The Septuagint — New Testament, Part 2

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm still woe. On today's Stone Choir, we are concluding the seventh part Septuagent series that began some time ago. This is entirely a part two of the previous episode, so this intro is going to be very brief because the intro for this episode is quite literally the intro for the previous episode. We are continuing right where we left off in the New Testament. As we said, the New Testament is our closing argument for the Septuagint. The structure of this particular episode is going to be very simple. We're going to speed run through 44 verses in the New Testament that are quoted from the Septuagint exclusively and cannot possibly be

1:20 from any Hebrew foreloga. And then Cory and I are each going to give our closing statements. Basically we're presenting the evidence, we're gonna close out the case and then we're going to wrap everything up. And so that we don't repeat ourselves because we basically say pretty much the same thing. We've obviously reached the same conclusions and all this. My conclusion is simply going to be a recitation of the facts that we presented. Basically, I'm going to pull the previous seven episodes back into everybody's memory so that warm up those caches and get your contacts window refilled with the relevant facts so that the arguments we make are in the context of everything we've presented. The next verse that we're going to be looking at from the

2:04 New Testament begins in Romans in the previous episode we went through Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, which included all four gospel writers, and at the end we're already looking at Paul himself quoting the Septuagint in Acts. Today we're going to be going from Romans through Revelation. First verse is Romans two twenty-four, which is a quotation of Isaiah fifty-two five. The New Testament reads, For just as it is written, the name of God is being blasphemed among the nations because of you. And the Septuagint says, Because of you, my name is continually blasphemed among the nations. So slightly different word order, exactly the same wording. The rabbinic text says, My name is continually despised all day long.

2:49 So there is neither because of you nor among the nations. So yet again we have an example where the rabbis deleted something that says you Jews are doing something wicked, and because of you wicked Jews, the nations, that is us, the rest of the people in the world, for whom the gospel is intended, despise me. That was true then? It's certainly true today. This sort of false doctrine when it's coming from those who should be the believers, when unbelievers see it, they're never going to believe in the true God. One of the single most effective things a Satan can do to undermine the church is to have the church itself spreading filth. And when we're relying on rabbis, that's what we get. So right off the bat in Romans, the very first quote, is

3:33 the rabbis specifically altering something where God points out that that's what they do. One more thing I want you to note here in this first example before we move to the second one. As it is written, that phrase occurs many times in your New Testament. Pay attention to that. There's a reason they're saying, as it is written. They have access to what is written. That's Gagrapti in the Greek there. That occurs in many of these quotations, that occurs in many places in the New Testament, think about what that means. And so the next example is from Romans three four citing to Psalm fifty one four, using the numbering with which we are all familiar, Psalm fifty in the Septuagint numbering. The ESV reads By no means, let God be true, though every

4:24 one were a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged. And then from the Septuagint, so that you may be justified in your words, and be victorious when you go to the law. The same sentiment, same statement, then from the rabbinic text. So you are just in your sentence and right in your judgement. Incidentally, the translations play a little bit of a game, not necessarily intentionally in this case, but the underlying verbs there in the Greek are identical. So it is even more of a quote than you would believe if you were simply reading it in the English without looking at the underlying Greek. And this is a case where there's a complete inversion of when you

5:11 are judged to when you judge. That's quite a radical difference theologically. And yet again, we have God's wrath diminished by the changes the rabbis made The next quotation is from Romans nine twenty-five of Hosea two twenty-three. Paul says, as indeed he says in Hosea, those who were not my people I will call my people, and her who was not beloved I will call beloved. And the Septuagint says, I will love her who is not loved. So the loved beloved wording is what is preserved there. The rabbinic text is quite different in a couple ways. It reads, And I will have mercy on no mercy, and I will say to not my people, you are my people. So in many of the Bibles we have now no mercy and not my people are capitalized, as though those are proper names for

6:05 whom God is referring to. So what we have removed here, the beloved in love is termed to mercy and then and then pity. It's a fundamental change in the wording which obviously can't be preserved in a manner that survives translation. It's clear that the Septuagint is being quoted. And notably this is Hosea, this is one of the minor prophets, as one of two quotations. I highlight that to point out that once again we're not talking about the Pentateuch. When the New Testament quotes the Septuagint, it is indiscriminate about which books it chooses. And sadly, this is also something we should take as a warning when we do things like make the Reformation argument that, oh well, the books that we put in the back of the New Testament,

6:51 they're not as important. You will not find that hermeneutic in the way Jesus and the apostles argue from the Old Testament. There is no unimportant book in the Old Testament. There's no book in the Old Testament from which we do not derive doctrine. That is a very dangerous premise to introduce into a circumstance where we go around saying that all of Scripture is breathed out by God. Which is it? If God says it, that means it's really important. So when we see Paul putting quotations of Hosea right alongside Isaiah and all the others, that means something. It means something in terms of us taking seriously wherever we find the Greek scripture. This is another instance where the underlying Greek word is again identical.

7:40 And so just because the English words are related they are similar, you can see that congruence there, that agreement between the New Testament quotation and the Old Testament. It is in the Greek the same word. The next example is Romans nine twenty seven, citing to Isaiah ten twenty two. And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved. And then from the Septuagint, and if the people of Israel become like the sand of the sea, the remnant of them will be saved. There are a few cases when we are going through these examples, where I have slightly changed the wording as it may read literally in whatever translation of the Bible you have.

8:28 When I have done that it is because the underlying Greek term is exactly identical, and I don't want to have to note that every single time And so if I've made them match, it's because they do in fact match in the Greek. The Masoretic text is instead only a remnant of them shall return. The word there, this time I will note it for return, Is identical. So is saved incidentally. And continuing with Romans 9, 27 and 28, again, this is quoting us Isaiah 10, 22, and 23. We split these in two because they're actually multiple parts where there's sufficient differences that the numbering of how you want to choose to the forty-four we're we're referring to, it's not a magic number, it's not special.

9:14 This is just the way we're grouping these things. The same passage is Cory just read. I'm gonna highlight a different portion of it. The Septuagint says he will finish the work and cut short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work in all the world. Whereas Rabinic's hex says, destruction is decreed overflowing with righteousness, for the Lord God of hosts will make a full end, as decreed in the midst of the earth. So the phrase cut short is verbatim in the Septuagint, which is not the case in the rabbinic. And also the phrase that's in Greek, upon the inhabited world, which is in the accusative, is different in the Masoretic when you look at the parts of speech that are used.

10:01 So where the Greek says upon the inhabitive world, the Hebrew says upon the earth, which sounds the same in English, except in Hebrew it's in the genitive case, which is possessive. So in the midst of the earth, saying that in a possessive sense versus accusive changes the nature of whom is doing the possessing or whom is doing the occupying. So it's a subtle shift. And again, we're not trying to make a bunch of theological points here. We're specifically highlighting their clear textual differences where Paul is simply quoting the Greek. But it is notable that some of these differences do have knock on effects to how one would theologically interpret some of these passages. Just a quick note on my previous comment about Remnant because I

10:50 know it's going to come up at some point in the future, someone's going to object to what I said. To be entirely specific, it is the same core word there. Because the Greek uses two slightly different variants of the same word. You have hupalima in the New Testament and Katalima in the Old Testament. Same core word, slightly different. In terms of nuance. We have many of those examples in English as well, so you're all familiar with that. So the next example is Romans 9:29, citing to Isaiah 1:9. And as Isaiah predicted, if the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah. And then from the Septuagint, and if the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom, and become

11:42 like Gomorra. This is one of the cases and this happened as I was taking notes for this episode. My notes increasingly just become Greek near the end, because in many cases it is essentially an exact quote, what we would literally call a quote in English. Sometimes there's a particle difference here and there. That's something that happens, sometimes in Greek. We do that in English as well, but I started adding the Greek in because I can look at the two verses in the Greek and they're identical. There's a difference of maybe two words in this case. Whereas in the rabbinic version it says, had not left us a few survivors. The Greek's identical, the rabbis gave us something else. It's very clear the New Testament author is citing to the Greek.

12:29 He's basically quoting it as we would call a quote in English, which is to say literal. And the Greek word that's used there for offspring that how it's translated in some septuagent translations is sperma. It should really be translated seed. And And uh Lexum and Brenton both use seed. That's very biblical language that is used in the New Testament to correlate Jesus to the promise that was made to Abraham and to Jacob. So that distinction, that removal of seed and replacing it with remnant, also has theological knock on effects. And it's you can't possibly mistranslate one for the other There. Next example, still in Romans 9. This is I think the fourth or fifth example we have in Romans 9, all right in a row.

13:17 If you go read Romans 9, 10 and 11, because most of these quotations from those, when you see whom Paul is addressing, it becomes kind of interesting that he's talking all this Greek to these people, not what you'd expect based on what we're told about the context in the New Testament. Romans nine hundred thirty three and ten eleven both quote Isaiah twenty eight sixteen. Paul says, Just as it is written, Look I am laying in Zion a stone that will cause people to stumble stumble, and a rock that will make them fall, yet the one who believes in him will not be put to shame. The Septuagint repeats, the one who believes in him will not be put to shame identically. Whereas the rabbinic text says, He who believes will not be in

14:00 haste. So the put to shame and in him is replaced with an entirely different notion, not be in haste. This is one that both neuters a Christological prophecy and really fundamentally changes the meaning, as is usual, to something that's like, what does that even mean? He will not be in haste. It's one of these things where when you read in the old testament, like, I don't know, it's just some weird shamitic saying, we have no idea what they're talking about. Basically it's reducing the Old Testament to magic Bible language. That's rubbish. It makes perfect sense, but it only makes sense in the original Greek. The next example still in the Book of Romans, Romans 10, 18, citing to Psalm 19:4, again using the numbering with which we're all

14:45 familiar. Their voice is gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. And then from the Septuagint, their voice went out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. This is another case where I just took the Greek and stuck it in my notes because they're identical. The Rabbinic text has their line is gone out through all the earth. They've just changed this to something that is practically again incoherent like the previous example. It's something again that we'll read in the Old Testament and just assume that this must have some sort of meaning. But of course it has a meaning when you read it in the Greek, when you have what it actually means, their voice has

15:25 gone out to all the earth. Incidentally, the ESV deliberately chooses the Septuagint over the rabbinic in this case, and in the footnote for this it just says their measuring line. In other words, footnoting what the actual rabbinic text says, the text on which the ESV is supposedly based, but using the Greek, because the Greek makes sense, and the Hebrew does not. And again, this is a case where the Greek is an actual quote. This is This is what we would call a quote in English. The next example is Romans eleven, verse ten, which is quoting Psalm sixty nine twenty-three, or if you look in the Septuagint sixty eight twenty-four. And David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.

16:16 Let their eyes be darkened so that they may not see, and make their backs bend continually. And the Septuagint says, bend their back always. Whereas the rabbinic text says, make their loins continually tremble. Yet again, this is both not a match literally, so clearly not a quote, and the Hebrew is unclear to be charitable. And again the Greek is a literal quote. I'm looking at the two here in Greek. Exact same. A funny little aside from the previous example before I give the next one, one of the Jewish translations at which I looked actually used the Septuagint to correct their own Hebrew, because they also agreed that it was incoherent. Which is incredible. Sort of a deep irony, but it's actually perfect because as we made the

17:07 case in the first episode, until Jesus came and they murdered him, they were all using the Greek. Exactly. The Septuagint was the authoritative Bible Bible of the Jews of Jesus Day, which is why everyone's citing it in the New Testament. So it's not actually bizarre Hebrew scholarship for them to cite the Septuagint. It was authoritative with them until they replaced it. It's they're the ones who became liars when they rejected the stone that became the capstone, and now we have seminaries teaching the same thing the rabbis do. The next example still in the book of Romans, you may notice a theme here, Romans eleven twenty six B citing to Isaiah fifty nine twenty. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it

17:51 is written again Gropti, the deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob. And the Septuagint, the deliverer will come for the sake of Zion, and he will turn ungodliness back from Jacob. The Rabbinic text has, however, and a redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression. This is an inversion. This is a completely different statement in the Rabbinic text. In the Septuagint this is a clear prophecy of the Savior of Christ. In the Rabbinic text this is simply the promise of reward for those who turn from transgression. It is a fundamentally different saying, it changes a theology entirely. You basically go from having a Savior who is going to come

18:42 and save us from our sins, which is exactly what the gospel is to works righteousness. That's what the rabbis have handed us And that's made very clear in the last portion of the quote in Romans 11, 26. It says, He will banish ungodliness from Jacob. And then another quote, and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins. So Paul very directly connects God removing the sins of his people to what else is going on here. So when the rabbis removed that portion, they were specifically denying what Paul quotes and what Paul confesses in Romans. Next example from the very next verse, Romans 11, 27, which is quoting Isaiah 27, 9, and is quoting Isaiah 59, 21. So as I mentioned in the previous episode, Isaiah is quoted, I

19:37 believe, 29 times. in the New Testament exclusively from the Septuagint. It's overwhelmingly. Forty-four percent of the quotes that we're looking at are from Isaiah. So as I mentioned last week, when someone brings up the so-called Great Isaiah scroll, you need to laugh at them and tell them to shut up because the New Testament rejects it out of hand. So the difference that we are highlighting here has to do with the first person promise when I take away their sins, which when we look at Isaiah twenty seven nine, the Septuagint says, Therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be taken away, and this is his blessing, when I shall have taken away his sin. Whereas the Rabbinic text for Isaiah twenty seven nine says, Therefore by

20:24 this guilt of Jacob will be atoned for, and this will be the fruit of the removal of his sin. So what is removed in this passage is the first person promise when I take away their sins. What the rabbis have done here is made it unclear that God is taking away their sins. Now, of course, as Christians, we know that that's the only possible way sins go away, but that's not what the rabbis taught. They taught completely different theology. And so this diminution of God's active participation in the removal of sin is both textually a difference that means this Isaiah quote can only possibly be coming from the Septuagint, but it's also a denial of Christ. The next example Romans eleven thirty four citing to Isaiah forty verse thirteen

21:15 for who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? And then from the Septuagint, who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counsellor to instruct him? The Rabbinic, however, has who has measured the spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel. It changed both of the two parts of this verse. Spirit is a completely different word from mind. It is the same word, it's the same phrase, incidentally, mutting to the Lord in the Greek there. Spirit is a different concept. It's capitalized in many of our Old Testaments because they're assuming it's a reference to the Holy Spirit, to the Holy Ghost. But that's not what we actually have in this verse. It's not what it says in the New Testament.

22:00 Testament and it's not what it says in the Old Testament. And what man shows him his counsel, certainly we can read that through a Christian lens and try to make that consonant with what Scripture teaches, make that make sense, but again this is a case where the Hebrew is actually essentially gibberish, because who has been his counsellor makes perfect sense. What man shows him his counsel? This is going to depend on how you want to try to assign these pronouns and make this make sense. We shouldn't be looking at the Old Testament and trying to make a jumbled mess of Hebrew make sense. We have the Greek and it is an exact match to what is in the New Testament. Next we have Romans twelve nineteen, which is quoting Deuteronomy thirty two,

22:48 thirty-five. Paul again says, For it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And And the Septuagint quotes, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. The rabbinic text says, Vengeance is mine and recompense. So the explicit promise I will repay is completely removed, and recompense is put in there, which you could say is sort of the same thing, but it's not a quote. The next example, Romans 14, 11, citing to again Isaiah 45 23. For it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. The Septuagint, because to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall acknowledge God. The Rabbinicaz, instead, keeps every knee shall bow, but changes every tongue

23:42 shall swear allegiance. There's a similar sentiment here, and that's the case in some of these examples, but it's very clear that what the New Testament is citing, what is being referenced there, is the Greek Old Testament, is the Septuagint, because it is not identical, shall swear allegiance and confess to God. I think I would argue that's even worse than that because it's almost describing this as teamwork. The bow to me is submission, but then I'm gonna take an oath as like Laura, I'm I'm on team God now. I'm a I'm a big party of this covenant. Whereas when you say confess to God, it's continuation of that submission. Next quote is from Romans 15 12, which is quoting Isaiah 11 10. Paul.

24:30 And again Isaiah says, The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the nations, in him will the nations hope. And the Septuagint repeats verbatim. In him the nations will hope. The rabbinic text says the nations will seek. So the differences between hope and seek, which are both very different words, cannot be a quote. And it's also a removal of the gospel. To say that the nations are seeking God, yeah, maybe, but for the nations to have hope in God makes them already believers. So it's a fundamental reduction of the gospel for us. The rabbinic changes were not only substantive, they were harmful. And they weren't haphazard. This is one of the kinds of changes they made to Scripture

25:22 because they wanted to minimize the promises to those who are not Jewish. That was one of their overarching goals throughout these changes, and that is very obvious because this is a particular type of change that we see again and again and again. So the next example, moving on to a new book, but at the same time not, because we're still in Isaiah for the citation here, the reference here. 1 Corinthians 2.16 citing to Isaiah 40, verse 13, a verse we already used previously, and of course this is notable because there is a different intended audience for this epistle, and he is still using the Greek, he is still citing to the Septuagint. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ, and then from

26:11 the Septuagint, and who has been his counselor to instruct him? I won't replicate the comments from earlier because again this is the same verse in Isaiah and essentially the same thing in the New Testament. But it is worth noting that to instruct him, which is the same Greek verb in both places, is simply absent from the rabbinic text. They just removed that part of the wor of that one verse. The next example is also from first Corinthians chapter fourteen, verse twenty-one, which is quoting Isaiah twenty-eight, eleven and twelve. Paul writes, By people of other tongues and by the lips of others I will speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord. The Septuagint reads By reason of a different tongue and by another

26:57 lip they will speak to this people, and they were not willing to hear. The Rabbinic text says, For by stammering lips in another tongue he will speak to this people this is rest, and yet they would not hear. So this cannot possibly be a quote from the rabbinic text because Paul's wording of other tongues or different tongues in lips of others, which is a form of refusal to listen, aligns exactly with the Septuagint vocabulary and structure. And it's not at all what the rabbis wrote with stammering lips. And this is a case where if you look at your English Bibles, some of them will go one way and some will go the other. If you look at Bible Hub for any of these, and it's actually a good idea to do that, you can search any of

27:43 these Old Testament passages in Bible Hub and just scroll down and look through how the various translations choose to do these. You'll find that in some cases they're very consistent with the rabbinic. In some cases they're very consistent with the Septuagint. In some cases are all over the place. I have really come to despise translation committees in the process of this project because they are singularly untrustworthy. Because many of the times when you look in the footnotes, there's no footnote that says, Oh yeah, we use a septuagent here. They do not show you their cards because if they did it every time, they actually made changes from the Septuagint of the rabbinic text, they would have some explaining to do.

28:22 There's still a lot of those footnotes in there, but there would be a lot more if they were honest. The next example, still in the book of First Corinthians, First Corinthians 15, 54, citing to Isaiah 25.8, the next example will also be right in this place in First Corinthians When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written Death is swallowed up in victory. Then from the Septuagint, death having prevailed swallowed them up, and then the rabbinic says he will swallow up death forever. There's a pretty significant difference here, even if it is really the difference of that single word. You have the word forever in the rabbinic text which is not

29:10 there in the New Testament citation. And so it's quite clear that the New Testament is again referencing the Greek because the author of the book was writing in Greek, and he was reading the Greek while he was doing so. The next example is the very next verse in 1 Corinthians 15, 55, quoting Hosea thirteen, fourteen. Paul writes, Where O death is your victory, where O death is your sting. And some textual variants read Hades for the second death, but the taunt is preserved. Septuagent Hosea says, Where is your penalty, O death? O Hades, where is your sting? Whereas the rabbinic, Hosea 13 says, I shall be your plagues, O death, I shall be your destruction, O Sheol. So the rabbinic as the original source is again excluded here because

30:00 Paul's rhetorical questions in sting language reflect the interrogative taunt that's present in the Septuagint, whereas the rabbinic has declarative threats and not questions. There's another case where your Bible may well conceal that it's actually using the Septuagint wording. In fact I looked at the Lutheran study bible, which has very long note for this, and yet it still conceals the fact that they're actually using the Septuagint here. It's absolutely unforgivable what the Bible producers have been doing for generations with this stuff. Absolutely unforgivable. Just intolerable wickedness to conceal this. Because if they exposed every place where this was happening, we wouldn't been the ones to figure this out.

30:39 Any random guy with the Bible would have seen so many of these, he would said, Hey, what's going on And of course the underlying Greek words there are identical in terms of victory, Nikkei and the word used for sting or goad, which languages often have many words for that, but it is identical here, Kentron. The next example still in the book of Corinthians, Corinthians one thirty one, and incidentally also Second Corinthians ten seventeen, boast citing to Jeremiah nine twenty four, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord, and this is identical from the second citation to the other epistle to the Corinthians from the Septuagint, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and

31:25 knows that I am the Lord. Then from the Masoretic text that he understands and knows me that I am the Lord. The wording is changed, the wording is different. Incidentally, it's even more different if you look at the Jewish translations of their own text instead of the translations that we often have in our Old Testament again, whereas we've mentioned a number of times. The translators play games with how they handle the text because they often pull in the Greek in order to make the Hebrew either coherent or consonant with what they find in the New Testament. And so one of the Jewish translations, in this case the JPS, the nineteen eighty five version, but only in this should one glory, in his earnest devotion to me.

32:13 That's not close at all to what we have here cited in first Corinthians and in Second Corinthians. In both epistles it is very clear that what is being used is the underlying Greek. The Septuagint is what is being quoted, not whatever this is the rabbis have in their text. And it's one of many places where the specific word that the rabbis deleted was Lord. We now move on to another quote from 2 Corinthians, which was split there between first and second with the previous one. This is Second Corinthians four thirteen, which is quoting Psalm one hundred sixteen verse ten, which in the Septuagint is one hundred fifteen verse one. If you're looking at certain books in the Old Testament, trying

32:57 to look up Septuagint passages, it's really a pain in the butt. So sometimes we'll give both examples. When you dig into this stuff for yourself, if you want to do comparative stuff, get used to some pain. It's not pleasant. Because they're inconsistent. Some of the translations will use the same numbering that we're used to, some will use different numbering, and they're not even consistent when they use different numberings. It's always exciting even to figure out which verse you're actually looking at. Paul writes in second Corinthians four thirteen, but since we have the same spirit of faith as that shown in what has been written, I believed, therefore I spoke. We also believe, therefore we also speak.

33:38 This is quoting I'll read from uh this is Septuagint Psalm 115:1. I believed, therefore I spoke. The rabbinic Psalm 116-10, as commonly rendered, I believed for or when I spoke, I am greatly afflicted. So the difference is the therefore, which is a concise clause that's mirrored exactly in the Septuagint. So it's a case where the syntax can only possibly match again quoting the Psalms, which was another one of the most quoted books. The quotation Paul provides can only possibly be from the Septuagint. Another instance of what we would actually call a quote in English if you look at the underlying Greek. The next example, this time from Galatians, Galatians 3:10, citing to Deuteronomy 27, verse 26.

34:31 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed be any one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. From the Septuagint, Cursed be any one who does not remain in all the words of this law to do them. From the rabbinic, cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them. And so again there are similarities, of course, in many cases they were not so bold as to change things completely. But there are differences in word choice here. The Greek is an extremely close paraphrase. The rabbinic text is not the same. Saying confirm the words is not the same thing as saying remain in all the words, which is to say abide by all the

35:20 things written in the book of the law. What is being taught here in the Greek, in the actual word of God, is a different thing from what the rabbis have put into their wording. Confirming the words of the law is not at all the same thing as abiding in them, obeying them. They have changed this because of course, confirming the words of the law is more consonant with their religion, which is a religion of essentially memorizing these things and then not doing them. Whereas what the actual Greek says is you have to do the law. The next verse is Galatians 3:13, which is quoting Deuteronomy twenty one twenty three Paul writes Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written cursed is

36:11 everyone who hangs on a tree. Septuagin reads cursed by God is everyone who hangs on a tree. Whereas a rabbinic text reads, For a hanged man is God's curse. So the difference of everyone or the man who is hanged is the major difference here in substance, as well as the overall quote being totally different. You'll also notice that the rabbis deleted the word from part of that verse. And just as sort of an aside, little reminder of I guess high school biology class for some of you, the word underlying there in the Greek for tree is zoolon, which is where we get xylem from, one of the parts of the flesh of a tree. Just a fun little tidbit. The next example Ephesians four twenty six citing to Psalm four four

37:04 Be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger. Then from the Septuagint, be angry and do not sin. In this case I am going to read for the Rabbinic text, the Jewish translation again, the JPS eighty five. There are two versions of that essentially. There's the 1917 and the 1985, and so basically it's the difference between say the KJV and the ESV. So tremble and sin no more. This is not the same. In some cases, in your Old Testament, they will have translated it identically, and so if you look at your Old Testament, supposedly based on the Masoretic text, it will say, Be angry, and do not sin. But then, if you happen to be in a software version where you can do so, you can look at the underlying word

37:51 and go and look that up in the dictionary, and it will say, Be agitated, quiver, quake with fear, be excited, or perturbed. You'll note what isn't there. Be angry isn't there. And so the ESV very clearly this is what I'm reading when I say be angry and do not sin, where it matches. The ESV clearly followed the Septuagint, but did not footnote it merely gives the alternative reading in a footnote of it might mean be agitated, which is actually what the Hebrew is saying there. And so it's another instance where the translators have played games with God's Word. They have discovered to follow the Septuagint, which is right, but they have not footnoted it correctly, and they didn't do what they should

38:36 have done all along, and simply gone with the Septuagint entirely. Instead of doing this sort of hodgepodge, where they're trying to fill in holes or gaps or things that aren't consonant in the Hebrew. Our next example is Ephesians five thirty one, which is quoting Genesis two twenty four. Paul writes For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And the Septuagint repeats the two shall become one flesh. Whereas the rabbinic says they shall become one flesh. So the difference there is between the two and they. So same meaning in this case, but the wording is exclusive. The quotation in Ephesians can only possibly be from the Greek.

39:25 This is an example that we used in the previous episode, but it's worth noting again because In the previous episode, it was Christ citing the Septuagint, and now it is Paul doing the same. So we have two different New Testament authors, one recording the words of Christ citing the Septuagint, and now we have Paul citing the Septuagint in the same way. The next example, Philippians 1 nineteen, citing to Job thirteen sixteen. Job is one of those books where, as Woe said, you may have to do a little bit of hunting if you're trying to find the exact verse because there are some differences, some pervasive differences in the book of Job. Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers

40:08 in the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance. From the Septuagint, and this shall turn out to my salvation. From the Masoretic this will be my salvation. Deliverance and salvation here are actually the same word. This is another case where they have decided to translate it differently despite being the same underlying Greek term. This is the one that's used throughout scripture for salvation. And of course, salvation and deliverance are very similar concepts. There's some nuance there in English, but again, same Greek word. Turn out is also the same verb. Very clear, the New Testament author is citing to the Old Testament in the Greek, in this case the book of Job.

40:53 The next example is from Philippians again, chapter two, verses ten and eleven, which is quoting Isaiah forty five twenty-three, which you previously discussed, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess. I'm very glad that when I made that graphic a couple of years ago with the Jesus returning and destroying the pagans, the vaporwave edit the quarry posts every week. I didn't even know at the time, but I was quoting the Septuagint. If I had been quoting the rabbinic, I might not have liked as much, might not have made it. The next example is from the book of Second Thessalonians, chapter one, verse nine, citing to Isaiah two, verses ten, nineteen, and twenty-one. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence

41:41 of the Lord, and from the glory of his might, from the Septuagint, from the glory of his might. Same thing. From the rabbinic, from the From the splendour of his majesty. The word there for majesty, the lexical scope of that word, is height, eminence, pride, presumption. So again, they've played some games here in order to translate this to try and make it match what is said to some degree in the New Testament. The Greek word is just the same word, the Greek word for glory, doxa, which is where of course we get doxology. The next example we're moving on to yet another new book. This is second Timothy chapter two, verse 19, which is quoting at Numbers 16, 5. Paul writes, quoting, The Lord knows those who are his, which is

42:35 pretty much a straight quote from the Septuagint God knows those who are his. Whereas the rabbinic reads, The Lord will make known who are his. So this shifts into the future in terms of when the knowing takes place. Again, it's a small change. This one doesn't really affect theology either way. Suppose you might make an argument down the road that it does. But functionally, there's no possible quotation because Greek has much more sophisticated structure around conveying things like the future tense. The fact that it would actually be preserved in the rabbinic means it can't possibly be the same. This couldn't be a translation error. There's a particularly famous historical quote that, as it seems, is citing

43:23 to the Septuagint, but of course in Latin. The next example, Hebrews 1, verse 6, citing to Deuteronomy 32, 43, and again when he brings the firstborn into the world he says, Let all God's angels worship him. The Septuagint says, and worship him, you sons of God. I would give you the rabbinic, but it is absent. This is a line that exists in the Septuagint, cited to very clearly here by the author of Hebrews. Not present in what the rabbis have. Incidentally, there's something something worth noting here that I noticed while I was making my notes for this episode. This one verse in the ESV has six footnotes because of how much of a mess the Hebrew is. If we would just use the Greek, we wouldn't be having to

44:21 pepper God's word with footnotes to try to point out where we've attempted to fix the deficiencies, the missing bits, the other problems with and in the Hebrew. We should just be using the Septuagint. It's what the author of Hebrews very clearly did here And it's notable that we are now in a new book. We're not gonna pick the fight over who the author of Hebrews is. If it wasn't Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Jesus, Paul, Peter, or James, then we have yet another author being represented in this list of New Testament quotations of the Septuagint. So for the sake of the argument we're making here, I kinda hope it's none of those other guys. But either way, this is obviously the Holy Spirit speaking, which is

45:09 why we didn't make a big deal out of oh well Jesus says this or it is written like it's notable, but that's not the reason that this matters. It matters because it's in the New Testament. That's the soul opportunity. It's emphasized when Jesus said it. It's emphasized when it says it is written, but it is all written. So there's no ambiguity. The second example we have from Hebrews is again in chapter one, verses ten through twelve twelve, which is quoting Psalm one hundred two verse twenty five through twenty seven, or in the Septuagint one hundred one twenty six through twenty eight. Hebrews reads They will perish but you continue, and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a robe you will fold

45:50 them up, and like a garment they will be changed, but you are the same and your years will never run out. And the Septuagint reads basically the same, like a cloak, you will roll them up. Whereas the rabbinic reads, like clothing, you will change them. So the difference there is between change versus roll up. Not a big deal, but the distinctive word that is used, roll them up is not present in the rabbinic text so therefore this is definitely a quotation. As an aside I just happened to think while going over this particular example while we were preparing for this episode. In the beginning, there is of course identical to what we find both in the book of John, John 1-1, and Genesis 1-1. Happen notice that because I was going over some notes for Genesis

46:38 earlier. Exact same wording there, anarch say. The next example is Hebrews three verses seven through eleven citing to Psalm ninety five also seven through eleven, or in the numbering of the Septuagint, Psalm ninety four, same verses Therefore as the Holy Spirit says, Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test, and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation and said, They always go astray in their heart, they have not known my ways, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. And then from the Septuagint, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, same thing as we see in the New Testament, according

47:29 to the day of testing in the desert, same thing we see in the New Testament, desert wilderness, same thing. Then from the Rabbinic, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massa in the wilderness. Now the things that are being referenced here in the Rabbinic text are the things that are being referenced in the Septuagint and in the New Testament. We know that because we're familiar with the Old Testament, we're familiar with the wandering in the desert, the rebellion, all of these things. But the words that are actually used in the New Testament are the words that are present in the Septuagint version. The rabbinic version uses different words. It doesn't matter, it does for accuracy's sake perhaps, but it doesn't

48:17 matter that they are referencing the same event, when you look at what is being quoted, the quotation is pulling the words that are present in the Greek, not the words that are present in the rabbinic text. The next example is Hebrews 8, 8 through 12, which is quoting Jeremiah 31, verses 31 through 34, or in the Septuagint, note the change here, chapter 38, 31 through thirty four. So I mentioned the last episode, the rabbis just chopped up Jeremiah entirely and rearranged it to tell a different story. So we go from chapter thirty one to thirty eight for the same passage. That's how much they changed it. I think they added some things too, but you're looking at some fundamentally different ways of things being told, even when they don't mess

49:04 with the text itself. They treat it like a ransom note. Hebrews reads, It will not be like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant, and I had no regard for them, says the Lord. The clause in Hebrews eight nine, and I did not care for them, says the Lord, or did not have regard for them is very similar. It's the same underlying in the Septuagint, for they did not remain in my covenant and I neglected them. The difference in the rabbinic text is that it says, when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,

49:46 declares the Lord. So difference is though I was their husband and not I disregarded them, which is just a fundamentally different formulation. It's very clearly not a translation issue. It's not remotely the same text that's being used here. This next one is an example that I suspect everyone knows by now, from previous episodes and from other discussions, Hebrews ten, verses five through seven, citing to Psalm forty, verses six through eight, or the numbering of the Septuagint, Psalm thirty-nine, verses seven through nine. Consequently, when Christ came into the world he said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me, in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.

50:32 Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me, in the book of the scroll. The relevant part there from the Septuagint, but you prepared a body for me. The same thing that we have here in the New Testament. This is a case where the Hebrew just doesn't make any sense. We try to make sense of it, we try to pretend that it's some sort of weird shemitic idiom, but it says, ears you have dug for me. And so exegetes will try to explain it away by saying, well, it's he's saying God listens to him or whatever they try to say, but it's not. It's Hebrew gibberish. We don't know what this means because it's not scripture. Scripture is, but you prepared a body for me. Incidentally, it is the same Greek verb for prepared, and it is

51:24 the same Greek noun for body soma. The next example is Hebrews ten thirty seven through thirty eight, which is quoting Habakkuk two verses three through four. Hebrews reads For yet a very little while the coming one will come and will not delay. And the Septuagint reads If he is late, wait for him because the one coming will be present, and he will not tarry. So there's a personification of the presence there, of a coming one. The rabbinic uses a neuter, says it will surely come, it will not delay And then the second portion of this quote is as a composite quote here, Hebrews 30, 10 38, but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him, which is a quotation from Habakkuk two four,

52:17 which contains If he shrinks back, my soul is not pleased, whereas Rabbinic lacks shrinking back entirely, and says, instead, Behold, his soul is puffed up. So we're losing the personification of the coming one for a neuter and the shrinks back because behold his soul is puffed up. So again, it's not remotely the same quotation, and Hebrews is very explicitly quoting the Greek scripture. The nine Greek words that comprise the core of that quotation are identical between the New Testament and the Old Testament. The next example is Hebrews 11, verse 21, citing to Genesis 47, 31. By faith Jacob, when dying blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship upon the head of his staff, and then

53:12 from the Septuagint, and Israel bowed in worship upon the head of his staff. The The rabbinic text has instead Israel bowed himself upon the head of his bed. Now of course, perhaps the most obvious change there is first that they change staff to bed, but they also removed in worship. They changed the nature of this act. They changed what is happening here with Israel. Israel bowed in worship upon the head of his staff, not just bowed himself upon the head of his bed. They changed the theology of this verse. They removed, similar to how they have removed the word God in other places, they removed in worship here. And this is one of numerous cases where the difference in Hebrew between bed and staff is entirely in the vowels.

54:06 So until the Masoretes finally decided the lie that they were going to pass on to the Christian church a thousand years ago, you could say was ambiguous because it was entirely oral tradition. Thankfully, God preserved the Greek scripture for us in the New Testament, as well as in the Septuagint itself. Our next example is from Hebrews 12:5 through 6, which is quoting Proverbs 3:11 through 12. This is the last quotation from Hebrews. And have you forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons? My son, do not scorn the Lord's discipline or give him or give up when he corrects you, for the Lord scourges the one he loves and chastises every son he accepts. And the word here for chastises it means disciplines the weak.

54:53 Technically the word is flogging. So this is not gentle chastisement. This is not gentle discipline. The Lord's discipline is flogging. Septuagent Proverbs three twelve reads for whom the Lord loves he rebukes and scourges every son whom he receives. Whereas a rabbinic reads, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the Son in whom he delights. So here we have scourges every son entirely removed. God says if you love your son, you'll flog him. That's what God does to us. When we're chastised, it's not some airy metaphor. The flogging that we receive in this life for our sins is sometimes very overt, sometimes it's not obvious, and sometimes it doesn't seem like you get it. But the fact that it does sometimes happen is a very strong

55:43 theological point and one that the rabbis deleted entirely. The next example is James four verse six, citing to Proverbs three, verse thirty four But he gives more grace, therefore it says God opposes the arrogant, but gives grace to the humble From the Septuagint The Lord opposes the arrogant, but gives grace to the humble. Then from the rabbinic, toward the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he gives favour. And so the second part of that is perhaps the same sort of sentiment. The first is less so, but again you'll note they removed the word God or the word Lord, depending on which one, obviously meaning the same thing here If you account for the difference between God and Lord, Kurios versus

56:40 Theos, the underlying Greek is otherwise identical. The only thing that has changed here is that the New Testament author has decided to say God opposes instead of the Lord opposes. The rabbis simply have something else in their text. Although that is the only example from James, it is notable, we're talking about the first bishop of Jerusalem and the half-brother of Jesus. So the fact that James is also quoting the Greek as scripture, again, we're just we're beating this point to death because once you look at the New Testament, nothing else is necessary. We move on then to 1 Peter 2.6, which is again quoting Isaiah 28, 16. We We've previously discussed that verse, but this is a case where

57:28 Peter and Paul are both quoting the Septuagint. Again, look at the guys we're talking about: James, Peter, Paul, Jesus, Matthew. Like these are not the guys that we are told would be speaking and quoting Greek and using Greek for theology. And yet New Testament is replete with these examples. The next example, still in the book of first Peter, two, verse nine, citing to Exodus nineteen, verse six. But you were a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness, into his marvellous light. Then the Septuagint, and you shall be for me a royal priesthood and a holy nation. Same two things there, royal priesthood, holy nation.

58:22 The rabbinic text has instead, You shall be to me a kingdom of priests. Incidentally they did keep the and a holy nation. But those are different words. These are different terms, and again they are trying to make this into a statement that they are going to have this sort of kingdom on earth because that's what they want, that's their entire theology. Is that the Jews are special, they're going to rule everyone else and destroy everyone else. That's ultimately their theology. They've changed the text here to align with what they want it to say, as if that's going to convince God that he should change his plan. But the salient point, of course, is that you have the identical statement here, in the Greek, in the Septuagint, being used by the

59:11 New Testament author, being used by Peter in his epistle. Our next example is from first Peter two twenty two, quoting Isaiah fifty-three nine. Peter says, quoting, He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. Septuag says, Because he did no lawlessness or sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth. There's the case where the ancient textual witnesses differ on whether it says lawlessness or sin, but obviously those are essentially synonyms. The rabbinic text says on the other hand, he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. So the difference between violence and sin there is the substantive non translation dichotomy. It's not a case where you could possibly get from one place

1:00:00 to the other. And it's frequently the case where we find violence used in place of sin by the rabbis. In this case that is not scriptural. The next example still in the book of first Peter is chapter four verse eighteen citing to Proverbs eleven thirty one And if the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly in the sinner? And then the Septuagint If indeed the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? Other than that one word, identical, from the Rabbinic, if the righteous is repaid on earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner? There's a one-word difference between the Greek and the Greek of the New Testament, because the author decided to drop the word indeed, dropped

1:00:52 what is a particle there in the Greek. The rabbinic has a completely a radically different statement. The New Testament statement citing to the same Old Testament statement is a theological statement of the impossibility of being saved, absent God's miraculous intervention, whereas the rabbis have changed it to if the righteous is repaid on earth, okay perhaps, how much more the wicked and the sinner? This is a different religion. It's a different theology. This is one of those times where you can try to baptize it as a Christian and make it into something that is consonant with the rest of Scripture and what we actually actually believe what we know is right. But that's not something that we should be doing, because it's not

1:01:41 what the Old Testament says. What the Old Testament says is the same thing the New Testament says, which is why Peter cited it Our next example is from first Peter five five, and this is also actually repeated in James 4:6, quoting Proverbs again three thirty four. Peter and James both quote God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. The Septuagint reads, The Lord resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Whereas the Rabbinic says surely he scorns the scorners, but to the humble he gives favor. So again it's just a radically different way of phrasing it versus identical quote. Then our final example is appropriately from the book of Revelation Revelation two twenty seven twelve five and nineteen fifteen citing to Psalm

1:02:37 two hundred nine and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my father then from the Septuagint th. shall shepherd them with an iron rod, and like a potter's vessel you will shatter them. Then we will read from the rabbinic text, which is a little different. You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces, like a potter's vessel. Okay, so the second part of that verse is quite similar. But you shall break them with an iron rod is a fundamentally different thing from saying you shall shepherd them with an iron rod. This is again one of those cases where part of it is a so-called revocalization, which is to say playing games with the diacritics,

1:03:34 because you can change, again, as you all know by now, you can change the vowels in a Hebrew word, simply by changing the little bits that you've marked along it. And so it could be you shall rule them with a rod of iron, but that's still different from saying you shall shepherd them with a rod of iron. It's a fundamentally different formulation of God's relationship with his children, with his church. And the rabbis have handed us something that is simply not what is cited in the New Testament. And the reason again, as we have pointed out so many times that the New Testament author is citing the Greek is because the Greek is God's word. The Greek is also incidentally the thing to which he had access,

1:04:17 but it is the Greek that is God's word. It is the Greek that is being cited here, and the rabbis have changed it and made some other text and tried to pass it off as God's word. I think it's fitting that we end with the gospel writer John in Revelation quoting three separate times one of the Psalms. I think that brief encapsulation really just hammers home the point how fundamental the connection between the New Testament and the Septuagint is. It's one and the same thing. Calling it the Old Testament and the New Testament. To us today, it almost makes sense because we think of the Old Testament being Hebrew and the New Testament being Greek. Scripture is Greek. The word of God is breathed out in Greek.

1:05:05 So we have now closed our case here. We rest. This is the prosecution, making its case for the Septuagint and against the rabbinic text. We have no new evidence to enter into the record. So now Cory and I are each going to essentially give our closing arguments for arguments for the Septuagint based on everything that we presented over these past seven episodes. As I mentioned previously, the next episode next week will be the bonus episode talking about future work in the church. It's not related to the case for the Septuagint. It's basically, okay, I believe the Septuagint is scripture now. What? Which is why we're considering that to be outside of the Septuagint series that we're presenting here, because everything we've talked about for

1:05:50 these seven episodes is factual. We've obviously given our own framing along the way and made our arguments as we went, but the facts are not disputed. You don't get to have your own facts. You can reach your own conclusions and either be right or wrong in those conclusions. But the facts we believe speak for themselves. So I'm going to simply rehash what we've covered in these seven episodes to refresh your memory, and then we're gonna rest. We are done with what we have to say about the Septuagint. The Greek Old Testament is the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles in the early church. We have proved that beyond any shadow of a doubt We went through six dozen verses in the New Testament that can only possibly

1:06:34 be from the Old Testament. We looked at the history of how the church viewed the Septuagint and then when it lost the view of the Septuagint. And what we made clear early on was that although the Greek Old Testament was the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles in the early church, when the early church became the medieval church and the Septuagint ceased to be its Bible, there was no great council, there was no great vote, there was no fight, there was no discussion. It just happened, and it happened due to the evolution of language. When you look at the Old Testament, what you find is that when the Israelites, when the Hebrews come up, they're almost always being wicked and idolatrous. Almost always.

1:07:21 You can turn to almost any page, at least ninety percent of the time in the Old Testament, when it's talking about the Israelites, they're doing something evil and wicked, and God is lamenting it and he's punishing them. And so language is important because the Hebrew language was killed by God. When God shattered the northern kingdom and then he shattered the southern kingdom, they were given over into rule by foreign conquerors, one after another, and they lost Hebrew, and it was replaced with Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of the conquering armies. And then they lost Aramaic, and they began speaking Greek, which was the lingua franca of their next conquerors. And then after the end of what is recorded in the New

1:08:09 Testament, they lost Greek. And this now we're talking about the early church, lost Greek, and switched to Latin, which incidentally, if you look at the old Greek Daniel, is prophesied more clearly than is found in the Theodosian's Daniel that used both in the Septuagint and in the rabbinic text. As we said at the beginning, we're not going to pick the fight over some of those variations. It's just notable that this linguistic evolution where one language is destroyed and replaced by another is part of God's wrath. It's part of God's plan. And when we look at what was done to the Hebrews, it was done as punishment from God. Not only did he take their land, not only did he take their language, emiscedenated the northern kingdom out of existence.

1:08:58 That's where the Samaritans came from. They were wiped out as a race by being mixed with foreign neighbors. This is what God does to people when he destroys them. So by the time we get to the first century and we're looking in the New Testament era of Jesus and the apostles, all they had was the Greek. There was probably some Aramaic that may have been used liturgically. In fact, we know that to be the case. There may have been some Hebrew used liturgically as well. There is a clear case to be made for certain liturgical use and repetition of Aramaic, but we know that because we know it had to be translated, because nobody could understand it. So when we talk about dead language, that's a technical term.

1:09:37 A dead language is one that is no longer spoken, it is no longer in common use, it's no longer evolving. So not only can't people speak it, but it's not doing anything anymore. English today is not a dead language. Latin is a dead language, and it's dead for the specific reason it's no longer evolving. Now it doesn't mean it's lost entirely, it doesn't mean it's totally vanished, like we have with some ancient languages, we don't know anything about them. Hebrew was lost to the point that there was no one left who could speak it, it wasn't used conversationally. Even Aramaic was lost to the point that when you look in the New Testament, in the cases where it uses Aramaic terms, it quotes them in line.

1:10:16 You'll frequently see things like Marinatha and Golgotha are translated in line so that you can understand what they are. Because the readers of those epistles and those gospels in that day wouldn't have known otherwise. And the readers were overwhelmingly Jews. Between the middle of the third century BC and roughly the end of the first century BC, the entirety of the Old Testament was translated into Greek, which means it was not all done at once. So when we talk about the Septuagint, we're talking about the Pentateu Jesus and the apostles received it as Scripture. Every time they said it is written as it is written, Thus says the Lord, they were quoting Greek scripture. There are no biblical languages.

1:11:10 There is one biblical language, and that language is Greek. What we find in the first four centuries of the church is that other than Origen around 180 and his follow on Eusebius, and then Jerome later on, all of whom were scholars, no one else knew Hebrew. It was not used for debate, it was not used for theology, it was not used as a basis for scripture. And the only reason that Origen and Eusebius knew any Hebrew was specifically to deal with the fact that they had all these texts floating around. It was entirely a scholarly endeavor, which is very distinct from a theological question. There was no use of Hebrew theologically whatsoever in the early church When there were scholarly inquiries to figure out what do we do

1:11:58 with these various texts floating around, the principal case that Origin was trying to make was that the Septuagint is what we should be using. In fact, when you look at the quotes from many of those men in that day, they were very clear, we used one last episode. They said flat out the Jews were tampering with scripture. That is not a new twenty first century conclusion from internet Nazis. The early church fathers said point blank, we know for a fact the Jews have tampered with Scripture. This is a century or more after Christ. We've laid out ad nauseum in the last few episodes. It's no surprise that the people who murdered the Word of God would also despise the Word of God. If they'll kill the man, they will certainly destroy what is written.

1:12:41 So when Jerome translated the rabbinic text of his day into Latin unilaterally with no permission from anyone, over the direct objections of Augustine, but no one else really fought. As I said, there was no church council to ratify that or to say it was okay, but the problem that was being solved in that immediate moment was that they were losing Greek. Another language is being lost. So because the West could no longer speak or read Greek, they needed Latin. That was all they understood. That was the lingua franca of that day. So when Jerome finished his work, without permission for the textual basis, at least it was a Latin Bible, and it stuck around for a long time. It still took about four centuries before Alquin of York and Charlemagne

1:13:27 made official that this was to be the Western Bible that everyone was to use as a basis for reproducing additional copies. And Alquin of York specifically worked on figuring out what Jerome's actual Vulgate was. Because again, there was a perpetuation, a proliferation of different versions of what was called the Vulgate. He had to figure out, you know, the same sort of textual problems that we have today. It's nothing new to have textual problems with differing manuscripts. It's always gonna happen with copying errors. In fact, Corey and I were working on the last episode. We had that very problem with the digital file that I sent him. The file I sent him was not the same as the file that he received.

1:14:06 We tried to figure that out. It was impossible. These transmission errors are not anything new. They're not inexplicable to us. Between 400 and 600, we had Gregory the Great, the Pope, who was the first to really very strongly push for an allegorical reading of scripture. Now he didn't do it to the exclusion of other things. He didn't really do anything wrong. But he popularized it in a way that in subsequent centuries became dominant to the point when other writers were writing about scripture, they increasingly relied on allegorical readings to the exclusion of the literal word. Greek was entirely lost in the West, which meant the the schism between East and West caused a situation where there was no observation of the Septuagint text

1:14:58 in the West whatsoever. it never came up. And they didn't debate over that either. Which is kind of fascinating. You think of all the fights that they had, the fact that the textual basis for scripture itself didn't come into play would have been more prominent. By the eleventh century, what we see is that Jews have sprung up throughout Europe, they have made their way into numerous different European nations and they've set up shop pretty much on their own. You know, there's some integration of sorts, there's commerce. What this meant was that they would begin to produce and proliferate their own rabbinic writings, their wicked blasphemous teachings, internally to their communities. They weren't selling this stuff, they weren't giving it to others.

1:15:44 In fact, often on pain of death, those writings were to be kept secret. In the 10th, 11th, 12th century, the fact that things were in Hebrew was basically a secret code that was only known to Jews. This meant that they were able to practice their black magic and do all these wicked things that they were doing and teach the things that they were teaching and say the prayers that they were praying without any Christian princes knowing how evil they were, because they couldn't understand him. You see some guy next to you who's talking in a foreign language, you don't know what he's saying. He could be telling a joke, he could be giving instructions for your murder. It would sound the same to your ears.

1:16:21 You can't tell the difference. And around the 1200s, we have the Augustinian scholars at the school of Saint Victor strongly advocating for the primacy of the literal historical sense. This was a marked departure from the allegorical readings that the church had seen for a number of centuries. This was important because at this time we had Rashi's commentary produced previously available in some of these communities. So when Andrew of St. Victor adopted his school's of hermeneutic of literal interpretation, word came to him that this rashi commentary, this rabbinic commentary on the Old Testament, had a lot of really literal readings. And so that then became a resource for the church. Even though they did not have a favorable view of Jews at

1:17:13 all, they still did not distinguish between the fact that the people that they disliked who had murdered Christ should not be a source of influence. Because when they were looking at the church having produced all these allegorical readings, and then they look at their rabbis next door with Rashi's commentaries saying things are very literal and to their ears, they seem like good arguments. They seem like sound arguments. The danger was they probably were. Some of the were actually good faithful Exegetical arguments from scripture from a rabbi. That's exactly what Satan needed in that moment because it brought rabbis back to the table. When you bring rabbis back to the table, you got to bring

1:17:55 Hebrew back to the table. And so despite the fact that in twelve forty we had the Trial the Talmud in Paris, where one of the very few Jewish converts in the entire history, after about the first or second century, Nicholas Donan exposed both Pope Gregory II and King Louis II, these blasphemous black magic practices of the Jews which had been concealed in Hebrew. This man who knew Hebrew went to them and said, Look, here's what they're doing, here's what they're writings say, here's what they're praying among you. And the Christian prince and the Christian Pope was rightly outraged, put the Talmud on trial, and they burned it. They destroyed probably billions of dollars worth of Jewish writings.

1:18:37 And they hate King Louis to this day for it. They never give up a grudge. Unfortunately, when the decision was made that these Jews' writings are evil, they solved the wrong problem. They kept the Jews and they burned the books. They didn't get rid of the evil by getting rid of the books. The evil remained. And so within thirty years we have Nicholas of Lyra, who is called the ape of Solomon Rashi, publishing the single most influential and widely circulated biblical commentary of the later Middle Ages. And what did he do? He laundered Rashi's arguments for the rest of the church. And it doesn't matter if they are good or bad arguments, what matters is that they were coming from a rabbi who cursed God and

1:19:19 cursed Christians. You never listen to anyone like that. It doesn't matter what their arguments are, but because there had been a dearth for centuries in the West of anyone making literal arguments, rather than Christians discovering their own and fixing the right problem, said, Well, let's just import a bunch of stuff from the Jews. These rabbis have the scripture stuff nailed down. The Gutenberg press was invented in the 1400s, which meant that there is now the possibility and the opportunity for mass production of anyone's writings. And very quickly what we found was that Jews got a hold of printing presses. They set up publishing shops. When we look at the modern media domination of Jews, I don't

1:20:00 know what it was like prior to Gutenberg, but that was very likely the genesis of Jews in media. They set up printing presses, producing their own books, producing these works of blasphemy, including the Hebrew so called Bible. It was no such thing. It was the Masoretic text, it was a rabbinic text, which was rejection of Christ, which was riddled with alterations, that the early church explicitly condemned, said that they had deliberately changed it. All this was placed on the table immediately prior to the Reformation, when Johannes Reuchlin, who was a very well connected man politically, became a Kabbalist when he studied the Kabbalah under the influence of a truly profoundly wicked rabbi, if you can even narrow it down.

1:20:49 This man was worse than most. This man specifically programmed Roychlin in the Kabbalah, inculcated him to it, initiated him, and he loved it. He published that stuff and tried to bring it into the church. And although that was shot down, they still accepted Reuchlin's primer for how to teach yourself Hebrew. Because the book that he published to show the rudiments of Hebrew so that anyone in the Christian church could learn it, you didn't have to have a rabbi in the loop anymore. You could just buy Reuchlin's book and you could learn Hebrew at home in fifteen minutes a day. And now we have a case where you don't even feel like you're going and talking to the rabbis. You're just learning from this Christian book Reuchlin, the book that he

1:21:29 has where you can learn Hebrew, and then you're reading the Hebrew Bible that you brought from Bomberg or one of the other Jewish printers. And how are you doing anything wrong? This is the original word of God. This is the pure fountain from which this muddy stream of the Vulgay came from, isn't it? Why shouldn't we go back to the source? Everywhere along the way they thought they were doing something entirely holy and godly, nobody batted an eye. They were solving the immediate problem, which in many cases was the right problem, but they didn't solve the fundamental underlying problem, which was that they were bringing evil into the midst of the church. And so after publishing the rudiments of Hebrew, Reuchlin named Philip Mangthan,

1:22:14 gave him his last name, taught him Hebrew. And then Melanchthon was the man whom Luther relied upon for his linguistic expertise. At the very inception of the Reformation, the very moment when there was the opportunity to actually take a critical look at texts, everything had been laid out so that the decision would go in the direction of we need even more Jewish stuff. We need more rabbis, we need more Hebrew, we have to get back to the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith. That's basically what people think to this day. From four hundred with Jerome through fifteen whatever with the early Reformation, you can pick any number, any date you want, any year. What you will find is at no point did anyone say, as

1:22:59 a church, should we look at the Septuagint or should we look at the rabbinic text? The question was never asked. The Septuagint was never invited to the party, because it was in Greek. And although starting in the twelve hundreds, Europeans began to learn Hebrew, they didn't learn Greek until the late fourteen hundreds. That was a very late breaking thing. And when they did that, it was not for purposes of scholarship initially. They weren't even interested in theology, because what does Greek have to do with theology? We already have the New Testament, we're fine. It was a perfect storm of apathy, of misdirection and of false choices being made and established and locked in. So when we look at the Septuagint itself, we find why that

1:23:44 lack of a conscious decision was such a serious problem. We find many cases where Christological prophecies and passages have been altered or neutered entirely. And when you look at your modern Bible, it will simply quote the Septuagint, even though the Hebrew says something else, the Rabbinic text does not say what your Bible says, but if it's a Christological passage, they're going to import it from the Septuagint and not tell you. And yet there are also cases where some of the rabbinic readings seem more Christological than what's in the Septuagint, which is a trap. Because if your hermeneutic for which Bible, which textual source is your scripture, is going to be, well, which one has more Jesus?

1:24:26 You know what? You're going to become a Mormon. Because they've got a whole extra book of Jesus. They got a New Testament. They got a new Testament. They got even more Jesus than we dumb Christians do. So if your hermeneutic is, I want the most Jesus possible, you can forget the rabbis and you can forget the Christians and you can go to the Mormons. It's obviously not a permissible hermeneutic. We do not judge the text based on how much we like it. So how do we judge it? Well, we judge it based on what Jesus and the apostles did, what they viewed, and we look at the text itself. When we look at the text, we find that there are entire books like Psalms and Proverbs that are radically different.

1:25:06 Proverbs is a completely different book in the Septuagint. Some of the conclusions, some of the wisdom is just fundamentally different. As we said in the wisdom episode, you've never read Proverbs until you've read it in the Septuagint. And those books are not isolated. When you look at Esther, when you look at Jeremiah, you have entire books rearranged entirely. You have sections added, sections removed, the story is completely retold. The story of Esther and Jeremiah is fundamentally different in the Septuagint than it is in the Bible on your shelf at home. When you look at books like Job, you have substantial details that have been erased. They would put King Job right in the historical context during the

1:25:47 Hebrews Egyptian captivity. The problem with removing King Job from his context is that you lose sight of what we find in the very last verse of Job. And his friends who came to him were Eliphaz of the children of Esau, King of the Thamanites, Baldad sovereign of the Saukians, Sophar king of the Menaeans. We have the Edomites, the Thamanites, the Salkians, and the Menaeans, all Christians. They were all believers in the one true God, simultaneous to and neighboring to the Hebrews, who were enslaved for their faithlessness. The redaction, the removal of those things from Job means you don't pay any attention to that. You think that the Hebrews were the only believers on the planet. They were the only elect who existed.

1:26:34 They were the only elect who ever existed. They were the chosen ones. Chosen and elect are synonyms. Anytime you hear anyone say chosen, just think elect. And remember that's Christian doctrine. That has nothing to do with a race of Middle East people. The Edomites, for a long time, were the chosen people. They were elect. We know that because King Job was generations after Esau, and he was the most faithful man alive, and so were his sons, and his friends who came to him the other kings. Although their theology was not great in some of their arguments, they were confessing the true God. These were Christians coming and talking to Job about the Christian God. They were kings over their kingdoms, and they loved and cared for

1:27:17 their friend, their Christian friend, King Job, so much, that they took time off work as king to go commiserate with him, and to try to encourage him. And although they didn't do a great job, they did it as Christians. We're certainly in no worse shape today with our own friends. Those nations that were not of Jacob were Christian. They were believers in the one true God, and later on they lost the faith. We can't find that surprising because when you look at the Old Testament, you find exactly the same thing happening with the Hebrews. They continuously lost faith. There are very few episodes in the history of those people where they were not apostate, or nearly so. There was some tiny remnant, sometimes it was only a few prophets

1:28:02 were left, and everyone else had fallen into idolatry. That was the tenuous hold that Christianity had among the Hebrews. So we can't pick on the other nations that were also descended and also knew God at that time that they fell away, just as we're falling away today. These stories are a warning to us. These stories are not about Jews. These stories are about humanity and its connection to God and how easy it is for us to throw God away and how hard God fights to hang on to us. When you look at the other alterations that were made by the rabbis to the Old Testament, you see these other changes to timelines, not only Job being deleted from the timeline, but significant Christological alterations

1:28:47 of the timeline, alterations that simply make history no longer align with scripture itself. Changes that when the rabbis were making them to blaspheme God, they didn't realize that later on archaeology was going to prove them liars, was going to prove the rabbinic text a lie and a forgery. The Septuagint doesn't have those problems. So how do we reconcile all this? How do we look at this mass of confusion and error? And how do we as sitting here in the twenty first century, how can we possibly pick a winner? We weren't there. We don't have the very oldest manuscripts of any of these things. We have copies of copies. How do we pick the winner when you're just looking at things sitting on a table?

1:29:27 You look to the New Testament. That's why we say the New Testament as our closing argument. We don't have to make exegetical arguments. We don't have to make theological arguments for the Septuagint. We have to make the argument the New Testament calls the Septuagint scripture over and over again. There are over 300 quotes in the New Testament of the Old Testament, and all but about half a dozen of them are from the Septuagint. There are over six dozen that are exclusively from the Septuagint. Cannot possibly be from the rabbinic text. And it's not simply limited to one or two books. There are thirteen different Old Testament books that are quoted, so we're not talking about the Pentateuch.

1:30:08 We're talking about a random grab bag, talking about wisdom literature, the Pentateuch, Minor Prophets, it's all over the place The New Testament is indiscriminate about which Greek Old Testament books it cites, as Scripture. We must do the same. We have to take it as a whole. When thirteen Old Testament books are quoted from the Septuagint in seventeen different New Testament books, that is beyond overwhelming evidence. You cannot possibly carve anything out of the Septuagint and say, okay, well, we'll take this, but we're gonna have to carve this out and say that this this isn't scripture. There's no way to reach that conclusion, not with the numbers involved here. As we've said, 44% of those quotes were from Isaiah alone.

1:30:53 That is overwhelming. Particularly when contrasted with the so called Qumran Caves discoveries. These things that are supposed to once again reconnect us to our Judeo Christian roots. It is Judeo, it is not Christian. It has no nexus to the Christian faith. Nothing that came out of the Kumon case has anything to do with Christianity, except that it exists to subvert it. What we are dealing with here is something that Corey and I have referred to numerous times over numerous episodes, even before getting to the Septuagint. We have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. The story of Josiah, who incidentally, in the Greek, is named Jos, and the high priest is not Helkaih, it's Calcius.

1:31:40 I had to go look that up 'cause I didn't know what their names were. I had no idea. That's a really good reminder to all of us. Whenever we realize, oh I don't even know what that guy's name is in the old testament because I've never looked at it in the Greek. That's a reminder. Go back and look at that text. Just see what the Septuagint says there. Maybe the name is the only thing that's different. In some cases that will be what you find. In other cases what you'll find is that it's not the same story at all. If you happen to flip to Aster, it's not the same book. Jeremiah is totally rearranged. We didn't even get to it. As I mentioned in the previous episode, we found out about that afterwards. We probably wouldn't have touched it anyway.

1:32:16 There's so much work here beyond what any human being can do in his entire life. There's literally centuries of Christian scholarship ahead of the church. What we must do is respond as Josias did. What did he do when the book of the law was found in the house of the Lord? Was essentially found in rubble. He repented. He waited, he wept, he tore his cloak in anguish, because he had been evil for believing the things he had believed before then. Even though he was a believer. He was already trying to clean up the temple at the time that they found this stuff. That's why the workmen were in there. He was beginning to do away with the idolatry when he discovered that they had lost scripture entirely.

1:33:02 And when you look at the various prophets that rose up around that time, it's clear just how bad things were. There's a lot of scripture right around this period of Josiah's. Because of his repentance, God God specifically personally spared him from what was to come. He made a promise to him after he repented of the wickedness of his father's having lost the Bible. And God's promise to him was very simple. Just as I have destroyed the northern kingdom before you, after you die, I'm going to destroy the southern kingdom. I'm going to destroy Judah. God destroyed Judah because they lost the Bible. Josiah alone was spared because of his repentance when he heard what was in the word. He believed it, he repented, and God spared him the wrath.

1:33:51 And he was called a good man. Nevertheless, the fate of Judah, of the southern kingdom, was the same as the north because of their apostasy. Because when they heard the word of God, when they heard the voice of God, they didn't believe it. We point to Josiah's repentance because we are in that exact situation today. We are in a situation where we are not talking about a translation of the Bible. When we talk about the Septuagint, we talk about the very Bible that Jesus and the Apostles used, we talk about the Bible that the early church thankfully and by God's providence preserved for us. We are talking about having to look at every single decision that the church has ever made based on the arguments of the rabbis.

1:34:36 That's part of why it's gonna take centuries, because a lot of the theology that we have sitting on our shelves is based in some part on the rabbinic text and on rabbinic lies. Not all of it. We don't know what's in there. But we are going to be confronted as Christians with a choice when we find those things. Are we going to hear the voice of God in the Greek scripture that He gave to us? Or are we gonna instead follow the teachings of men? Men who in their day were Christians. Although they fell victim to this fraud, they will be forgiven for it, because they did not know. They missed this. We are not in a position where we can miss it. When we're looking at this, now that this has been laid on

1:35:21 the table plainly in front of us, a decision will have to be made in the future, in the near future for every Christian, what do I do with the Septuagint? What relationship does it have with me? Is this scripture or is it a fraud? Because it's got to be one or the other. There's this whole mixing of the Greek and the rabbinic text is utterly impermissible. It's wicked. Either scripture is breathed out in Hebrew or it's breathed out in Greek, and Hebrew is destroyed and lost. The facts that we have presented here can only possibly reach one conclusion for a Christian mind. And although we're not going to get into the theology either in this episode or the bonus episode on what impact that's going to

1:36:03 have on the church, I want to give you one small pointer just to give you some idea that we're not just talking about a new Bible in your pews. The Westminster Confession of 1646, the Savoy Declaration of 1658, the Second London Baptist Confession of sixteen eighty nine, all read the same way, chapter one, section eight. SUMMARISING. The OLT TEMEN in Hebrew has been immediately inspired by God. It has been kept pure in all ages, it is authentic, and it must be used as the final judge in all controversies. This is the controversy of all controversies. Any one of you who holds to any of those confessions is He is bound confessionally to call us liars and to reject the Septuagint. And in fact, to reject your own Bibles because your own

1:36:52 Bibles are not based on the Hebrew text. Your confession that says Hebrew, your Bible does not save Hebrew. Your Bible is riddled with Septuagint. It's riddled with this infection from this Greek text that your confession says is false. Whenever it disagrees with the Hebrew. Your Bible does not conform to the Westminster Confession. Flat out. That's not our problem. That's a problem for each individual to look at. And to figure out what are you going to do with this? And again, it doesn't matter how faithful the men who came up with those confessions were. I'm sure I'm going to meet most of them in heaven. This is not indicting those men. This is saying that the specific stipulation in writing that the Hebrew

1:37:35 is sacrosanct and is holy and is breathed out by God, either that's true or it's false. And if that's true, then the New Testament is false. And if that's false, then your confession is false, and you're gonna have to figure out what to do with that. One specific example of something that evaporates theologically when you adopt the Septuagint and you reject the rabbinic text, covenant theology vanishes. As a Lutheran, that doesn't even mean anything to me. To many of you, that is going to be a crisis of conscience, which is why we've been very careful to lay out as we went through just how important it is to look at Jesus and the apostle and the early church as our guide for this, because by the time you're looking to the Reformation, when you're looking

1:38:20 at the 16th century, you're over a thousand years into rabbinic influence. The decisions that were made were not made in view of rejecting the Septuagint. They were made in view of the assumption that the Hebrew was authentic. That's why your confession says that. If it turns out that that assumption was wrong, then anything downstream from that assumption is wrong. genealogy of ideas. We began there in Stone Choir for this very reason. The notion of a pure spring and a polluted stream is absolutely true. The problem that the church faces is that the rabbinic text is the polluted stream. The pure spring of scripture is Greek exclusively. I want to end with a quote that describes Josias in the

1:39:09 moment of his repentance. And it happened when the king heard the word of the book of the law that he tore his own clothes, and the king commanded Calcius the priest and his sons and the secretary and the king's slave, saying, Go, seek out the Lord for me and for all the people, and for all of Udea. Concerning the words of this book that was found, for great is the wrath of the Lord is blazed out against us, because our fathers did not obey the words of this book, do according to all that is written against us. Every word of this applies to us today. Every word of this applies to the church. Our fathers did not obey the words in this book. What is written in the book of Scripture in Greek is written

1:39:52 against us. It is not a book about Jews. It is a book about the elect, and how awful and idiotic and retarded we are, and how hard God has to fight to keep us out of hell against every effort that we make at all times and all places to try to disobey him. Just by the littlest measure. We're not going whole hog. We're not doing the reprobate thing. We're doing the easy thing. We're believing God in the wrong way. We're believing God in a way that is gonna make the world happy. May God give us the strength to navigate what is before us. May he give us the wisdom, and may we forgive us for everything that we've done. Amen. Wo just gave you the overview by way of reminder, the roadmap, where we've been, what we've gone over, part of the argument for

1:40:49 what we need to do next, what we should have done in centuries past. And now I'm going to give you the closing argument for the Septuagint. For the Septuagint over and against the rabbinic text. I'm going to divide it up into six points. I leave it as an exercise to the listener or the reader, if you prefer the transcripts, to decide how to number those points. But I'm not going to go over the history again. We're not going to be cumulative as it were. I'm not going to belabor the point. I am going to give you the points that you need in order In order to understand the argument, in order to be secure in knowing the Septuagint is the word of God, and the so-called Hebrew is not, and here is why.

1:41:42 The first point, and I will number this one for you so that you know that I'm starting. The first point, very straightforward. Which one did God preserve? God did not preserve the Hebrew. As Woe said, the Hebrew was entirely lost by the time of Christ. All that was preserved was snippets of it in liturgical use. The same as you may find in our courts of law today with regard to Latin. Let me tell you as an attorney, very few attorneys know Latin. We still use it all the time, because we have these little set phrases that have been preserved. The same thing was true of Hebrew in the time of Christ. The language was gone, the texts were gone, these little snippets survived. Aramaic was still around, but often needed translated into Greek.

1:42:39 What was preserved? The Greek was preserved, because God had caused his word to be translated into the Greek, and then disseminated into the Greek. The Jews had already spread the Greek scriptures everywhere. God managed to get them to do something good because they didn't realize they were doing something good at the time. And so all of these far flung synagogues had copies of the Scriptures in Greek. That's what they were using. That's why these men, all over the Roman world, had access to the Scriptures, because they were present in the synagogues in Greek. The Jews did something good because God can use whatever tool he has to hand to do whatever he pleases. God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks.

1:43:27 And And so fulfilling God's promises, his many promises to preserve his word, he translated it, he caused it to be translated into Greek, because Greek is the language of the empire. Greek is the language that would spread the word of God. Greek is a European language, incidentally, you should hearken back to the promises of Noah. This is God fulfilling his promise to the sons of Japheth that they would dwell in the tents of Shem, that we would become Christendom. That is what the Greek is. God fulfills his promises, not a single word falls to the ground. One of the MOTOS of the Reformation, with which many of you are undoubtedly familiar, even if you don't know the Latin, you'll know the initialism V DMA

1:44:14 Verbum Domini Manet in Eiternum The Word of the Lord endures in eternity or into eternity you can translate that either way. While I was sitting here I happened to look it up in the Hebrew and so this is a sort of bonus example in a literal translation of the Hebrew from the Biblia Hebraicotencia, it has a word of our God riseth forever. Well that's not the same even as the motto that we used in the Reformation. It happens to be that we were relying on the Septuagint all along, with our own motto, and didn't even know it. Because what do we have in the text of the Septuagint? The word of our God remains forever. It's the same thing. We've been relying on the Septuagint with even that all along, when

1:45:09 we're speaking about the word of the Lord, enduring, we're quoting the Septuagint. Even men who thought they were relying on the Hebrew weren't doing it at the very moment they were saying God preserves his word for all time. And that ties into what I want to make as my next point. I pointed this out as we were going through the examples in this episode, but I want to highlight it again. I was almost tempted to simply collect all the examples, which is very easy because I have a copy of Strong's, or you can use any concordance for this, all of the instances of Gigrapti in the Greek. It is written. It appears sixty to seventy times in the New Testament. That's a lot of times where the New Testament authors are saying,

1:45:58 It is written. And remember my first point. What did they not have written? They didn't have the Hebrew. So they are saying, it is written. Well, what is written? The only thing they can possibly mean is the Greek. And so every single time when you are reading the New Testament and you see, it is written, it is written, it is written, it is written. They are talking about the Greek, because that is the only written copy of Scripture to which they had access. Because the Hebrew foreloga, which we admit existed at some time in the distant past, of course it existed. The Septuagint is based on that. God used that to preserve his word until he created the Septuagint. That existed, it is gone, it is lost forever along with the

1:46:44 language needed to interpret it, to read it. In fact, it is interpret more in that case, because of things we've already pointed out about the Hebrew language, and how it is deficient, without an oral tradition. And so when they say it is written, they can only ever mean the Greek. And so every single time you see that, when you are reading scripture, recognize, they are telling you, the Septuagint is my Bible. The Septuagint is the Word of God. The Septuagint should be your Bible. Because it is written. The next point is from Matthew 5. You should all expect this one. This is one we should all have memorized. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law, until

1:47:32 all is accomplished. I actually want to give both the King James and the ESV credit here, because they both translate this one pretty well. Of course, from the King James, we get the one with which we are all familiar, jot or Tittle. Even if we are no longer particularly familiar with the words jot and tittle. Jot, incidentally, is basically iota, just anglicized. And so you have that i transforming into a j. This happens a lot. Tittle just comes from titulus Latin, which is a small stroke. In other words, it's the line on the iota, or sometimes it can be the line versus the dot, which is why the ESV incidentally uses dot. But the word there in the Greek, if you want to translate it more literally, is serif.

1:48:21 The word iota of course is iota. Well what is iota? Iota is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet. It is equivalent to our I. Historically written without the dot, so it's literally just the line, and then you have the dot, the serif. Because in some forms of Greek, granted, in ancient Greek they didn't really use the diacritics that was developed later. I don't want to get into that as sort of a tangent. But this term here for seraph can also refer to the diacritics that are used somewhat during this time and definitely in modern Greek and slightly before modern Greek because they've simplified things. But what is a serif? Well, a serif is just a line. It's a line that is essentially embellishing a letter.

1:49:09 This is something that is dear to both Wo and me. Incidentally, I'm looking at my desk here, and basically everything on my desk is in San's serif fonts, unfortunately, but the serif is that little ornamentation on the letter, and so it's saying that nothing will pass away from the law. Christ is being as clear as he can possibly be Possibly be that not the smallest part of anything will pass away. And of course you should remember verse seventeen as well when you think of verse eighteen. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. He is referencing the entire Old Testament. He's not saying the Pentateuch. He's not saying just the first five books.

1:49:51 He is saying the entirety of the Old Testament. Nothing will pass away. And what does he use there? He uses Greek. Undoubtedly, Christ knew the words in Hebrew because Christ is God, he knows all things. We're not going to get into according to the humanity versus according to the divinity and the state of humiliation. Even during his earthly ministry in the state of humiliation he knows all things. So could he have used Hebrew there if he wanted to? And then explained it. Absolutely. Did he do so? Absolutely not. He uses the smallest Greek letter and the smallest stroke of a Greek letter. The Iota and the Seraph. And so when Christ says that nothing will pass away, he references the Greek explicitly.

1:50:40 He is saying that nothing will pass away from the scriptures which are in Greek. What is verse nineteen, which is relevant to day, to morrow, and in the near future? Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. We should be concerned about what has been done to scripture. Because Christ here, God says that nothing will pass away, and then cursed is the one. Granted, the language of Revelation is stronger, and I'll get to that in a minute here, but even if you are a Christian, you are going to be least in the kingdom of heaven if you are relaxing and changing the

1:51:32 Word of God. And that's assuming you remain Christian. That's what the rabbis did. That's what we have been doing by using the text that they gave us. And then verse twenty for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Now of course part of that is the gospel because what Christ is saying is, you can't do this, it's impossible. You have to be perfect. And you can only be perfect if you're in Christ. Apart from me, you can do nothing. These are verses that all of you should have memorized. But of course, perhaps the most relevant verse in this area is Revelation 2218. This is the one that should come to mind every time the

1:52:19 issue of the Septuagint versus the so called Hebrew comes up. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. God threatens those who would tamper with his word, with plagues, diseases, curses, and hellfire. That should terrify anyone who thinks that he can play games with God's word, who thinks he can just change things because he feels like it, or he doesn't like how this is worded or that is said, or maybe it would align better, or I can harmonize

1:53:12 that no, you do not get to play games with God's word, and God threatens to damn you forever if you do it. And yet down through the centuries, apparently men have just ignored this warning. And for those who aren't clear on the point, John is a prophet. John is the last alive. John lives to basically a hundred years old. He is writing and clicking out the New Testament and he knows it. He knows that he is the last author of Scripture. So this applies not just to the Book of Revelation, this applies to the Book of God, which we call the Bible. This applies to the Old Testament, equally and the New Testament. If you add or subtract anything, God threatens to curse you, in the strongest of terms.

1:54:03 And yet what did the rabbis do to Scripture? What have we proved? In particular the two New Testament episodes, but also the Old Testament episodes and all along? They edited Scripture. They removed things, they added things, particularly they removed prophecies that concerned the Christ, promises to the nations, all the sorts of things that you would expect them to remove. And they added things where it benefited the Jews. Because that was their goal. They don't care about God. If they cared about God, they would preserve his word exactly as he gave it to them. They didn't do that. And part of the reason that they didn't do that is because they were wicked and faithless and God cursed them and took away

1:54:45 their language, and their nation, took everything from them. And don't think that God won't do the same to those to day who do not obey Him. Because God is the same yesterday, to day and to morrow. Those who are not faithful to God will always be cursed. And God is not slow as men count slowness. God is not lax. God simply does things in Kairos, the perfect timing. And so Josias was right. Repent. Dust and sack cloth to rip his clothing, to rend his garments. That is the correct response when you see the sort of wickedness that had happened. And the same thing happened to us. And perhaps the most ridiculous part is that it's almost an exact equivalent. They lost it in a wall. We have the Codex Vaticanos sitting in the Vatican Library.

1:55:38 Granted, good luck getting access to the high resolution scans because the Vatican has decided to copyright and watermark them, which which is unbelievably abominable but it still exists. We have the physical copy of the Septuagint still. We have the Word of God preserved in the Greek. Thankfully, we've preserved it better than hiding it in a wall. But storing it down in the basement, in the sub-basement of the Vatican, is not that much better. Thankfully, today we have access because we have actual copies, facsimiles, of this thing. I have it open in Lagos. It's not like it used to be where the copy lost in the wall was the copy, or one of only a handful that existed. So we're not in quite as bad of a situation, certainly

1:56:25 as the Old Testament Israelites. But what we have done is almost equivalent, it's actually almost worse, because many of those living in that time had no access to this thing. We've had access to the Septuagint all along. Yes. You have always been able to buy a copy of it. We simply stopped using it as God's Word because we forgot that it was God's Word. We didn't just forget that a book existed. We forgot that this thing possibly sitting on your shelf is indeed the word of God. As a sort of aside, I want to use a phrase that has been used in higher criticism and elsewhere I know those of you who are familiar with that are going to recoil at that. That's fine. That's the right response. But it's useful here because it's appropriate and it's true.

1:57:12 Some of those who try to critique the Bible will say that it contains God's Word, but not that it is God's Word. This is actually true with regard to the so called Hebrew. The Masoretic text contains God's Word in many places, because in many places it agrees with the Septuagint, but it is not God's word, because it has been altered. The Septuagint is God's Word. And so that statement that they try to use to denigrate God's word is absolutely true, but only with respect to the corrupted text given to us by the rabbis. And so thankfully God has preserved us because he preserved so much of his word despite the evil of the Jews, despite their wickedness, despite their deliberate corruption of his word, he preserved enough to preserve

1:58:02 his church down through the centuries, so that we could go and rediscover his word hiding in a basement. And I want to reemphasize the curses that God speaks in many places with regard to those who speak on behalf of God when God is not spoken, or extend the word of God, or diminish the word of God, or add or subtract as Revelation says. Those curses should absolutely terrify everyone. Whatever God's Word says is what God's Word says. We don't get to change it. Doesn't matter if we like it or dislike it, we should like it, because of course we should love the Word of the Lord, as the Psalm says. God's Word is God's Word. It is unchanging. It does endure in eternity. Because God is unchanging and His Word flows from His nature.

1:58:56 Because it is truth and God is. Whatever it says, we accept it. And that is what the Septuagint says. So if it disagrees with your confession or my confession, anyone's confession, this theologian that you like, this theologian that I like, that doesn't matter at all at all. And quite frankly, most of those men were pretty faithful. If they had been confronted with this argument and this mountain of evidence, they would have repented and burned their own writings insofar as they disagreed with the Septuagint which would have been the right response. And so we're going to be faced with that sort of question in the coming days, and months and years. What are we going to do now that we know beyond the

1:59:42 shadow of any reasonable doubt, beyond the shadow of any doubt whatsoever, that the Septuagint is the Word of God. It is his preserved word in the Greek, which he caused to be translated, he caused to be preserved, he has miraculously preserved for us down through the centuries, despite our own stupidity and wickedness, our own apathy, our own negligence. The fact that we did not do our part of the deal, we didn't do our duty in preserving his word and transmitting it to future generations, as is mentioned so many times in the Scriptures. One of the duties of fathers and grandfathers is to see that the word is faithfully transmitted to future generations. That most certainly includes transmitting the actual word.

2:00:28 Yes, explaining it, yes, teaching it, yes ensuring the next generation and the one after that know God's word, are familiar with it, respect it, hold it dear. But if you don't even transmit the word itself, it doesn't ultimately even matter what else you've done. You've fallen so far short of your duty that you have simply failed. It's not to say that our ancestors were all faithless, because many of them were trying to be faithful men. Unfortunately they were operating under false presumptions and presuppositions. They thought things about the texts that they had that they'd received from the rabbis that simply weren't true. And so we cannot say without caveat or footnote, as it were, that the men who went before us were faithless, because faithless is

2:01:17 too strong of a word. But they were not as faithful as they should have been, in some cases due to simple error, in some cases due to other things. This is, of course, speaking only of those Christian men who went before us, because there were plenty of malefactors who are Certainly receiving their eternal reward currently, according to the words of Revelation. We know now what the Word of God is. We know the Word of God is the Septuagint. We know the Word of God is in the Greek. We know that the extant versions of the Old Testament that we have in our various languages, whatever language happens to be your first language, for most of our audience is of course English, but quite a bit of French and German and other things as well.

2:02:08 Those translations are based on corrupted documents, on a corrupted source, on the muddy stream of the rabbinic text. We have the pure spring of the Greek, of the Septuagint. We will speak more about where to go from here in the final episode in the overall series. But we all know what we have to do. We all know we need a new translation of the Old Testament, a faithful one that uses the Greek, and does not use the rabbinic text in any way, shape, or form, that doesn't reference it, that doesn't look at it, that doesn't think about it during the translation process, and that has some obvious conclusions that come alongside. It's not a small task, but it's also not an impossible one. Because again God preserved his word, as he promised.

2:03:04 We still have it. We know Greek because Greek was never lost. Unlike the Hebrew that was completely lost, the Greek language was never lost. And so we still have the text, we still have the tools, we can do this. This is not an impossible task that God has set before us. As I've said before in previous episodes, we should really look at this as a blessing. Because God has given us a great gift, preserved it for us, made it accessible to us. We have an opportunity Opportunity that has been there all along. Down through the centuries. This opportunity has been there sitting in the archives waiting for someone to come along and say, hey, wait a minute. But now we know, and now this fact that the Septuagint is

2:03:51 the word of God, is the preserved word of God is spreading. Many men know this. Unfortunately, many clerics are going to double down on Hebrew, they are going to double down on the wickedness, and they are going to suffer the curses along with the rabbis. Because if you understand the argument that we have made thus far, there's absolutely no way you can possibly reject the conclusion. The simple fact is that the Septuagint is the word of God. The rabbis added to the Word of God, they subtracted from the Word of God, they are cursed, and anyone who decides to stick with their text will join them in those curses. Because of course it is significantly worse to do something knowingly than to do something accidentally or even negligently.

2:04:45 Negligence is bad enough, but knowingly using a corrupted version of the old Testament text, when you know it is corrupted, when you know that there is a pristine version, when you know there is a true and faithful version that exists that is accessible That you should be using? That is an entirely different matter. Knowing sin is always worse than unknowing sin. Both are sin. You can sin without knowing it. But it is far worse to be a high-handed impenitent sinner. You do not want to join the rabbis. What does Christ say of the rabbis? You travel over land and sea to make a proselyte, and make him twice the son of hell as you. That is what the man who decides to double down on the Hebrew, so called, to double down on the rabbinic text, that is

2:05:39 what he is and will become. And so the way forward is simple. We have the Old Testament. We have it in Greek. We need a new translation, a number of new translations in various languages. But it is an entirely achievable task, and it is not an optional one. We cannot rely on this corrupted text passed to us by the Christ killing, Christ denying and Christian cursing rabbis. We have to rely on the Word of God as He preserved it, because He preserved it in Greek because He intended it to be preserved in Greek, as I said, it fulfills the Prophecy of Father Noah. Noah was a prophet. He was speaking the words of God. He said that Japheth will dwell in the tents of Shem What greater fulfillment of that could there possibly be than God causing his

2:06:36 word to be translated into a European language that all of the sons of Japheth would be able to read and translate into their own tongues with almost trivial ease. God is true to His Word. God is true to His promises. God's prophecies always come true. The prophecy of Noah with regard to Japheth came true, the promise of God to preserve his word came true, the words of Christ that neither Iota nor Seraph will be lost, have been true and will remain true. It is It simply falls to us to do our duty as Christian men and to be faithful to God. The next handful of years are going to sift the wheat from the chaff, because there will undoubtedly be those who double down on the rabbinic text, who double down on the so-called Hebrew, and in

2:07:31 the process deny God and apostatize. That is going to happen. That is absolutely going to happen. I can tell you that now with complete certainty. What we want for those of you who are listening to this episode, who have listened to the series, is not to follow them. Don't take the broad path that leads ever downward. Take the narrow path. The only true path. Be faithful to God, obey His Word, believe in His actual Word. Believe that he has fulfilled his promises. It's that simple. It's not a complex task, but it is a difficult one. Because you are going to have pastors who are screeching about the Hebrew Jew, who are saying the most evil things about the Greek, about the Septuagint. Their condemnation and their eternity will be the worse for it.

2:08:27 Don't fear them, don't join them. What can man do to me? Rely on God, rely on his word. Be firm in the conclusion, in your knowledge, your certainty, that the Septuagint is God's Word. I've laid out the argument, we laid out the history and the examples extensively. The argument is unassailable, and the conclusion is undeniable. But before I end this episode, I think it is appropriate that we end with the words of Christ, an example that we used in the previous episode. But I want to point out something different about the example here at the end of this series, and so reading from Luke four. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath

2:09:21 day, and he stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written. Gagraman, another form of the same verb from which we get Gagrapti. 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. We already pointed out how the wicked rabbis removed recovering of sight to the blind, such a key part of Christ's earthly ministry. And we also highlighted how the New Testament is essentially a quote, differing only very slightly from what is in the Septuagint.

2:10:11 But I want to highlight that sort of preamble, the introduction to the quote here. What does it say that Christ did? He read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. The word there for scroll in the Greek is Biblion, the word from which we get Bible. He was reading from the Greek scroll of Isaiah, not from the so called great scroll of Isaiah that they want to pass off as some great find. No, he was reading from the Septuagint. That's why what he read matches the Septuagint. And I want you to think about the typology here as well, the connection to what is going on in our day? What part of Christ's ministry did they remove? The recovering of sight to the blind. Who is possibly more blind than he who believes something that is

2:11:06 not the word of God is the word of God, or he who denies that what is the word of God is the Word of God, as so many faithless clerics are going to do in the coming years. It could not possibly be more obvious that the Scripture of the Early Church, the Scripture of the Apostles, and the Scripture of Christ Himself, who read from it, in the very pages of Scripture was and is the Septuagint, because that is the word of God that He preserved for His Church in order to preserve His Church. The way forward is simple, and the way forward is obvious. It will be difficult, but God is with us, and we will certainly need his help. But God has never abandoned his church, and he never will. Amen.