked change. So some of these, as we said earlier, some are going to be neutral examples where it's just different wording. Some of them are evil, which is in distinct

1:15:39 difference from what we had with the seven examples, where in some cases they made even more sense in the Septuagint, which in no way diminishes what's in the New Testament. But we're not dealing with the same substance of the changes. The heart of these changes are malicious, where is the heart of the difference between the Septuagint and the Hebrew forelaga is pure and it is entirely innocent and truthful. This is not a small deal. I didn't count up how many of these examples have, but just reading this makes me angry because this is us that they're hating. This is God that they're hating. They tampered with his word and passed off a forgery. The next example is egregious, as egregious as the last, but in a slightly different way.

1:16:30 And this one is Matthew fifteen eight citing to Isaiah twenty nine thirteen. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. And so in relevant part for the difference here, in the Septuagint, in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts and teachings. That's the same statement, slightly different wording, but the exact same teaching. The Rabbinic text, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men. Even if one were inclined to be as charitable as possible and sort of try to exegete away what this actually says, There's no real way to do that without simply ignoring what it says because what it says is wrong.

1:17:27 The fear of God is not a commandment taught by men. The fear of God is what we are supposed to have as Christians. The fear of God is part of what it means to be a Christian. And here they're saying their fear of me is a commandment taught by men. They've totally gotten rid of the condemnation of what they are doing, because in vain do they worship me teaching human precepts and teachings as doctrines, the commandments of men, because that's exactly what the rabbis did. The rabbis made their own religion. It's one of the things at which the Pharisees excelled. They made their own religion and implemented that contrary to God's law. And of course, the ultimate display of that, the ultimate flower of

1:18:12 that particular poisonous plant is the Talmud. This is a condemnation of that, it's a condemnation of all false religion, of course, but here they do away with what God is condemning, their own behavior, and add something that is totally contrary to the core of the Christian religion. Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is one of the ways in which we chiefly worship the Lord. It's not, as some may think when they hear it in English, fear in the sense of just being terrified of God. It is a different fuller theological sense of that term, a discussion for another time we've touched on it elsewhere, of course. But what they're saying here is simply contrary to the truth.

1:18:56 We sort of gloss over this because that's the case in many places in the Old Testament where the rabbis have corrupted it. We just sort of try to harmonize it with what we know as Christian. We should have never done that. We should have certainly stopped doing that centuries ago. Because here we have the Septuagint, there's nothing inconsistent. It's the same statement. Because Matthew is reading and citing to the Greek. He is not reading and citing to this corrupted text that the rabbis passed off. This text they probably hadn't even created yet when Matthew was writing his gospel. And so they just straight up deleted, in vain do they worship me, which really proves the point. The next example is from Matthew 19, verses 5 and 6, which

1:19:41 quotes Genesis 2:24. This is also present in Mark ten eight. Matthew says For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. The ending here in the Rabbinic text is the different part. The Septuagint says verbatim with Matthew, and the two shall become one flesh, whereas the rabbinic text says, and become one flesh. So two is missing entirely, and the they that you will see in some of your Bibles is an interpolation. It's not present at all. So it's very clearly a case where the same sentiment is being conveyed, but the wording is specifically distinct. And in the case of Matthew and Mark, they're quoting a word that they can only have possibly gotten from the Septuagint.

1:20:31 The next example is in a similar vein, although with a theological nuance here, as opposed to what is more a change in diction. This is from Matthew twenty one sixteen citing to Psalm eight two. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes, have you never read, out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise? And then from the Septuagint, out of the mouths of infants and nurslings, the same word there, you furnished praise for yourself. As opposed to the Rabbinic text, which instead of furnished praise prepared praise, has established strength. This is a different saying, and it's not really even coherent. Because furnished praise makes perfect sense.

1:21:21 Now of course we're going to if we follow down that road, get into doctrinal and theological differences here between different Christian sects today, because we view infants and infant faith differently, but it's very clear what is being said here. Prepared praise, furnished praise, whichever way you happen to translate that, is not the same as established strength. And so again it is very clear Matthew is reading and citing to the Greek. He is not using any supposed Hebrew text. He is not using the rabbinic text that we have in our Old Testament. using the Septuagint. The last of our twelve examples from Matthew is chapter twenty four, verse twenty nine, which is quoting Isaiah thirty four four.

1:22:06 This is Jesus prophesying and Isaiah prophesying the end of the world. Isaiah and Matthew reads basically identically The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. The Septuagint difference here between the Rabbinic text The Septuagint says that the stars will fall like a leaf Whereas the rabbinic text says that the stars will wither and fade. So in this case, you know, it's poetic, they're both sort of describing the same type of thing, but the very specific wording of falling like a leaf versus withering fading very clearly can only possibly have come from the Septuagint. The next example is from the book of Luke, Luke two twenty

1:22:54 three citing to Exodus thirteen twelve and so Luke two twenty three As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord. Now it's worth focusing on that word male here. This is a relatively minor difference, but it just goes to show that there are problems with the rabbinic text, and with regard to God's word we shouldn't be encountering things like this because we all know, at least we should know, in the Old Testament ceremonial system, males that opened the womb had to be redeemed, or if they were animals, redeemed or sacrificed to the Lord. This should be very clear in the text, and it is indeed very clear in the Septuagint, because in the Septuagint, you shall also

1:23:44 set apart everything opening the womb, the males for the Lord. Everything opening the womb from the herds, or among your animals, whatever belongs to you, you shall consecrate the males to the Lord. We don't have that in the Rabbinic text. And the Old Testament, that most of us have, so the ESV, follows this problem that is present in the Rabbinic text. It says you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. It doesn't say the males, which is very key here, because when you look at the ceremonial system in the Old Testament, the females are not included. It is the male that first opens the womb that must be redeemed, and that is true of certain animals and certainly of your sons, not the females.

1:24:35 It then says with regard to animals, all the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord. So it has the phrase there, the males, that modifier, with regard to the animals, but it is absent with regard to the first statement there, all that first opens the womb. It seems like something minor, but it is not contrary to. It requires you to pull in context from elsewhere in scripture. Whereas what is cited here in the New Testament matches the Septuagint because the Septuagint retains the accuracy of the males must be redeemed. It is not just everything that first opens the womb. It is specifically the males. The next example is from Luke three verses four through six, which are quoting Isaiah forty versus Verses three through five.

1:25:31 For time I'm just gonna quote verse four from Isaiah and verse five from Luke because that's really where the change is. Luke reads Every valley shall be filled and every mountain that is a hill shall be made low, which is pretty much verbatim what we find in the Septuagint. What is said in the Rabbinic text is every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain and hill shall be made low. So the distinction there is between shall be filled versus shall be lifted up. And you know, again, I don't know if this is one of those shemitic sayings that makes sense to them and doesn't make sense to us. The important part is that Luke is very clearly quoting the specific wording of the Septuagint again for Isaiah here.

1:26:19 And this is of course parallel to something that we went over earlier and so the comments made earlier also apply here. The next example and the final example from Luke is Luke four eighteen through nineteen citing to Isaiah sixty one one one two. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. There are a number of things in there that Christians will immediately note, but one particularly salient one is of course recovering of sight to the blind, because the that was a major part of Christ's

1:27:04 ministry. There's all sorts of typology and theology we can pull out of that for another time, but that was a major part of Christ's ministry on earth, was restoring sight to the blind. And so And so what does the Septuagint have? And recovery of sight to the blind. It is the exact same statement. What does the Rabbinic text have? And the opening of the prison to those who are bound? Or in the translation that the Jews prefer, the JPS, liberation to the imprisoned. This is a deliberate removal of part of Christ's ministry. The Septuagint has it word for word. It is exactly what we see cited here by Luke, it is exactly what we see happening in Christ's ministry, and the rabbis simply removed it.

1:27:54 This is of course one of the themes that we see from the rabbis, from the rabbinical changes. They remove promises to the nations, which is to say non-Jews. They remove parts of Christ's ministry, they remove things that clearly reference Christ. There's a theme here, but again, the overarching point. This matches the Greek because Luke is reading the Greek, he is citing the Greek, because the Greek is scripture. And in this same passage, Luke is also quoting Isaiah 61, 1 and 2, And the phrase that is different there is to set at liberty those who are oppressed, which is verbatim from the Septuagint, and is not found in the rabbinic text. The next example is John twelve thirty eight, citing to Isaiah fifty

1:28:46 three one. So that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled, Lord who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. This is one of those cases where it's worth dropping into the Greek as it were, and simply looking at the two, the Nestlean versus the sweet is what I happen to use. It's the exact same statement. Lord who has believed what he heard from us Curitus Epistusen Te Akawe Haimon. It is the exact same I know someone's going to complain about my Greek pronunciation. I'm not fluent in Greek, too bad. The point is that it is the exact same statement, word for word, identical, between the New Testament and the Old Testament. This is a This is a case where very clearly what is

1:29:39 being cited here again is the Greek, in Greek, notably. It's kind of easy to do that. This would rise to the level of what we would call in modern English a quote. John is quoting the Septuagint. And crucially the first word there, Lord, is deleted from the rabbinic text, which is how we know beyond any shadow of doubt it's a quote. Not only is it verbatim, but the word Lord Kyrie Nayawe blasphemous sound that the rabbis deleted. And this is also one, just John 12, 38 is also repeated in Romans 10:16. So we're not double counting it, but it shows up a couple times the same verse in Isaiah. The next example we have is from Acts 226. And this is a case which is quoting, and now that we're getting into some psalms here in this one, the psalm numbering is

1:30:39 different in the Septuagint, which is the pain in the butt. For most of the Psalms after about 10 and before someplace, you have to delete, you have to subtract one in order to find the correct Psalm. So in your Bible, it's going to be Psalm 16, 9, in the Septuagint, it's going to be fifteen nine. Acts two hundred twenty six says therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. The Septuagint says again, my tongue rejoiced, whereas the rabbinic text says my glory rejoices. Which is one of those cases where A, it's not remotely the same word. It can't possibly be a mistranslation. And B, it doesn't really make any sense. What is it for your glory to be rejoicing? Now, I I don't know if this is rabbinic tampering in this

1:31:22 case, but it's very clearly I believe this is Peter speaking in Acts two, quoting the Septuagint. The next example again, still in the book of Acts, is chapter 7, verse 14, citing to Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1.5. And Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his kindred, seventy-five persons in all. The Septuagint has seventy-five persons. The rabbinic text has seventy persons. This is a relatively minor difference in terms of perhaps characters, but it is a salient difference because we do have a different number here. And so if you have the New Testament author citing something, he is going to cite the number in that thing. And so he's very clearly here citing the Septuagint, which has seventy-five,

1:32:17 which is what he cites, not seventy, which is present in the rabbinic. The next example from Acts is one that we mentioned before, and it's one of the very first ones that made me wonder what was going on with the Septuagint thing. This is Acts seven, forty-two, and forty-three, which is quoting Amos five, twenty-five through twenty-seven. I'm gonna read the full thing from Acts as I said earlier, and then we're just gonna show you the bits that are different. Because the context here is again very interesting. But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, as it is written in the Book of the Prophets Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

1:33:04 You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Raphan, or Remphan, the images that you worship, and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon. So this is Stephen directly condemning the Jews to their faces for having murdered Christ, and he says you were worshipping your god Moloch and the star of your god Remphan in the forty years when you were wandering in the wilderness. Now, I alluded to this in the previous episode talking about King Job and why he might have had reasons beyond just fear to keep these people out of his territory. They were literally worshipping Moloch in the desert. That's what Acts says. That's what Stephen says. That's what the Holy Ghost says. That's what Amos says.

1:33:50 So the difference here is Moloch and Remfan, which are both words that we use frequently today, certainly on the internet and on the right, we're familiar with this. This is a distinction where Stephen, the martyr, they kill him immediately after this. This is one of the very last things he says before they get outraged and murder him on the spot, for calling them Moloch worshippers, for saying that they were worshiping the star of their god Remfin in the desert during the forty years in the wilderness. What is said in the Rabbinic text is totally different. Doesn't say Molak and it doesn't say Remphan. It says Sikuth your king and Kiyun instead of Remphan. Now these are both proper names, but I'm not aware of them

1:34:38 showing up anywhere else. For our purposes it doesn't matter, we don't need to do any sort of archaeological investigation. Scripture says Moloch and Remphan says that they are worshiping the star of their god in the desert, and there were no stars associated with the people of Israel so called until fairly recently, that a thousand years ago the star started showing up on black magic tomes. And later they said, Oh, it's the star of David. It's the star of Remphan. It's the star in Acts. It's the star in Amos. But it's only there if you read the Septuagint. You would never know that this correlation existed if you believe the rabbinic text. The next example still in the book of Acts, the next chapter,

1:35:25 chapter eight, verses thirty two through thirty three, citing to Isaiah again chapter fifty three verses seven through eight. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth. There are a number of differences between what is cited here in the New Testament and the rabbinic text. With regard to the Septuagint, it is essentially a perfect match. It is very clearly what is being read, what is being cited here, which incidentally does mean the eunuch is indeed reading

1:36:12 the Greek, he is reading the Septuagint. This is also what is used, of course, by the apostles, by everyone in this day, because that is just what they were reading. That was their Old Testament. Weirdly, the words sheep and lamb are swapped in the rabbinic, and you will note that if you read the version of the Old Testament you probably have that is probably based on the Rabbinic, more likely than not, but saliently another thing that they removed from their version is the word humiliation. They simply decided we don't need that. We don't need to have that word there. And so some of your Old Testaments may have that if they decided to pull from the Septuagint to harmonize with the New Testament,

1:37:00 but if you read that in just the Rabbinic text, you are not going to have that humiliation there. You are going to have something else. The next example is from Act thirteen forty-one, which is quoting Habakkuk one five. Acts reads Look you scoffers, be astounded and perish, for I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will not believe, even if one tells it to you. The rabbinic text changes from look you scoffers and perish to look among the nations and see wonder and be astounded. So scoffers, disappears, and perish disappears. Calling them scoffers the rabbis got rid of, and saying that they would perish is eliminated. So again, these prophecies, including from the minor prophets at the very

1:37:59 end of you know, before Israel had the promise fulfilled on the Christ with the destruction of the temple and everything else some of the very last prophecies calling them scoffers and saying they would perish, they had to clean that up on their way out the door. The final example we have then is from the book of Acts still, Acts fifteen, sixteen through eighteen. The final example for this episode that is citing to Amos nine, eleven through twelve After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that is fallen, I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the nations who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.

1:38:46 Again I change the little word play there to be friendly, that the ESV uses I change the Gentiles to the nations as it should be. And so the Septuagint again just matches this, so that the remnant of mankind and all the nations upon whom my name is invoked will search for me. We've mentioned this one previously, because this is the sort of change of which the rabbis were certainly fond. did something similar pervasively in the book of Esther, and so instead of having the remnant of mankind and the nations upon whom my name is invoked, they have, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations upon whom my name is called. They change this from a prophecy about what God is going to

1:39:36 do for the nations, about the fact that the gospel is going to be taken to all peoples into basically a revenge fantasy against Edom, against their old racial enemies, notably their very close cousins, but they're racial enemies. This is not even remotely comparable what we have in the rabbinic text. The Septuagint matches, because the Septuagint is what is being cited here. And so the promise to the nations remains in the Septuagint, whereas the rabbis again transformed it into this revenge fantasy. And so to close out this episode, you can very clearly see here, just by the preponderance of the evidence, what do you have? You have citations by the New Testament authors to the Old Testament

1:40:29 in Greek, to the Septuagint, because that is their Old Testament. Yes, we had at the beginning that handful of, in some cases, very knit very nitpicky examples in which they were citing to a Hebrew four Laga that maybe had been preserved via the Aramaic Targums, however that had been preserved perhaps liturgically, or just miraculously in the case of the Spirit directly inspiring them perhaps we don't know exactly how that transpired, but we do know that those are the exceptions. Virtually always when the New Testament authors are Cite to the Old Testament, when they reference the Old Testament, in some cases, when they literally quote it word for word, they are doing that in the Greek, because the Greek is what they were reading, the Greek is

1:41:14 what they knew, the Greek was their Bible and it should be our Bible. Because the Greek is the one that God preserved. I'm not going to do the full conclusion for the series today, obviously, because that will come at the end of the next episode when we've finished going through the examples, notably the next episode will simply be examples where the citations in the New Testament are to the Septuagint. Because we're done with the exceptions, we went over all of them in that tiny segment at the beginning of this episode. Everywhere else, where the New Testament cites to the Old Testament, the authors are citing to the Greek. They are putting their stamp of approval because they are putting God's stamp of approval on the Old Testament,

1:42:01 in the Greek, on the Septuagint. If we believe the New Testament, which certainly, if we are Christians, we must, because if we do not believe the New Testament, then we are certainly not Christians, and so given that we are Christians, given that we believe the New Testament is inspired, and given that the New Testament cites to the Greek, we must believe that they are citing to that which is inspired, that which is God's Word, because they are citing it as God's Word. This is notably different from the times, very few in number, incidentally, where New Testament authors cite something external to Scripture. You have some citations to poetry and some minor things like that. They are not citing those as Scripture, they're not quoting those as

1:42:46 the Word of God. Here Here, many of these are introduced as It is written, It is written in the Prophet. God said, They are giving a deliberate and explicit stamp of approval to the Old Testament in the Greek. Because it is the Word of God, it is the Bible of the Church, it should never have fallen out of use. It is unforgivable, it is unconscionable that that our ancestors permitted essentially the old testament to be lost. Now yes, of course, God preserved us from our own stupidity as he does day by day, thankfully. He preserved his word because the Hebrew contains some of the Word of God. But the Greek is the Word of God. And we had it all along. It is equivalent, and I pointed this out before, it is equivalent

1:43:38 to when the Old Testament Israelites lost the Old Testament in a wall. We did it in the Vatican Archives or wherever it happens to be. We did the equivalent. We pretended that we had the Old Testament still in this thing that the rabbis gave to us, but it was not the Old Testament, it is not the Old Testament as preserved by God, and as clearly taught by the New Testament. And we will continue to prove that in the next episode, in which we will give even more examples of where the New Testament authors are very clearly citing the Greek. Because they were reading the Greek. Because again, as we proved in earlier episodes, they didn't even read Hebrew. They didn't have access to the Hebrew. The Hebrew didn't exist.

1:44:28 Because the Hebrew by this point was dead and gone and lost for all time. The Greek is what God preserved, because the Greek fulfills God's promises. The Greek is his word, the Greek is what we should be using as his word. We should be thankful that God preserved it down through the centuries despite our negligence. We should not be using what the Christ killing rabbis passed off to us as supposedly God's word. We can see where they changed it, and we can see the kind of changes they made because they follow a theme. It is exactly what we would expect them to do, and it is exactly what they did. Whereas the Greek is faithful, the Greek was preserved because God's promises ride alongside the Greek.

1:45:19 That is how he fulfilled his promises that his word would endure, and again, thankfully, he did that for us despite our own stupidity and negligence and faithlessness down through the centuries. We still have the Greek. We should be using the Greek. We should no longer be using the rabbinic text because it is demonstrably corrupted. It is not the text of the early church, it is not the text of the apostles, it is not the text of Christ Himself. That is the Greek, that is the Septuagint, that is the Bible of the Church.