The Septuagint — Wisdom Literature

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm still Woe. On today's Stone Choir, we're continuing our discussion of the Septuagint. This week's episode is going to specifically be focusing on wisdom literature. So we're gonna talk a little bit about the Psalms and mostly Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Before we begin, brief housekeeping, apologize for the last couple weeks not being around. I was on my way out the door to have my surgery when I got called and said it had been cancelled. I don't have a date yet for when it's gonna be done again. I am thankful that happened because I realized afterwards I have six tons of wood pellets coming soon that I have to get into my garage, so I would not have been able to do

1:20 that when I was healing from surgery, so God protected me from being an idiot, as he does us all. I don't know yet when that's gonna be, so there will be another delay. A bunch of other things have come up and interrupted. I apologize for the intermittent nature of this series. If you don't follow on X, we recently published the entire six plus hour episode of the interview that Corey and I did with Will Spencer last year. He published it all his episodes on his sub stack and immediately pulled them down and stabs us in the back. So So this is the last bit of pre-drama version of that. We decided to put up a whole thing because there were some new questions that came about from that camp of evil men, and

2:04 we don't have any of the episodes that were edited, which is the reason that we didn't actually put it on the Stonequire feed. So in the link to the show notes for this episode, and we'll go back in the link for the show notes to the episode that we published on our feed a year ago, we will have a link to the six and a half hour, six hour roughly raw, unedited. So it's not high quality audio. There's no editing or anything. It's just a conversation that we had with Will. It's a really good conversation. It was a great interview. So if you're Jonesing for us in the meantime, well we're we'll probably have some more intermittent downtime between getting these episodes out. In the show notes there's a six hour interview with us.

2:43 We didn't put on the feed because we didn't want to push such a huge episode to everybody's device is get a big file. And we also didn't want to push something that was unedited. Like it's not really an episode, but it's a really good introduction. Frankly it's the best introduction to Stone Choir that exists right now. So that recording is available if you want to hear it, but you'll have to click on a link and listen to it in a web browser or whatever. As we're discussing the Septuagint today. I want to recap a few things that we've talked about in previous episodes. We're going to give a few examples principally from the Psalms of some different problems that exists when you compare the Hebrew text, the

3:28 rabbinic text to the scripture of the ancient church. And we're doing that for a very specific reason. It's answering the question, what's going on here? What are the differences? Because it's one thing to make the historical argument, as we have in previous episodes in this series, and it's one thing to make the conclusive argument from the New Testament, which will be where we're gonna finish up. But that's still not necessarily enough for a reasonable, honest Christian to say, well, okay, I like the arguments those guides made, so I'm not gonna read the Masoretic, the Rabbinic texts anymore. I'm just gonna read versions that are based on the Greek. It's entirely reasonable to say well and hear what the differences are.

4:07 That's a fair question. So this couple of middle episodes we're doing here where we're covering the old testament changes that were made by the Masoretes and the rabbis to the Christian text is not engaging with their arguments. It's something we tried to hammer home in the first couple episodes about history. No Christians should have ever been listening to rabbis. And we're not either. We're not arguing with them, we're not getting down in the mud with them, but every Bible in your house, unless you've gone out and bought a Septuagint since we started talking about it, or if you happen to already have one handy, all your Bibles are based on the rabbinic text. So it's fair to ask, well, okay, what am I losing?

4:49 What am I gaining? What is the nature? What is the meaning of these changes? Most of the examples we're going to give today, which will principally be from Proverbs. We're not going to do a lot of deep analysis on all here's the Hebrew word for this and here's the vowel pointer and none of that. The point that we hope to get across from the whole series is we as Christians have to stop doing that because we never should have done it in the first place. Jerome shouldn't done it. No one should have followed his lead. We must break with that false tradition. We have to stop listening to rabbis. So the only way for most people unfortunately to make the case, why should I stop listening to the rabbis is to show what

5:29 the Christian text of the early church looks like. What did Jesus and the Apostles Bible look like? So these comparison episodes are specifically answering that question. You have, you know, just like Origins Hexapla did before Jerome, you have a column of the rabbinic text, and you have a column of the Greek text and you have something that you can read, you know, which was already beginning to be Latin. Today it's English. What do we do with that? It's a fair question, but this is a much a thinking about thinking question as anything. We cannot fall into the trap of wanting to be guys who just argue all the time, especially when Jews want us to argue with them. Have I've had guys wanted to do this on X.

6:15 Everybody wants to do that. Oh well, the rabbis taught us this and and my Bible says this which is what the rabbis say, and you're saying this different thing. We need to go have you argue with the rabbis so that we can know what Jesus said, so that we can know what Christianity is about. Breaking that cycle is what is happening here. And so there are going to be some arguments, some examples, but we're deliberately, both because it would be a waste of time and it would simultaneously not be remotely exhaustive. You could go through entire books of the Bible and find huge changes between the rabbinic text and the Septuagint. The categories are important and we're gonna highlight the categories and then

6:55 we're just gonna let it drop. We're gonna, you know, maybe mention well here's a verse that falls into this category or that category. But I wanna highlight that we are not gonna fight with Jews over what God said. That's not what this is about. That's not what you should have in your heart or on your mind when you're looking at these questions. Some examples are necessary, but once you are satisfied that the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles and the early church is a Greek, at that point you personally, church denominations, new bodies that are formed, are going to have to make the decision okay we are done with the rabbinic text forever, for eternity. I'm convinced that it is not the word of God.

7:37 I'm convinced that the Septuagint is the Word of God. Next question. And everything that comes after that is not going to be in view at all of the Hebrew. The rabbinic text is going to die with their lies, and all we're going to have is the Greek of Jesus and the Apostles in the early church. So I say that up front because there can be a bunch of places today where we just skip over the textual argument. We're just gonna look at what it says in English in a faithful translation. We're not gonna care about the underlying text in Greek or the rabbinic text. We're just gonna look and say, okay, what is the meaning? Because fundamentally that's what's going on here, the meaning's changed. And those are some of the key categories that we're gonna go

8:19 through here initially. But please just recognize the distinction that we're making here at the outset. We are not arguing with rabbis. If your impulse is arguing with rabbis, you have sinned. You have sinned against God by listening to those who deny him. That is not where you should receive your teaching from. If you learn nothing else from the Septuagint series, it should be that. I don't uh say it any plain or that. We're gonna keep repeating it, but I say that because we are not engaging in the very thing that we're condemning. We're sure showing some examples of where the actual text in English differs. You can pick your translation. A translation that's faithful to either the Greek or to the rabbinic

8:59 text, they're all pretty much going to say the same thing. You can basically get from one language to another. First example that we're going to use is from Psalm 599. This one I'm going to quote from the King James and then from Brenton. King James fifty nine nine Because of his strength I will wait upon thee, for God is my defense. And then Breton says I will keep my strength looking for you, for you, O God are my helper. So there are two crucial changes that happened here. The first the King James based on the Masoretic text says because of his strength, whereas the Bretton says I will keep my strength. So we've changed the pronoun entirely. whose strength is being commented upon is either God's or it's mine.

9:46 The reason that I quoted the King James here, though I usually use the ESV, is that virtually every modern translation follows a Septuagint here again. There's a pattern that we had in the previous episode talking about the Christological passages. Yet again, your Bible, which probably doesn't footnote at all that's following the Septuagint, maybe some of them do, they're actually not being faithful to their binic text despite claiming they're based on it. Because it changes whose strength. Is it my strength or is it his strength? Whoever that is. The reason that this my to his flips is once again a vowel pointer. The vowel changes it from my to his. So at some point the rabbis change their teaching to change the

10:31 meaning of this text in that small way If you don't have vows because you don't have a complete language and all that you have is an oral tradition for rabbis, it can go either way. And you can only know from oral tradition which one it is. And the rabbinic text, which the King James preserved and everything else abandons, says his versus mine. Brenton in the Greek says I will keep my strength. And the other change at the end is different, it's not a vowel change, but it's in a way it's even more important. The second half of that passage says, For you, O God are my fortress. That is present in both King James and ESV, because it's based on the Rabbinic text. Brenton, based on Greek, says, For you, O God, are my helper,

11:13 which is an important distinction and it's one that highlights one of the types of changes that we're going to see here today. To say that God is our fortress, like as Lutherans, we obviously really like that sentiment, which is found elsewhere in scripture. It's entirely Christian belief. It's one that Luther memorialized and a mighty fortress is our God. But Psalm fifty nine nine is not a proof text for a mighty fortresses or God. Psalm 59-9 says that, oh God, you are my helper. What's the difference between being a fortress and a helper? One of the common changes that the rabbis made to scripture was exactly this sort of thing. They turn God into a place, into a status. It's basically the essential form of the argument that the Pharisees made

12:04 to Jesus, we have Abraham as our father. What is that? That's a status claim. God is my fortress is true, but then God's just sitting there. Abraham is my father. You know, maybe that was true in some cases in that day genetically, but it was beside the point. When you make a status claim saying, Well, here's a placement, what don't you have? You don't have any actual activity. A fortress just sits there. So if God is your fortress, like he's a shelter, he's a refuge, which is a good thing, but it's inert inherently. To say that God you are my helper is a very active thing. So it's a small change, it's not a huge thing. It doesn't change Christian doctrine one way or another because those are

12:45 sentiments, both of them are preserved elsewhere in scripture. But as we look throughout today's series of examples, one of the common refrains will be that God's action is reduced. God's no longer doing anything. He's no longer participating. He's just sort of sitting there. You're making a status claim. He's my fortress. He's my father. And everything else is implied. And that's one of the problems that we're going to have as Christians looking at some of these changes, is that as Christians we can baptize a lot of these. So throughout the many examples we'll give here today, and we're gonna run through 'em pretty quickly, apart from my introduction here. That's part of the reason for doing this kind of lengthy example.

13:26 One of the things I want you to keep in mind as you're listening to all these examples, don't just think about you, you know, maybe you're a Christian who's been raised in the church, you've been a Christian your whole life for decades. So you're really well inculcated in all this. You know it pretty well. You have a Christian heart, you have a Christian mind. When you hear something like for God is my defense, God is my fortress. You know exactly what that means. You pull all of it in. Because you're incorporating all the rest of scripture. Think about these differences from the perspective of someone who's not a Christian yet, who is a brand new Christian, but they don't know their way around Scripture.

14:03 They don't know what God's voice sounds like yet. And think about the differences between the passive fortress, the passive status claim, versus the act of God as my helper. That's a theological difference. And it's one that's repeated in many of these cases. Oftentimes the changes that the Masoretes made, that the rabbis made long before them, some of these changes exist before the day of Jesus, which is why the Bible of Jesus and the apostles was the Septuagint. You will find God's activity is actually removed from the text. And so just keep that in mind. You as a Christian know what's going on, but someone who's not well informed, if they were to be reading a Bible based on the rabbinic text versus one based on the early church and Jesus

14:51 and the Apostles Text, what conclusions would they reach? Because that's really what's going on here. It's not just about oh I have an expert level theology understanding. I'm a very good Christian, very well informed, so I can get these things right, because I know the backstory. When you look at these texts, what are you missing if you're using the rabbinic text? So the next example that we're going to look at here at the beginning that shows of some of what we're going to see throughout this episode is from Psalm eighty four verses 5 through 7. I'll read first from the ESV and then from Brenton. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a

15:31 place of springs. The early rain covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength, each one appears before God in Zion. And then Brenton, for the most part, reads pretty much the same. Blessed is the man whose health is of thee, O Lord. In his heart he has purpose to go up to the valley of weeping, to the place which he has appointed. And here's where it differs. For there the law giver will grant blessings. They shall go from strength to strength. The God of gods shall be seen in Zion. So most of that was the same, but what changed? Right there in the middle. The early rain also covers it with pools, changed to for there the law giver will grant blessings. That's a completely different sentence, isn't it?

16:13 Or a phrase is a part of a sentence. You know what changed there? A single vowel pointer. This is a second example where one small tiny little change to you know, in English, dog versus dig versus dog are three different words, and two of them are related, and dog is sort of conceptually related to dig and dug, but it doesn't have an etymological root. Totally different words, the only difference is a vowel. If I gave you DG and you had five vowels in English to choose from, well two of those examples, DAG and DEG, are not even English. That's what Dutch or something. But we don't use those. So you wouldn't know if it was dog, dig, or dug. That's the sort of problem that we have when we only have

16:59 an oral tradition. And so here we see an example of the ESV is faithful to the rabbinic text, which is not faithful to scripture. And yet again what do we find? What was the change? You go from this sort of ambiguous the early reign also covers it with pools to for there the lawgiver will grant blessings. Once again we see a case where God's activity vanishes entirely. God was erased from this entire passage by one vowel changing, because when you look at the minimal structure that's left in the Hebrew, the only way that the rabbinic text can make sense is if early rain is used and then you blush out the rest. Whereas if you believe it's teacher or lawgiver, which is what is translated in Greek, that's very clearly a place where God is active.

17:45 So again, these are examples where just one vowel changes and a substantial portion of the meaning vanishes entirely. And one of the frequent patterns that you will find as you're comparing whatever your rabbinic-based Bible is to the Septuagint, you'll find that these weird things like that were like, ah, the the early rain covers it in pools. You think well that's you know some weird smack idiom. I'm not really sure what that's about, but okay. It's just flowery language. You don't realize what you've lost. You've lost God's activity. You've lost that for there the law giver will grant blessings. God's doing something in that place. Yeah, they made us sound pretty, but it was just pretty for

18:26 its own sake and not a place where God was doing anything. Just like the previous example where a fortress gave way to a helper. When God's action is removed, we have less of God. And someone who's not familiar with the Christian faith wouldn't know. It's like, okay, well this is this is nice flowerly language, but what's God doing for me? These changes are not insignificant and the pattern becomes very obvious the further you go. We're not even going to scratch the surface today, but I'm highlighting these because as you do your own exploration, you will find this pattern. And you won't have to worry about vowel pointers, any of that garbage. Again, we don't want you engaging with the Hebrew.

19:05 We just want you engaging with the Greek text in English. A faithful translation, which is it doesn't yet exist. I'm using Brenton in some cases. Corey's going to use Lexum in a bunch of cases. A lot of times a Brendan follows the Hebrew anyway. It does it a lot less, like it's technically a septuagin-based translation of English. But for whatever reason, Brenton didn't pick a lot of these fights. So there are many passages where he follows the Hebrew for no justifiable reason. So it's a much better Bible to read, but we still don't have the one that we should that's actually faithful to the original Septuagint jump text for those of you who like the King James, you may have noticed that there is a difference between the ESV and the King James.

19:48 And I want to read just verse five from the King James to note this difference. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, and whose heart are the ways of them. You may have noticed there's something that disappeared, but The highways to Zion not there in the King James, because if you note from the footnote of the ESV, it says that Hebrew lacks to Zion. They've just gone ahead and inserted that in order to make sense of the underlying underlying Hebrew, that doesn't make any sense if you don't do something to it to make it make sense. This is something that crops up frequently, particularly in the Psalms but in other places as well, if you start to look at some of these footnotes that are in our Bibles for those translations that

20:36 include footnotes from the translators, there are many places where it says Hebrew uncertain, or essentially we don't know what this word means, so we just made something up. Sometimes they will resort correctly, incidentally, although without following through the logic, they will resort to the Septuagint in order to get the sense that actually is not you can't even draw it out of the Hebrew, it's just not there. But these footnotes appear frequently, particularly again in the Psalms. When other minor point from this psalm, not from a section we read, but at the end of verse eight, you see the word Salah. You may have heard a pastor or a teacher at some point in the history say, we don't know what this word means,

21:20 it's just in the Psalter, it exists, it's it's something that's there. Usually they'll guess it's probably something to do with a pointing the psalm for chanting or for singing, whatever it happens to be. We don't need to guess because we know what it means because in the Greek it says musical interlude. That's all it is. It is in fact what people have guessed it is, but we know what it is. It's not something that is this mystery left in the text for us. We have the Word of God telling us what this actually means. So when you are reading the Psalms and you see this word salah, if you're still reading from a version that has that in it, just recognize we know what it means. It's not some mystery.

22:00 It just means play some music here. Because the Psalms are one of the hymnals of the church. So basically salah means guitar solo. Just remember that and you'll never forget again. And please don't play guitars in church. The next last example that we're gonna use from the Psalms is from Psalm four, verse three. I'm gonna read again from the ESV. O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Then the Septuagint reads, and I'm actually combining Brenton and the Lexum here. O you sons of men, how long will you be heavy hearted? Why do you love vanity and seek a lie? So what has changed here is my honor how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

22:53 How long will you be heavy hearted? No mention of shame or anything else. Once again is a case where a single vowel change causes all this. And even in the Greek there's the idiom that's preserved heavy hearted. This is also translated as slow of heart or dull of heart. It basically means stubborn or unrecepted or dull witted. You could translate this as you know colloquially how long will you be unreceptive to my teaching? How long will you be idiots? How long will you be deaf to what I'm saying? That's another way of expressing the sentiment here. And the reason I incorporated the whole passage is that the second half of it makes very clear that's what's going on there. When you understand the heavy hearted means stubborn, you know, unreceptive to

23:39 teaching. Oh you sons of men, how long will you be heavy hearted? Why do you love vanity and seek a lie Why? That makes perfect sense. You're seeking lies instead of hearing what God has to say. That's a much more important sentiment than oh man, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? Which again as I said, a Christian can sort of baptize that and make it into something that makes sense. You can explain it. And the commentaries do, but they're explaining Hebrew nonsense. They're explaining something that isn't scripture. That's gonna be a tough part that we're gonna have to get past as the established Christian churches that in many cases what was written about these passages won't be of any use to us because

24:21 they weren't analyzing the text that's actually in question. Now there are lots of places where the Greek and the rabbinic text do basically match as much as any two languages can. So they're not losing anything. But whenever we do find these changes, we as people who might consult a commentary or what has been written or said in the past have to realize that anyone who was commenting on how long shall my honor be turned into shame has nothing to say about Psalm four or three. Has nothing to say about it because you've completely lost the essence of what's going on. And I understand that these examples we're giving are going to be bait for many of you to go and do your own comparisons. That's a good thing.

25:03 That's not not going to discourage that. We certainly want people who have the aptitude and the time and the inclination to do that. My only exhortation to you is this. If we say Psalm four three says this, don't go read Psalm four three. Read all of Psalm four. Read the entire thing before you even look at any of the differences. That's crucial because the context is always going to be consistent with what we find in the Septuagint. It always makes more sense when you look in the full context, like, oh yeah, suddenly this is a natural reading that is overwhelmingly the case when there are differences. So it's fine to go hone in on well, here's what you know, this verse or this portion of this verse says one thing

25:49 versus another, and that's where the differences are. But the context is where the entire semantic neighborhood is. If you don't understand that this is about lies versus the truth of the Lord, then the second half of the verse doesn't seem to have anything to do with the verse. So when you read it in context, you're gonna get that. So just as a general admonition, please read entire chapters anytime you look at anything that we say here. I genuinely mean that. Any verse that you look up that we mentioned today, read the whole chapter right off the bat. Read it in either the Lexum or the Breton, and then read it in wherever your favorite rabbinic text translation is. Read the whole chapter, and then focus on the verse we're pointing

26:29 to, because the context is going to help you understand well yeah, I can understand that this is not just some translation committee change that occurred twenty two hundred years ago, that God's speaking with one voice. This is one of those episodes where there is essentially a bit of homework, and that will become manifestly apparent as we go through these examples. Because we will be spending basically all of our time for the balance of this episode in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. And I am going to go ahead and say that you should probably just read both of those books in a translation of the Septuagint. Insofar as the wisdom literature is concerned, in particular Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job, and we will not really be getting to Job at

27:15 all today. In fact we probably won't get to it at all period. There are significant differences as between the rabbinic text and the Septuagint, the actual word of God. And so I would recommend that you simply read those three books in their entirety. Whenever you happen to have the time. It's not something that you need to go and do as soon as you hear me say this, pause the episode, do it now and come back. That's not what we're saying. Just this is something that you should do in order to see what God has actually said in his word. We will try to keep these examples relatively short because given this format, as we said in the previous episode, it is difficult to parse large chunks of text, particularly when you are trying to compare

28:01 them, even if they are read one after the other. So we'll try to keep these relatively short. So last Psalm that we're gonna look at here today is Psalm fourteen. And the reason that we're looking at this is that this is one of those cases where there's actually a long ending to the chapter. You may have heard that phrase for some other books in the Bible. The long ending to Psalm 14 is quoted in its entirety in Romans 3. So I'm going to read this from Romans three, because it has an uncontroverted text that we all agree is absolutely scripture. Beginning with verse nine, Paul writes What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all, for we have already charged that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin, as it is written.

28:48 No one is righteous, no not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now if you look at Romans three in any Bible that has footnotes and commentaries it gives citations of what they're quoting. In the ESV I counted it up and it said that there were eleven different citations here for what Paul was quoting from elsewhere

29:34 in scripture. So Paul says as it is written, and then gives you know about fifteen lines or so. The claim that is made by the modern scholars is that this is what they call a katana. It's a concatenation. It's just a it's a big conglomeration of a bunch of different verses that Paul consolidated to make his one point. So he took a bit from here and a bit from there, and there are a bunch of psalms. I think Zechariah and maybe Jeremiah Isaiah shows up once or twice. It's a big grab bag of things. At no point in at least the ESV's notes does it mention that this is literally a verbatim quote of Psalm fourteen, the end of it. This is one of many examples where they will go to such lengths to deny that the New Testament is quoting the Septuagint that

30:24 they make up preposterous arguments. Now, when you look at the text, when you look at all that, beginning with no one is righteous, no not one, it is true that many of those so-called citations are echoed, if not verbatim, in other parts of Scripture. It does not therefore follow that the ending of Psalm fourteen that's present in the Septuagint, which is entirely deleted from the rabbinic text. They chop this whole thing off. You will not find a single word of this in Psalm fourteen in the Masoretic text. They deleted it. The argument that's made today by scholars oh well that's fine because we find that everywhere else. This is another essential problem that we have to deal with. There's this tremendous casual attitude towards just not caring about whatever the

31:14 rabbis did to the text. If, again, as a knowledgeable Christian, say that's an echo of this other thing. Here's a citation where that's present, so it's true that when Paul writes as it is written, it is written, it was written in somewhere else. It just wasn't written in Psalm fourteen. It's important to know the Athenaeus, Augustine, Chrysostom all referenced this psalm the long ending, and they treated as scripture. There's no doubt in their minds that this was the inspired word of God. In Romans also cites the Septuagint at least half a dozen other places. So it's not like this is the only place where Paul cites the Greek. He also cites the original ancient Hebrew, but overwhelmingly he is in

31:56 his other epistles, he cites the Septuagint. So it's fine for us to acknowledge as we said in the previous episode, there are cases where you will find that the rabbinic text, as it existed in that day, was cited authoritatively by inspired apostles or by Jesus himself. That's fine. They knew what they were talking about. They had direct, immediate access, and they also had the Holy Ghost. We don't have the access that they had. What we do have is them saying, yes, this was true, so we can take it as gospel, but it doesn't follow that that retroactively blesses the rest of the rabbinic text. If you think it's okay to just delete the rest of Psalm fourteen because you know, it's it's found elsewhere.

32:38 You should know how often this happens in scripture, just a few examples of places where a passage of scripture is repeated elsewhere. Psalm one hundred eight is entirely a composite of Psalm fifty seven, verses seven through eleven, and Psalm sixty, verses five through twelve. So if you are okay with deleting Psalm fourteen and saying, Yeah, I don't believe that Paul was quoting the Septuage. I think that's a bridge too far. I think the simplest answer is that Paul was quoting eleven other verses just as a hodgepodge that he mashed together. Then you have to accept that it's entirely reasonable for somebody to come along Come along and delete Psalm one hundred and eight, or to delete either Psalm eighteen or second Samuel twenty two, because they

33:21 say the same thing. Or Psalm seventy, which is nearly identical to Psalm forty, verses thirteen through seventeen. Or all of Isaiah thirty six through thirty nine, which is basically the same as second Kings eighteen, beginning with verse thirteen through twenty, nineteen. God repeats himself a lot. That's why we're not shy about repeating ourselves here. It's an important didactic tool. It's fine to repeat yourself. Oftentimes the only things that end up getting through are the things that are repeated. We know that, and so there are times where we belabor points and you can search the transcripts of saying belabor point. That's why. It's not to be annoying. It's because we want you to hear certain things so many times

34:00 that you get aggravated. Like, yeah, I've heard it already. I know. You know, kids are like that, like, shut up, mom or dad, I want to hear it. If you're a kid, you shouldn't show up to your parents, I certainly did. I feel bad about it. But the sentiment is in all of our hearts, I'm sick of hearing this anymore, I'd get it, leave me alone. That's the purpose of repetition sometimes. So the notion that well God repeated himself, so I'm just gonna delete it because I don't take one of these as scripture, it's a deadly error. And it's one that we're so casual about. Why? Because the rabbis told us it was okay. Please do not fall down that trap. And so starting with Proverbs one, I will read first from the

34:38 ESV and then from the Lexum. Basically all of my examples are going to be from the Lexum for the Septuagint translation I already commented on the difference between the Lexum and the Brenton in the previous episode, so you can go back and listen to that again or read that difference there. To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction and wise dealing, in righteousness, justice and equity, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. And now from the Septuagint to know wisdom and discipline, and to understand words of insight, and to receive subtlety of words, and to understand true righteousness, and to direct a judgment, so that it may

35:25 give cunning to the naive, and both experience and insight to a young child. Now there are a number of differences in this particular section as between the Masoretic and the Septuagint. In some places it is essentially identical. You may have noticed that verse 2B, other than the word and, is identical in both the ESV and the Lexum. But there are other places where the diction has changed. You have instruction in the ESV, you have discipline in the Septuagint. Those are not exactly identical. This is a different thing. You have righteousness, justice, and equity versus to understand true righteousness and to direct a judgment. Now you could try to excuse the differences and certainly exegetes have

36:17 done that. But as we have been saying, the point we have been making, that's not the Christian impulse. The Christian impulse is simply to look at the Word of God and accept the Word of God, not try to make excuses for what the rabbis have done to it, and then passed off as the Word of God, their mangled version of it. And just as a sort of preliminary matter, sort of in the middle of the episode, but a preliminary matter nonetheless, we are going to generally stick to the numbering scheme that is in all of your Bibles. The numbering scheme from the Rabbinic text because it is the one to which we are all accustomed, and so it is easier to stick to that. Sometimes that is a little more of a problem in the Psalter

37:02 where the numbers do not exactly line up, they're usually off by one. But there are certainly some places in the wisdom literature elsewhere in the wisdom literature where the numbering is not the same. We will be using the numbering that is in all of your Bibles. One of the recurring themes that will arise throughout this episode as you look for yourself is something that I've said before. I've been saying for well over a year on X. The more that I have come to rely on referring back to the Septuagint before I quote the Old Testament, the more often I realize that the point that I wanted to make just vanishes. And as in some of the previous examples we gave, it's not necessarily that what is present in the rabbinic text is actually actively

37:46 evil. It's not that it's a bad thing per se. It's just that it's not what God said, and therefore it's less important. And certainly to us it shouldn't be important at all, but you can't even necessarily make the arguments that you intend to make until you make sure you're using the correct text. And as Corey was highlighting, you know, the difference between like equity, that's part of DEI today. I'm sure that there are people who have tried to use Proverbs one to justify DEI, because it's got the word equity in the ESV. Game set match, right? Obviously, you need to have racial quotas because this verse says equity. So while that's a garbage argument on its face, even attempting to make the argument in this case is not possible if you're using

38:32 the text of the early church. So just keep that in mind. Not that it's going to undermine anything in terms of your faith, but it may undermine some of your points. And that's not a bad thing. Like your point can come or go. And frankly, you know, it's I've said before, like I have very poor knowledge of scripture in terms of citing chapter and verse. I haven't memorized very much at all. But I know a lot of stuff is in there and I know I can find it. Once I find it what I thought, usually the point is there. I'm not misremembering and having stupid things in mind that are disproven by the text. But even when I correctly remember what was in the text, I'm always going to be remembering the rabbinic text, 'cause that's all I've

39:12 known my entire life. And so then when I consult what's in the Septuagint, what I find is that in about a third of cases, my point goes away. Not that my point was evil, like it may be proven somewhere else, but the specific proof text that I thought I was gonna be able to post and you know own whomever I was gonna be able to score points in some argument, it's gone. I can't do it. Because some other point, maybe a different more important point, is made in the Septuagint. You will find this over and over again. When you refer to the Greek, whatever verse you're looking at, you're gonna find in a lot of cases the point you thought you could make is gonna vanish. And sometimes it's gonna boil down to a single word or a

39:48 few words, as Corey just highlighted. So just I'm warning you that you're gonna have to get used to that sensation. And it shouldn't be a cause for concern. It should be a cause for curiosity and for celebration. Okay, God has new things to teach me that I didn't know about that the church and Jesus and the apostles all recognized. I want to learn what misdom I've been missing out on. There's some better piece, there's some small word that's here that is important that was preserved. Let's go see. Let's go learn from it. That's a blessing. And more and more I think you're gonna be finding you'll be referring back to some of the Some of the early church fathers prior to Jerome, just because they're the last ones who looked at

40:26 this stuff. And that's important because they also disagreed a lot. When I as a Lutheran say that, I'm not making the Roman Catholic argument or the Orthodox argument that pretends that there's been this absolute unity of Christian teaching and arguments about individual verses forever. Christians have always been having these fights. In fact, there's a verse that says that very thing. Disputes must arise among you, the truth may be known. That's not exactly how it's quoted, like that's not another example. I know it's in there somewhere. When you look and your point vanishes, that's fine. When you look at the early church fathers and find that they disagree, now you have a real opportunity to learn because you're actually

41:05 gonna have to think. You're not gonna get a pad answer. You're gonna find that one guy says one thing, another guy says another thing. And frankly, most of the commentaries after that probably not going to be worth much because they're talking about the rabbinic text. They're not even talking about scripture. We are going to be sticking in Proverbs 1 for a while here, but the second example from Proverbs one is verse seven. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction. And then from the Septuagint The beginning of wisdom is fear of God, and good insight belongs to all who practice it, and piety toward God is the beginning of insight, but the ungodly despise wisdom

41:49 and instruction. Now there is a great deal of similarity between the two, but you may have noticed the reading from the Septuagint is longer. This is another place where the rabbinic text has simply dropped part of scripture. It got rid of the middle part of this verse of this section, because again remember verse numbers are something we added for convenience, they're not technically part of scripture. This is another one of those cases, and there will be many of them where where it's not necessarily fundamentally different between the two textual sources, between the rabbinic text and the Septuagint. But just because there isn't a fundamental difference doesn't mean that it's acceptable. We're dealing here with the Word of God.

42:38 We should want to be completely faithful, completely true to the Word of God. And the Word of God, in this case happens to have more for us. Good insight belongs to all those who practice it. That's just not there in the rabbinic text. And piety toward God is the beginning of insight. This is one of those verses that many that many people love because the beginning of wisdom is fear of God. Or in the rendering of the Rabbinic text, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Not exactly the same thing. Wisdom and knowledge are not identical. Wisdom is something higher and greater than knowledge, and that's what the proverb actually says, that's what it actually praises. So fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, not just the

43:23 beginning of knowledge. It is a different statement. As Corey highlighted, the two lines that are missing, there's sentiments that are found elsewhere in scripture, but this is just a slightly diminished verse. You're not getting quite as much of godly wisdom as you would if you were reading the Greek. Yeah, it's another one of the common themes Sometimes these deletions don't destroy the verse, they just kind of hollow it out. And that's another recurring theme. There are a lot of passages that they're just kind of hollowed out. They lose their their oomph. They lose the spirit that actually conveys wisdom. Yeah, we're looking at wisdom literature here, and yet a lot of the wisdom, including the very word wisdom, was removed from this verse.

44:13 It's not a small point. It's not It's not a dire point in terms of damnation versus salvation, but in terms of slowly starving us of what God wants to give us, it is consequential. The next example's still in Proverbs 1 is a different kind of example. This is perhaps a different category, where there's a fundamental difference. The saying in the Rabbinic text is simply a different saying from what is contained in the Septuagint. And so verse seventeen for in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird. Okay, sure, that's a true statement. We understand the wisdom behind that. We understand what is being said there. But what is said in the Septuagint, for one does not spread a net for birds without reason?

45:05 That's a different saying. Sure it's true that it is vain to spread a net in the sight of not any bird notably, but most birds. Some birds are in fact stupid enough you could spread a net and they'll walk into it still. But it is a very different thing to say one does not spread a net for birds without reason. There's a reason for why you're doing this thing. This is wisdom literature. This is a wise saying. The other one, I'm not saying it's a dumb saying, but it's a different saying. It's a fundamentally different thing. This is one of the examples that I had in mind when I said you need to go read the whole chapter. This sentiment talking about nets is part of talking about it's an entire section talking about thieving and plotting to be a thief and

45:51 falling in with the wrong crowd that's going to commit that sort of crime. So when if when you read this, in particular focus on Proverbs one verse eight through nineteen. That is the complete thought here because that entire passage deals with falling in with a bunch of guys who want to rob people. They want to steal, they want to take material possessions, and the admonition is don't do that, it's going to be bad for you. I want to highlight verse nineteen nearly at the end of this, in fact at the last one, because it's another substantive change that's made in the rabbinic text that doesn't seem like that big a deal unless you kind of have your focus correct. So again, this is a passage about you becoming a robber.

46:34 You know, a father warning his son, son, don't fall in with the wrong crowd who wants to go rob people. Don't be a getaway driver for a bank robbery. Verse nineteen in the S V says Such are the ways of every one who is greedy for unjust gain. It takes away the life of its possessors. So the rabbinic text ends with something that's very much about stealing. It's about robbery, greedy for unjust gain. Listen to what Brenton's translation of the Greek says. These are the ways of all that perform lawless deeds, for by ungodliness they destroy their own life. The moral tenor here has changed completely. Instead of it just being a passage about robbery, we have a passage about all lawlessness, we have a passage about all sin, all

47:20 ungodliness. This is crucial in the context of wisdom, particularly when it's coming right after the previous one, where we say that the beginning of wisdom is a fear of God and good insight belongs to those who practice it, and piety towards God is the beginning of insight, but the ungodly despise wisdom and instruction, the very next thing that follows is an admonition don't fall in with bad people who are gonna rob because this is an example of lawless deeds of sin and ungodliness, and that is what causes your destruction of your life. So both are true, but the Septuagint is so much more moral because it's saying here's a small example of the greater point. And crucially, this is another one of those examples I highlighted at

48:06 the beginning. Imagine you're a non-believer, you're new to the Christian faith, and you read this and you read robbery and such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain. The unregenerate heart, the immature heart look Looks for the line. It says where is the line that God draws such that if I go right up to it but don't cross it, I'm not sinning. I'm not gonna lose my eternal life. Where can I go without sinning? When you have an example about robbing and say this is what anyone who's greedy for unjust gain, you're gonna end up like this. Don't fall into the bad crowd that robs. Well, if greedy for unjust gain is your threshold for losing your life, then anything that is not unjust gain is on the table,

48:50 isn't it? So you know, usury, fine. Our entire economy is based on usury. The very notion that usury could be abolished, people correctly point out, well that would destroy the entire economy. Yes. Quake in your boots at the prospect of how wicked we have become as a society. That's the sort of wisdom that's contained when you step away from saying where's the line? If it's greed for unjust gain, and I'm not gonna be a robber, I'm not gonna rob a bank, so I'm fine. You miss that all lawless deeds fall into the same bucket. All lawless deeds are ungodliness, and all ungodliness destroys your life. This is a sort of reduction that occurs in these texts. It's a small change, but it's not the next example is a great one for looking at what is

49:36 lost in the rabbinic text, because while these two passages are going to sound similar, upon reflection they are fundamentally different, and you lose a great deal in what we have in translations from the rabbinic text instead of the Septuagint, and so verses twenty through twenty two. Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice, at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, at the entrance of the city gates she speaks. How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing, and fools hate knowledge? And now from the Septuagint Wisdom sings in the exits, and leads confidently into open areas, and upon the top of the walls she

50:26 proclaims, and at the gates she sits beside rulers, and at the gates of the city she speaks boldly. As long as the naive hold to righteousness, they will not be dishonored but the foolish, since they are ones who long for insolence, after becoming ungodly, they hated insight. These two are simply fundamentally different sayings. And of course it continues on, particularly in the Septuagint where that's not really a break in the full thought. There is an additional part to that, and you should of course go and read the entire chapter. But saying that wisdom is with rulers who sit in the gates, and that wisdom speaks boldly in the city gates, we simply lose that in the Rabbinic text. The Rabbinic text has at the head of the noisy streets she

51:17 cries out. That's not the same saying. That is a fundamentally different thing, but that's not even the biggest change here. Probably arguably the biggest change is from verse twenty two how long O simple ones will you love being simple? Okay, sure. Versus as long as the naive hold to righteousness, they will not be dishonored. Those aren't even comparable sayings. What we lose if we're looking at the rabbinic text versus the Septuagint is a vitally important saying, a vitally important bit of wisdom. Even those who are not truly wise, so long as they hold, so long as they cleave in the words of Breton, to righteousness, and it's the same word for righteousness or justice, they will not be dishonored.

52:09 That is a vitally important Christian sentiment, because regardless of your intellectual capacities, whatever they may or may not be, you can hold to righteousness, and Scripture says you will not be dishonored so long as you do that. What even is that compared to what we have in the rabbinic, how long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? That's practically a rhetorical question that doesn't give you anything in terms of wisdom. You get the actual wise saying in the wording of the Septuagint, it's just not there in the rabbinic text. The rabbis removed this saying and put something else in its place. Because so many of these comparisons are somewhat difficult for oral comparison when you're listening, one of the things we'll do is link in

53:02 the show notes a thread that a friend did on X where he made some very nice slides that highlight these differences. In his case, he compared the King James, I think, entirely to the Brenton, since both are out of copyright and they have a similar language. So that's a very helpful tool for you looking side by side. And he also, I believe, looked at the Greek to make sure that Brennan was being consistent. So verse by verse throughout all of Proverbs, you can have a visual comparison that's very helpful because again, just processing this orally can be tricky. But again, we're not trying to convince with any one of these one way or the other, we're trying to convince by the preponderance of evidence that they are substantially different.

53:42 That it's not just Isaiah seven fourteen that was modified. There's a lot more going on. And once you understand that, then hopefully a desire will be kindled to actually look at the Greek text because it is scripture. The next example still in Proverbs 1 is a great example similar to that change in Isaiah where you have a change of essentially one word. Now there's more difference here than just one word, but there's one key word difference here. so first again from the ESV, I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when terror strikes you versus the Septuagint. Therefore I also will laugh at your destruction, and I will rejoice when your destruction comes. Now again, there are several differences here, but the key difference is

54:32 between mocking when terror strikes you and rejoicing at the destruction of the wicked. Those are two different things. Mocking someone who has fallen into calamity or terror, whichever word we happen to pull there from the ESV, is a fundamentally different reaction from rejoicing at the destruction of the wicked, and we see this rejoicing at the destruction of the wicked all throughout the wisdom literature and elsewhere in scripture. These two sayings are not the same. We have a different saying in the Septuagint from what is in the ESV. The Word of God doesn't say mock here. It says rejoice. Those are not the same sentiment. I think one of the great enticements to looking back to the Old Testament as you seek to compare these things is just rereading

55:26 portions of the Old Testament carefully beginning with verse twenty through the end of Proverbs chapter one, it is a complete thought. It all belongs together. When you read these sentiments, these are things that will get you kicked out of churches today. If you were to say that God says these things, that God believes these things to be holy and wise, you will be called hateful, you will be called not a Christian, you will be told that you're going to hell. For saying what God says, for believing his wisdom. Understand that that's what time it is. One of the benefits to this comparison is re embracing the Old Testament in a way that frankly we've forgotten. Because I as Corey and I were talking before we began recording,

56:10 I think one of the worst things that has happened to us by the false adoption of the rabbinic text is that solidified in people's minds the notion that was then later on named Judeo-Christian. The Old Testament became the Judeo part, and the New Testament is the Christian part. And so what do you end up with in the Old Testament as a modern Christian? You have either stories that are about the Jews, but they're not about us, or they're stories that are pointing to Jesus, but they don't have anything to do with anybody else at all. At no point does any of this tell us about who God is or about what he wants and demands of us and what the Christian life looks like. Those things, as soon as you open those last two doors in

56:54 Christian conversation, you're on thin ice. You are going to get called a heretic. You're going to get told you are an evil man, that you have embraced satanic wicked thoughts for saying what God says. Understand that, and then read boldly what is in scripture. In this case, you can read it doesn't matter if it's a rabbinic text or the Septuagint for what I'm saying here, the overall sentiment has been obscured from us simply by virtue of thinking it's this old stuff. It's about the Jews, it's not for us. And even though people who say, Oh the Proverbs, it's wisdom literature, it's very wise. Are you going to say it's wise to rejoice in the destruction of your enemies and God's enemies? Good luck saying that and remaining in a church.

57:34 How wise is that? This is serious stuff. We have lost scripture by bits and pieces not only by the changes in the text themselves, but by our very view of what it is to inherit the Old Testament. It's not old. This stuff is not old. It's before Christ, but that doesn't make it old. All the New Testament quotations are from the Old Testament. It is every word breathed out from the mouth of God. I'll once again reiterate the ending of the Bible, Revelation twenty two that I mentioned in the previous episode. And if anyone 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. We do not get to mess around with God's word as the

58:23 rabbis did. Take seriously that when this reframing occurred to the Old Testament, it robbed us. We were robbed not only of the specific words by the translation changes, but by the very notion that this is not God speaking to us directly. When you go and read this for yourself, one of the things that you will notice is that the rabbis played games with how they chopped up sections of scripture. This is one of the ways that they managed to corrupt and pervert, particularly here in the wisdom literature, certain segments, certain sections of scripture. And the next two examples are a fairly good example of that, because in the Septuagint, and so I'm going to read them together and then compare

59:08 them separately, in the Septuagint they are a complete thought, whereas the Rabbinic text has broken them into two separated thoughts, and so I will read first from the Rabbinic text, the ESV. Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices. For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them. Verses thirty one and thirty two. And now I will read those from the Septuagint. Therefore they will eat the fruit of their own way, and they will be filled with their own ungodliness, for because they were doing wrong to infants, they will be murdered, and scrutiny will destroy the ungodly. This again is one of those times where these are not

59:59 the same. This is not a difference in terms of nuance or something minor. These are fundamentally altered sayings in the rabbinic text. It is a corruption of what we actually have in the Word of God, and part of it just isn't there We have where did doing wrong to infants go? It's not there. Instead we have something else here in the rabbinic text. The complacency of fools destroys them. And it says fools, as opposed to the ungodly. This is another one of the changes that you will note it's a sort of type of change that runs through the wisdom literature. They will change certain things into certain lesser versions of them. And so here you have the difference between the ungodly or you could say the unrighteous or the evil, the wicked, the impenitent, whatever

1:00:54 it happens to be. They'll change it to fools instead, which is a different saying. Why are these people being destroyed? They're destroyed because they're ungodly, they're not destroyed simply because they're fools. Now there can be sin in being foolish, but it depends on the kind of foolishness. There's no opaqueness here, there's no vagueness here in the Septuagint. These people are destroyed because they are ungodly, and they're doing wrong to infants. It says in fact they will be murdered, which is certainly stronger language than we find in what has essentially been sanitized in the rabbinic text. Another thing that runs all throughout the wisdom literature, and we will get into examples that show this as well, in many places you

1:01:40 will see an admonition to treat your friends well, or not to treat your friends poorly, whichever one it happens to be. In the rabbinic text, often friend has been changed into neighbor, and so many of these verses many verses you may know you may know them by heart By heart, where it says something in the rabbinic text about your neighbor, when you actually read it in God's word, it says it about your friend. That's a pretty significant change. And that runs all throughout the wisdom literature. It is something that you will find again and again and again, because the rabbis have corrupted this text that they passed off to Christians who were insufficiently critical of the source. They did not think about what they were doing.

1:02:25 They should have. They failed to do so. And as Woe said, this is not necessarily all bad news as it were for us, because when you start to look at these things with fresh eyes, which you are going to be forced to do because the wording is different. In some cases it's a completely different saying. You are getting to encounter and read the Word of God in a way that would be very difficult to do if If you were simply reading another translation of the rabbinic text, it's not that different going from even the King James to the ESV, and it's certainly not that different going from one modern translation to another. But when you have the rabbinic text in your mind and your memory because it's what

1:03:08 you've been reading for many years in many cases for our listeners for decades, and then you go and look at the Septuagint, you're forced to slow down and actually think about what you're reading. And that's a great thing. We have an opportunity here in how we deal with God's word and how we process God's Word. And I've certainly noticed this myself while preparing these materials and going through and reading the Septuagint more obviously. Because I read aloud every single day from the Psalter, I have a lot of it effectively memorized, I don't have the whole thing memorized, I certainly couldn't recite it from memory, but in many cases I've been able to simply run these comparisons even with proverbs and

1:03:52 things like that, just by reading the Septuagint text and knowing from memory what is in the Rabbinic text. Unfortunately I have the Rabbinic text memorized in many cases. I wish it were the Septuagint instead, but in reading the Septuagint and reading the actual Old Testament, the actual Word of God, I am forced to think about it more deeply and to slow down and actually spend the amount of time that I should be spending with God's word when I am reading it, in a way that I wouldn't necessarily be forced to do if I were reading from the rabbinic text with which I am more familiar. And so think of this in some ways and in some terms as a sort of advantage, a sort of opportunity for those of us who are encountering this in sort of a fresh way.

1:04:44 Don't look at this as oh we have this huge problem and it is a problem. I'm not saying that to minimize it, but I'm saying don't personally take it as some assault on what you have done in the past with regard to your time in God's Word. That wasn't time ill spent. Because in many cases much of it is preserved, of course. We have gone through examples where it is virtually identical. But it has been changed in places. It has been corrupted in places, and so it is necessary, and hopefully in the near future there will be a proper modern English translation of the Septuagint, but it is necessary to actually read God's Word as he as he preserved it, not as the rabbis corrupted it and passed it off to Christians, who were far too trusting

1:05:31 of people they should not have trusted at all. As I mentioned in the last episode, many of the guys who have gone gone out and gotten Septuagins and begun reading 'em have said precisely that. They've said that they've been enjoying and engaging with scripture more deeply, in part because it is novel in the sense of being univocal, which was how they all put it, not in those exact words. But as I said, they have all said to me, and I agree, and Corey agrees as well, I think you will too when you look, the voice of the Old Testament and the voice of the New Testament are the same when you're looking at the Greek. That's not the case when you're looking at the Masoretic, at the rabbinic text, versus the New Testament.

1:06:14 They don't read the same. They don't feel the same. It's a sea of the pants thing. It's something that you can only have through familiarity. You can't do a word study and say, oh cool, I can explain it because of these sentence structures. You just feel it. And a lot of these small changes are what we're talking about. That's why I said read the entire chapters. When you read a whole chapter, it's gonna read differently, not simply because of small word changes, but because the voice is different. The voice The voice of God is present in the Septuagint. There's no other way to put it, and you will find it too. Moving on then from Proverbs one to Proverbs two, and reading verses sixteen through nineteen first from the ESV.

1:06:57 So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God, for her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed, none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. And then from the Septuagint to set you far from the straight way, and make you a stranger from righteous intention. Son, do not let bad counsel overtake you, which abandons the teaching of youth, and has forgotten the divine covenant, for she has set her house close to death, and her paths close to Hades with the shades. All who go into her will not return, and they would never attain to straight paths, for they are not seized by years of

1:07:44 life. This is one of those cases where again, these are not the same, even sort of remotely. And this is another sort of mini-theme that I noticed as I was reading through and comparing the wisdom literature. Oftentimes the adulteress comes up in the rabbinic text and then just is not there in the Septuagint. It's one of those things the rabbis decided to add, they decided to modify the Proverbs to deal much more frequently with the adulteress, and that's not the case in the Septuagint. The Septuagint is speaking about righteousness and the intent of one's heart and the rabbinic text is speaking about the forbidden woman, the adulteress. I think it's notable that if you use Proverbs two from the Septuagint

1:08:40 that talks about not letting bad counsel overtake you or forgetting the divine covenant you have to come the conclusion that you shouldn't have been listening to rabbis. The next example is Proverbs 3, verse 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. This is one of those that many of you have probably memorized, or at least are very familiar with it. didn't sound unusual to your ear. But then from the Septuagint, trust God with your whole heart, and do not be exalted by your own wisdom. Similar. This is a case where the sayings are similar, but again, not identical. Do not lean on your own understanding versus do not be exalted by your own wisdom. It is not the same to tell someone to avoid being haughty

1:09:33 or to avoid being arrogant, which is what we're dealing with here in the Septuagint, versus telling someone not to lean on your own understanding. This is wisdom literature. It is constantly exhorting you to be wise. It is exhorting you to have understanding, to gain knowledge, to seek wisdom. These are good things. They're very highly praised in Proverbs and elsewhere. But you are not to be puffed up in your heart, you are not to be haughty, you're not to be exalted with regard to how you view yourself. That is not the same thing as saying do not lean on your understanding. Because the whole point of reading the wisdom literature is to develop this sort of understanding on which you can rely.

1:10:17 It's not leaning on it in a sinful sense, which is of course reading this with Christian eyes. You say do not lean on your own understanding. We recognize how you can take that in a Christian way. But if you simply read the words as they are there on the page, with none of that background, none of the rest of the context of Scripture in your mind, not a Christian understanding, just an understanding of the English language. That's not what it's saying. It simply says do not lean on your own understanding. For Fundamentally different saying from do not be exalted by your own wisdom. Don't be puffed up. Don't become arrogant. Basically don't mislead yourself with your own conception of your supposed wisdom,

1:11:03 because that's a false wisdom. As opposed to just saying don't lean on your understanding. Your understanding may be correct. Perhaps you should lean on your understanding in something. But not in something In the sense of being puffed up and misled of being exalted in your own heart, because that then leads into and leans into the sin of pride, which is a different thing. This is a passage that makes more sense if you understand the idiom from earlier about being dull of heart. This is saying the opposite. The exhortation, trust God with your whole heart and do not be exalted by your own wisdom is the same sentiment. Don't be doll of heart. Don't be reluctant to understand God's wisdom. Don't be a fool.

1:11:47 Don't be an idiot. And the notion of not being exalted by your own wisdom, where's the substitute? It's not a question of you being humble, it's a question of God's wisdom being your wisdom. Make God's wisdom your own, and then take confidence in that because your confidence then is in God and it's not in yourself. I think that's what this is hammering home. Trust God with your whole heart and do not be exalted by your own wisdom. Don't bring your stuff to the party. Use God's wisdom and use that to his glory, and then you can be confident. And then questions of pride and all the rest don't become ones of sin, because God's wisdom preclude that sort of thing, and you get your own understanding with full knowledge, because your understanding is God's,

1:12:33 it's not your own. It's a question of how much daylight is there between your wisdom and understanding and God's when it's the same thing that's when you've achieved what God is exhorting here. The next example is verses nine through ten. Honor the Lord with your wealth, and with the first fruits of all your produce, then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. And now from the Septuagint Honor the Lord from your righteous labours, and offer him of your fruits of righteousness, so that your storehouses may be filled in abundance with corn, and your wine vats may gush with wine. Now, again, this is one of those cases where you can look at the rabbinic text, and with a Christian lens, you can exegete

1:13:23 this and explain what it means to honor the Lord with your wealth. But that's not what it literally says, because it literally just says honor the Lord with your wealth. You have to take that as figurative with regard to all of the gifts that God has given you, including your attributes and your abilities and all of these things, and explain how it can mean what a Christian should take it to mean. As opposed to the Septuagint which just says, honor the Lord from your righteous labours. Well we understand what that means. It means all of your labors, all of your righteous labours, whatever they happen to be, whatever God has given you to do. It is not the same admonition in the Septuagint as what we

1:14:10 have in the Rabbinic text. Because the Septuagint is dealing with the fruits of righteousness, which you certainly should hear echoing in the New Testament, whereas we only have the first fruits of your produce here. That's a different thing. Perhaps that would call to mind the Old Testament sacrificial system in which you gave this certain portion to the Lord and you had different sacrifices you gave at different times for different things. That's not the same as saying the fruits of your righteousness. And you should perhaps be thinking then of the difference between what God says about desiring sacrifice versus what does God actually want? He wants your righteous works, He wants your good works that are

1:14:54 done in faith for your neighbor, that's what we have here in the Septuagint, we don't have that in the rabbinic text. And lest any of our listeners from Iowa get too excited, the word corn here just means the chief cereal crop of a given area, not necessarily actual corn. I think it's notable that if you take the earlier passage that's talking about falling in with robbers and covetous greed and unjust gain. If you don't take the Septuagint version of your righteous labors, it would be perfectly fine for you to honor the Lord with the wealth that you received from robbing your neighbor. The next example is VES eleven through twelve My son do not despise the Lord's discipline, or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord

1:15:43 reproves him whom he loves, as a father the Son in whom he delights. Now from the Septuagint, son, do not despise the discipline of the Lord, or grow weak when reproved by him, for the Lord reproves whomever he loves, and punishes any son he receives. This one is notable in large part because the Septuagint, for those who are particularly familiar with the book of Hebrews, you'll have noticed that's Hebrews twelve, five through six. Because the New Testament is using the Septuagint when it is quoting the Old Testament. So there's a great deal of similarity between these two. There are some differences, particularly in terms of nuance, but the truly salient part is that it is cited in the New Testament, because

1:16:36 Hebrews twelve five through six. My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. Well, that's just the same as the Septuagint rendering. And in fact, the Greek verb there for despise and regard lightly, there are some differences in translation choices between translations, but the Greek verb underlying those is the same. And in fact, the same is also true of what is rendered as punishes and chastises in the English. It is again the same underlying Greek verb. I think it's notable that you have four lines and in the rabbinic text only one of them involves discipline and you not growing weak

1:17:24 or weary. And yet when you look at the proper version that is quoted in Hebrews, punishment is recurring, it's kind of a couplet almost, and Hebrews twelve seven points out why. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? The entire point of this passage in Proverbs is about discipline, it's about punishment. It's about chastisement. We've said before if something bad happens to you, take it as chastisement. When I had a stroke I took it as chastisement. I was like, okay, well, what should I be doing better? It's a smack upside the head. Sometimes these things happen to you, whatever it is in your life.

1:18:09 If something bad happens, understand that God permitted it and that he cares and it is for a purpose. As we've explained before, that doesn't mean that God causes evil, but God uses it. God permits evil to occur in this fallen world. God permitted the fall. We don't understand why. But here we are in a fallen world where evil things happen, and we have a god who uses that evil to punish us for our benefit? It's not because he hates us, it's because he loves us. That's the entire point of Hebrews twelve hammerstone that would be lost if you're just looking at the Rabbinic text here. Still in chapter three, the next example is verses seventeen through eighteen. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

1:18:57 She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. Those who hold her fast are called blessed. And of course it's speaking of wisdom here, which is obvious if you read the context from the previous verses, then from the Septuagint. Her ways are good ways, and all her paths are in peace. She is a tree of life for all those who cleave to her, and for those who lean upon her as on the Lord. Now these are fairly similar. There are some differences in terms of nuance and diction and things like that. But perhaps the most salient difference here is that last line. In the rendering of the rabbinic text, those who hold her wisdom fast are called blessed In the Septuagint, and for those who lean upon her as on the Lord.

1:19:46 They've simply removed the reference to God from the rabbinic text. That is certainly an unjustifiable deletion, and that is something that, as well noted previously, simply runs through some of these corruptions and changes that the rabbis introduced. The next example is verse twenty-five. Do not be afraid of sudden terror, or of the ruin of the wicked when it comes, and then from the Septuagint, and you will not be frightened by intimidation when it comes, nor an assault of the ungodly when they come. There is similarity here, but it is again not identical, and they've also played a little bit of a game there with the ESV. Because the word there is actually storm, not ruin, the storm of the wicked.

1:20:38 So that actually does bring it perhaps a little more in line with the Septuagint, the assault of the ungodly. But this is one of those cases where not only do we see differences in how they've decided to interpret the underlying Hebrew for their rabbinic translation, but the rabbis have changed the nuance. They have changed what the verse is truly teaching. And this is one of the games they play all throughout the wisdom literature and elsewhere in the Old Testament. These changes are not simply something that is in one place or a small handful of places. This is a consistent thing that they did to the text before they passed it off to Christians. And so moving on to verse twenty seven. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when

1:21:29 it is in your power to do it. Septuagint, do not refrain from doing well to the needy when your hand can furnish aid. These are two different sayings. It is a fundamentally different thing from saying do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, versus do not refrain from doing good to the needy. In the rendering of the Septuagint, this is an admonition to Christian charity. Now, of course, as a Christian, again, this is one of those cases where if you take a Christian lens to the rabbinic text, you can justify the interpretation of Christian charity. Because you can say that there is good that is due to the poor because it is our duty to God to render these good render these good works to our neighbors who are in need.

1:22:19 And so of course as a Christian you can justify that. But it's not what the Rabbinic Text says. The Septuagint certainly does. The Septuagint again is that admonition to Christian charity, which is what we have here in this verse, it's what we should read in this verse. But the rabbinic text doesn't have that, and so you have to look at it also with the eyes of someone coming to it who does not have the Christian lens. Someone who simply reads that verse in the rabbinic text without a Christian lens is not going to come away from it thinking this is a verse about Christian charity. They're going to think this is a verse about paying your debts, which is a different saying. Verse 29 is one of the examples I mentioned earlier where there

1:23:03 is a change in term that we see in many places in the wisdom literature, this is one of those consistent changes they made. And so first from the ESV. Do not plan evil against your neighbor who dwells trustingly beside you. And then from the Septuagint, do not devise evil things against your friend, as he dwells alongside and trusts you. They simply change the word friend to neighbor, which is indeed a different saying, saying that you should treat your friends well is not the same as saying you should treat your neighbors well who may not be your friends. Now, should your neighbors be your friends? Yes, generally. Should you treat your neighbors well? Yes, of course. That isn't the point. The point is not whether or not the saying in the rabbinic

1:23:53 text is Christian, because of course you should not be planning evil against your neighbor. The question is whether or not it is the Word of God. And the Word of God says do not devise evil things against your friend. You can look at both of these and interpret both of them as being Christian, because of course they both are. You should treat your friends well, and not devise evil against them. You should treat your neighbors well, and not plan evil against them. But what God's Word says is friend. And that's what we should have in our Bibles This one's kind of a tough one because the this is the same verse that is used in love your neighbor as yourself. The notion of neighbor almost always in virtually every society has meant

1:24:43 I'm looking here, what Strong says about the underlying word. It describes it as a moun, a neighbor, a fellow, a man, countryman, Christian, or friend The notion of adjacency without any familiarity is bizarre, which to virtually any day except for our day where almost everyone is unknown to us. And that was one of the essential points in the story of the Good Samaritan, was that even in a case where someone who's totally unknown to you, who's not even from the same tribe, the same race, if he's in trouble and he's adjacent to you, he's nearby, he is your neighbor and you have a duty to him. But that was a New Testament example in the same vein as God talking about in the Beatitudes when he was speaking about adultery

1:25:32 and murder, saying you've heard it said you shall not commit adultery, I say don't lust. You've heard it said don't murder, I say don't hate. The admonition to draw the line at someone who's unknown to you, that's a random stranger, that you stumble across, is taking the furthest possible extremity of the notion of neighbor to show even in this case it is necessary. It's absolutely true. The question of how to translate neighbor versus friend versus you know countryman is one that in some ways comes down to the society that you live in in terms of what's going to make sense. So I think it's important to acknowledge that that whole lexical scope is present here. We're not trying to play games.

1:26:20 What you will find is that friend is typically used in the English translations, and it's a good one because the Christian notion of a neighbor is gonna be a friend. It's gonna be a countryman, it's gonna be a fellow everything, right down the list. He's gonna be from the same tribe, from the same nation, he's gonna be, you know, probably a third or fourth cousin. That's the normal neighbor in a normal society. The further away we get from that, the more things have gone wrong. And the only example ever in all of human history have been in towns of great commerce, usually poor cities. Jerusalem is one of the notable exceptions. If you have a really big city where lots of people are coming for trade and commerce, then you have neighbors that are gonna

1:27:04 be there may not fit any of those categories. Even that person who's a stranger in every other way, when he's adjacent to you, you can't still mistreat him. It's an essential Christian understanding because our natural impulse is say what he's not one of us, let's let's hurt him, let's pick on him, let's do something to him that we wouldn't do otherwise to one of our own. It's a wicked impulse, but it's one that's easy to well up from our sinful nature. But in a society where everything is working as it should, the neighbor in terms of adjacency is also going to be one of your cousins, in almost every case. He's certainly going to be from the same race as you. Because that's how it's always worked.

1:27:45 That's what a nation means. The next example is indeed the very next verse, verse 30. Do not contend with a man for no reason, when he has done you no harm. And then from the Septuagint, do not behave with enmity toward a person pointlessly, lest he perpetrate any evil against you. Again, these are two similar sayings, but it is not the same thing to say, do not contend with a man for no reason, because he has not done you any harm, versus do not behave toward a man with enmity, which is a different thing in terms of nuance from contending with a man. Behaving toward him with enmity is a stronger thing, lest he perpetrate any evil against you. Some of you may look at that and think that perhaps it

1:28:36 is a less Christian saying that you have here in the Septuagint. You may think that perhaps it is more Christian not to contend with a man, because he hasn't done you any harm, than to sort of take sort of the practical approach here. Perhaps even a cynical approach, do not behave with enmity lest he turn around and behave in the same way toward you. But again, as we've said in previous episodes, this is not a matter of picking and choosing what you happen to think sounds more Christian. Because has Wo said, he could write you a book that has a lot more Jesus in it than any of the Old Testament books if you just give him some time. That would not make it scripture. And in this case, what the word of the Lord says is

1:29:22 do not behave with enmity toward a person pointlessly, lest he perpetrate any evil against you. And so there are really two takeaways two key takeaways from this proverb is that you are in fact permitted to behave with enmity toward a person if it's not pointlessly. That is the necessary inverse of the first part of this verse. And the second, of course, is that part of the reason that you do not do that is because he will turn around and behave with enmity toward you. This is part of living in a society, this is part of living alongside neighbors and others. If you behave in a certain way toward them, you are very likely to receive that back. Society cannot function if men do not take that into account, and

1:30:10 control themselves accordingly. The next example is from Proverbs 4, this is verse 12. When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble. And then from the Septuagint, for if you walk, your steps will not be constricted, and if you run you will not grow weary. This is a change of nuance, the two sayings are indeed similar, but it is a different thing to be told you will not stumble versus you will not grow weary. It is in fact better not to grow weary. It is a sort of endurance about walking in the steps of righteousness and the right paths. Just because the change is one of nuance and not one of perhaps a substance or significance, does not mean that it is something

1:31:03 we can ignore, or it is something that is trivial in the full sense of that term. We should want, again, as we have said many times, the fullness of God's Word, not just whatever has been passed off to us by rabbis, with however they have decided to point it with vowels and then interpret it. As we said earlier, it's important to read all the context for these if you want to look at the examples, because what comes immediately prior is he was telling his son, for I teach you the ways of wisdom and I cause you to go in right paths. So when you're talking about walking and not growing weary or being distressed, which is how Brenton translates it, it's as Corey said it's with regard to walking wisely and justly.

1:31:52 The next example is a little longer, but still just three verses, although a little longer in the Septuagint. Proverbs four twenty five twenty seven Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left, turn your foot away from evil. And then from the Septuagint, let your eyes look straight, and your eyelids beckon regarding righteous matters, and Make straight paths for your feet, and make your ways straight. Do not turn away to the right or to the left, but turn back your foot from the way of evil. For God knows the ways from the right, but those from the left are diverted, and he will make your paths straight, and he

1:32:43 will lead your courses forward in peace. We simply don't have those last two verses in the rabbinic text. This is another case where the rabbi's decided to delete essentially the end of a chapter. They just chopped off a number of verses, and so we don't have for God knows the ways from the right, but those from the left are diverted, and he will make your paths straight, and he will lead your courses forward in peace. Other than that, these verses are largely the same twenty five through twenty seven until you get to A and B for twenty seven, very similar as between the rabbinic and the Septuagint. But we are missing part of the Word of God if we have only the Rabbinic text. We are missing two verses.

1:33:34 I think it's important whenever you're seeing these passages about paths being straight and things like that, which is much of the discussion of walking in God's wisdom. Keep in mind what Jesus said in Matthew seven. Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy, the leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard the leads to life, and those who find it are few. Now obviously Jesus is principally speaking of himself, but what is Proverbs, if not Jesus wisdom. God's wisdom, God's word is God. The manifest word walked among us, but it's not two different things. So I think it's important when you're reading especially through wisdom literature

1:34:23 that describes the perfect life to know that Jesus led the perfect life because each of us fails. We are intrinsically going to fail, and no matter how hard we try, we're still going to fail by degrees. But that is nevertheless not an excuse not to try. We are called, every Christian is called to walk in wisdom, to walk in the narrow ways of righteousness. So anytime you see this path in discussion, keep that in mind. Jesus talks about it too. He's pointing back to this when he tells you about the narrow gate. The path that leads to destruction is wide. Yeah, it's easy. It's easy to do the wrong things. You'll be rewarded for it. We all know this, we see it, we observe it, we see that it, or we fall aside and try to take advantage of

1:35:10 it. That is part of the challenge of living in a fallen world. As Christians, we know better and we must do better. These proverbs tell us how the next verse is one of those ones that some of the particularly male listeners perhaps enjoy and unfortunately as it were it is a very different verse in the Septuagint. You are going to lose a verse that lose, as it were, you're not really losing anything, but lose a verse that you may have memorized and like and so Proverbs five nineteen A lovely dear, a graceful doe, speaking of one's wife, let her breast fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated always in her love. Then from the Septuagint, may the dear of affection and full of your favours converse with you, and let her be considered your own,

1:36:00 and be with you at every time, for you will be great while you live life in this love These are not the same saying. They are similar, of course, because they are advancing the same general sentiment, which is to love your own wife, spend time with her and spend your life with her. Clearer in the Septuagint wording, perhaps more explicit as it were in the wording of the rabbinic text, and then related to that, of course, is verse 20, which has a key difference here. This is another one of those examples I mentioned earlier that plays on a theme the rabbis seem to enjoy. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman, and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? And then from the Septuagint, do not be with a strange woman

1:36:53 for long, or come together in the embraces of a woman who is not your own Now, of course, the second half of that verse is essentially the same sense as between the two. It is more literal, more blunt in the rabbinic text, perhaps, but come together in the embraces of a woman who is not your own is fairly straightforward for any man reading that. But that first part of the verse, in the Septuagint is a different prohibition from what you have in the Rabbinic text. Because the Rabbinic text says, Why should you be intoxicated my son with a forbidden woman? But the Septuagint says, Do not be with a strange woman for long. That is a broader prohibition, that is a prohibition on putting yourself in a position that may lead you to sin.

1:37:45 And so do not be with a woman who is your own for a long period of time. You may think of some rules that certain men have advanced to keep themselves from falling into certain sins or certain appearances of impropriety. That's what is at play here in the Septuagint. It is a broader prohibition. It is admonishing you to keep yourself from a position, from a place, from a set of circumstances that could lead you to this particular kind of sin. Whereas the rabbinic text is just saying don't spend time with an adulteress, which is fairly straightforward and good advice, certainly, but it is a different sort of prohibition, a different admonition from what we have in the Septuagint. The next example is from Proverbs 6, and this is one of

1:38:36 those examples again, dealing with wives and praising the good wife and the things that she does. I would read first from the rabbinic text, but these verses just simply do not appear in the Rabbinic text, and so I will read only from the Septuagint Proverbs six verses eight A through C or go to the B and learn what a worker she is, and how solemn she makes her work, whose toil kings and commoners consume for health, and it is desirable to all and glorious, although she has feeble bodily strength, because she honors wisdom, she is promoted. So again, this is something that we simply do not have in the Rabbinic text. This of course speaking of being dutiful in your work and pursuing your daily tasks and things like that, which is a frequent theme

1:39:27 of course in the book of Proverbs, but we have an expansion of this, not even really an expansion, because it's just what God intended to be there, but as an expansion in terms of an additional commentary on things that we do not have in the rabbinic text because the rabbis did not preserve it or intentionally deleted it as the case may be. And then playing on the same sort of theme of being assiduous in your work, of being dutiful, Proverbs 6, 10 through 11, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. And then from the Septuagint, a little sleeping and you slumber a little, and you doze briefly, and you might briefly fold your hands

1:40:15 across your chest. Then poverty comes in upon you like an evil wayfarer, and need like a good runner. But if you would be resolute, your heart will come like a spring, while lack will desert you like an evil runner. You not only have the negative admonition, as it were, the admonition not to be a slothful man, not to be lack in your duties and in your tasks, but you also have the praise of being dutiful, you also have the inverse as it were, the proverb telling you what will come if you are a dutiful man, if you pursue your work as you should, but if you would be resolute, your harvest will come like a spring, while lack will desert you like an evil runner. It's not there in the Rabbinic text this is another example of

1:41:03 where they have simply removed a verse. As I mentioned earlier, there are going to be numerous examples that you will find as well where passages just vanish or in other cases get a lot longer. It's frequently the case that just from looking at the English of these two passages in Proverbs 6, 10, 11, you can tell just by looking at them side by side, there's no possible way that the underlying Greek and the Hebrew could be the same. You got twice as many words on the screen at once or on the page. That's just a different thing, as Corey said earlier. That's a really good opportunity to make sure you're paying attention with fresh eyes. It's honestly a tremendous blessing to be seeing things anew when you

1:41:51 understand that this is the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles in the early church This is not new in the sense of Book of Mormon new. This is new in the sense that it's ancient and we lost it in the rubble. The next example is Proverbs six, twenty four through twenty five. To preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress, do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes Then from the Septuagint, to preserve you from a married woman, and from the slander of a strange tongue. Do not let desire of beauty overcome you, or be hunted by your eyes, or be captivated by her eyelashes. There is a great deal of similarity here, but you will notice

1:42:39 this is again one of those cases where you have the smooth tongue of the adulteress and the adulteress simply disappears in the Septuagint, because it is the slander of a strange tongue. Now of course you could try to draw out some similarity between those two, but you would have to torture the text in order to do it. And you also have the very distinct difference of the rabbinic text saying, the evil woman, and the Septuagint saying, Do not commit adultery, because it says preserve you from a married woman. This is not the same saying in these two because preserving you from the evil okay, why is she evil? What does it mean? What is it saying about this woman? Sure, we want to avoid evil men and evil women, certainly, that

1:43:32 is good advice. But it's not the same thing as saying avoid married women, don't commit adultery. Now, of course, it goes on in the second verse there, the second half of the first verse there in the rabbinic text say from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. But that is to some degree a separate thought, and it also loses what we have in the Septuagint from the slander of a strange tongue. These are related thoughts, but distinct. Whereas you have sort of a collapsing of them and you lose And you lose the sense in the rabbinic text. You lose what God is actually telling us here in the Septuagint. I think it's particularly notable that the one additional line that's added is right after this.

1:44:18 Do not let desire for beauty overcome you, or be haunted by your eyes. This is basically what Jesus warned when he was talking about adultery. He says, forget committing adultery, don't lust. And this is telling you how not to lust. Don't look. Don't be hunted by your own eyes for the beauty that you naturally desire. Of course you're gonna desire a beautiful woman, so don't look. I mean this is wisdom that we've shared before and uh you don't need to hear from us. Everyone knows. If you see something that's desirable that's going to make you think things you shouldn't think, don't look. Literally don't physically look. You additionally try to put it out of your mind, but that is the necessary step that comes before avoiding the downstream sins that

1:45:05 compound the first sin. So having omitted or be haunted by your own eyes, in a way this is just kind of gutted of the one step that's actually gonna matter. It takes it away from being a general admonition to here's a specific concrete thing you can do. The next example is another one of those examples that simply does not appear in the rabbinic text, and it is a very useful verse. Not saying that there are any useless verses of scripture, of course, but this is one that we should perhaps be memorizing. Proverbs seven one A. Son honor the Lord, and you will be strong, and do not fear any other than him. This is, of course, a sentiment that is echoed in many places in Scripture, but we have it here in a verse in the

1:45:52 Septuagint that is simply not present in the rabbinic text. Then moving from there to verse ten, And behold the woman meets him, dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart. And then from the Septuagint, the woman meets him, having a prostitute's appearance, which causes the heart, the young to flutter. These of course are very similar sayings, but we have this sort of additional layer, additional level of admonishment for young men. Which makes perfect sense. We all understand that, particularly the men in the audience understand that. There are going to be sins to which young men are more inclined than older men. Older men are going to have greater self control in certain areas. And so And so this additional level of admonishment, which causes the

1:46:44 heart of the young to flutter, is vitally important. It's something that we have here in the Septuagint that is simply not there in the rabbinic text. And in fact, it is a fundamentally different saying, because it's saying that this prostitute, this woman, is wily of heart. Sure, perhaps that's true of the prostitute, but that's not what we have in the Septuagint. It is which causes the heart of the young to flutter. It is a warning for men who would have any sort of dealings with this sort of woman. It is warning them to stay away from her because she will lead him astray. So largely in the interests of time, we are not going to go through all of the potential examples. We were never intending to go through all of them, certainly, but

1:47:32 we are not going to go through even all of the ones for which we have notes for this episode. So jumping to chapter thirteen before we move on to Ecclesiastes or rather jumping to Proverbs twenty nine verse thirteen before we move on to Ecclesiastes The poor man and the oppressor meet together, the Lord gives light to the eyes of both. And then from the Septuagint, when money lender and debtor gather together, the Lord makes examination of them both. Just seems somewhat interesting to me that the rabbis would want to remove the word money lender from their version of what they would like to call scripture I think it's also notable that it includes a warning that the Lord will make an examination of them both, meaning that both the debtor

1:48:23 and the creditor may have sinned. So moving then to the book of Ecclesiastes, and we will again start with the first chapter, verses seventeen through eighteen. And I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly, I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind, for in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. And then from the Septuagint. And my heart saw many things, wisdom and knowledge, and I set my heart to know wisdom and knowledge, I knew parables and understanding, For even this too is the preference of the wind. For an abundance of wisdom there is an abundance of knowledge, and the one who increases knowledge will increase pain.

1:49:11 Fairly significant difference in diction, and of course the Septuagint is also longer, there are parts that have been removed again. You may have noticed a theme here. But you see a different sort of nuance in terms of the understanding of this relationship of wisdom and knowledge as you're moving into the book of Ecclesiastes, which is indeed about wisdom, it is treated differently in the Septuagint versus how it is treated by the rabbis in their text. I think regardless of the underlying textual source, it's important for th especially many of the type of men who would be listening to Stone Choir to bearley's words in mind. The more you learn, the more pain you're gonna have. This is something that people figure out naturally without scripture.

1:50:06 But don't think it's not true even when you're learning about these things. Even if all you ever do is study everything that God has said and God wants us to hear, that's going to increase your pain. The more you know about what God says and what God wants, the more you realize how much of a sinner you are. And that's why the gospel is there. Because without Jesus as the answer to the question of how do I get out of this hole, there's nothing I can possibly do to save myself. The more you learn, the more it hurts. Even the better you act, yeah, the more you learn, the greater you increase in the faith. You will sin less, and yet you will still sin, and you will find more ways that you were sinning that you didn't even

1:50:49 know before. So there's no end to the suffering and the sorrow that come from knowing even God's wisdom and his love. And that's something to rejoice in. Because why do we need God? Why do we need God's love if there's not some downside looming without it? The notion today that we have of this buddy Christ that has no teeth, has nothing but friendly soft voices and gentle words, and no destruction and no anger and no wrath. That's not God. That's that old Testament thing. That's a demiurge. Our God is loving, He's kind. He never breaks anything, he doesn't flip tables, he doesn't raise his voice, he doesn't kill everybody. Well, the thing that you need to understand is that our God does all of those things.

1:51:37 He is all of those things. And when he acts in such ways, he is always just. Unlike us. We can never perfectly do anything. We can never perfectly love, we can never perfectly hate. We can never perfectly donate. We can't do perfection, and yet we're supposed to try. And the more we learn of God's wisdom and his knowledge, the more it hurts to realize how far we fall short. And nevertheless, it's still beneficial for us to do it. But don't do it and think it's just gonna be honky dory that you sort of just wander in not knowing what's gonna happen and you come out hours later after the movie's over. You're gonna be a bit dazed. You're gonna be improved in many ways, but you are going to have new burdens that you didn't have when you went in.

1:52:23 Because learning about what God says and who he is and what he desires is not a bed of roses. And that's a good thing. Part of the wisdom literature is the saying, look, this is what manhood looks like. You set aside childish things and childish learning, and you replace it with godly wisdom, and you're going to increase your burdens and you're going to increase your sorrow. You're going to increase the amount of work that you have to do. And in the end you will faithfully run the race, and you'll be united with God in eternity. This next example I'm going to read, but not really comment on it. And the reason I want to read it is because there's an interesting note here. The rabbinic text and the translations following it Do not treat this

1:53:10 as poetry. But the Greek does. The Septuagint treats this as poetry, and so reading from Ecclesiastes two, verses two through three. I said of laughter, it is mad, and of pleasure, what use is it? I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine, my heart still guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. And then from the Septuagint, to laughter I said madness, and to merriment, why do you do this? And I surveyed whether my heart would draw my flesh as wine, and my heart guided me in wisdom, and to seize upon merriment, until I should see what the good thing does for the sons

1:53:58 of humans, that they would do under the sun, in the number of their days of life. The only note I'll add there is that this is one of the places where Cory's quoting the Lexum where it translate man as humans, which I find detestable. The use of humans is virtually never appropriate, but what do you gonna do? As we've said many times, the reason we're not solidly exclusively endorsing any of the existing translations is none of them are fit. They're good enough for now to help us understand, but we need a new translation, particularly one unencumbered by copyright. The underlying Greek word there is anthropos, which would traditionally be translated into English as mankind, so in this context anyway.

1:54:47 But yes, the the Lexim does tend to translate that one as humans. The next example is verse 8, same chapter, and I really want this one for just one word here because there's an interesting note that you will see in the footnotes of your own Bible, perhaps. I also gathered for myself silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. And then from the Septuagint, again this is treated as poetry in the Septuagint not in the Rabbinic. I also gathered for myself silver and gold too, and the abundance of kings and of territories. I made for myself male and female singers, the delights of the sons of humans, male and female cupbearers.

1:55:34 And so you'll see that that modifier is moved there, but one of the things that's interesting is that if you look at the notes in your translation, the word that is translated concubines, it says the meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain. We don't even know what this Hebrew word is. The translations have just decided to translate it, in this case the ESV, as concubines. And And it says the concubines are the delight of the sons of man, whereas in the Septuagint it is saying male and female singers are part of the delights of the sons of mankind, and then male and female cupbearers is the word translated there that the analogous word is translated as concubines, but again the Hebrew is uncertain

1:56:22 one of those instances. Interestingly, the King James Bible says for that as musical instruments and that of all sorts. It's like as as we said, one of the common complaints that we have in contrast to the Greek is how often we find nonsense. I don't mean that disparagingly against the word of God. I mean we look as course it we literally don't understand what it means. That's a problem. That's not a good thing for Christianity, where we're told that not one iota will be lost, and yet we have words and phrases that are incomprehensible. That should concern us a little bit more than it does And when we've had this decoder ring sitting here for two thousand years in the Septuagint, and everyone just after Latin just sort of forgot

1:57:10 it was there in the West. And in the East, they had the Greek and they just forgot how to read altogether. The next example is verse 16, and this is one of those cases where it's a fundamentally different set of sayings, although they sound very similar, because the same words are used, but not in the same sense. For of the wise as of the foolish there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten, how the wise dies just like the fool. And then the Septuagint for there is no memory of the wise among the foolish for eternity as already the days are coming, everything is forgotten, and how shall the wise die among the fools? This is a different saying, as I said before reading it, because

1:58:02 it is saying there's no memory of the wise among the foolish, whereas the rabbinic renders it, as there's no enduring remembrance of the wise or of the foolish, and then it also laments at the end of this section in the Septuagint, how shall the wise die among the fools? Whereas the rest of the rabbinic simply reiterates what it already said, how the wise dies just like the fool, the same fate comes to both. Now, of course, it's not wrong to say the same fate comes to both the wise man and the fool, for of course it does. We all die. But that's not what's being said in this section. It is a different thing. It is lamenting the fate of the wise, because even those who seek after wisdom and gain these things that do have value because

1:58:49 of course we are again reading wisdom literature in this episode. These books of scripture are wisdom literature, they are meant to make you wise. There is profit in learning these things. But the wise still dies, just like the fool. The difference of course being the fool does not understand that fact. This is going back to there being pain and suffering in learning and understanding some of these things. And so the next example is from Ecclesiastes three, and this is perhaps one of the more egregious examples in the wisdom literature of an alteration made by the rabbis. And so I will read first from the ESV, this is verse sixteen. Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness

1:59:38 even there was wickedness. And so then from the Septuagint, and still I saw the place of judgment under the sun. There was the wicked, and the place of righteousness, there was the pious Pious. This almost goes without saying that these are not the same saying. It is not the same thing to say that there is basically just wickedness everywhere. Which is what the rabbis are saying, it's what the rabbinic text is saying, and discerning between the wicked and the pious, the righteous and the unrighteous, with regard to the place of judgment, which is what we have in the Septuagint. And there's a great deal of irony here, in that it is speaking of wickedness, and what the rabbis have done is indeed wicked

2:00:26 in this case. And so the last example that we will be pulling in here from Ecclesiastes, in the interest of not having this episode run overly long, is Ecclesiastes 9:2, first from the ESV. It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices, and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. And then from the Septuagint. There is one fate for the righteous and the ungodly, for the good and for the evil, and for the pure and for the impure, and for the one who sacrifices and for the one who does not sacrifice, as is the good person, so is the sinner,

2:01:18 as is the one who swears, so is the one who is afraid of the oath. This is worth noting because on the one hand the rabbis decided to drop and the evil from their version, and yet on the other hand, the ESV and other modern translations decided to take that from the Septuagint and stick it back in. It's yet another one of those instances where they recognize that the Septuagint is in fact the Word of God, it is the text upon which we should be relying. They use it to correct an issue with the Hebrew, with the Rabbinic text, and then simply do not follow through the logic of what they've done. That is quite frankly a worse position to be in than simply using the Hebrew. Because when you recognize the existence of the actual Old Testament, of

2:02:16 the Septuagint, of the Greek, of the Word that God preserved for us, and you use it to correct problems in what you've been using and pretending is the Old Testament, and don't simply adopt the actual Old Testament, that is a worse position. Because it is of course a worse sin to engage in something knowingly or negligently, however it happens to be in this case than in complete and utter ignorance. The knowing sin is worse than the unknowing sin, because of course not all sins are equal, you can see the literal words of Christ for that in the New Testament. M I think that as Christian readers, one of our greatest desires at this point really needs to be that we must simply set aside the rabbinic text and focus on whatever is present in the Septuagint.

2:03:10 Some of these changes are small, some of them are great. Rather than worrying about what has changed, our goal in this overarching series is to get to the point as a church that we will stop worrying about the changes and simply start worrying about what is there. Because great or small, as you parse these differences, it needs to be for the conclusion that there's enough here to realize that this is not simply a different translation. This is in many ways a different book entirely. And the Christian response, once we make the case in our closing arguments from the New Testament is okay, I want the Septuagint and I'm done with the other stuff. As I said at the beginning, the perpetual aggravating impulse to continually

2:03:56 go back to what the rabbis said and try to keep arguing with them forever is literally the satanic trap that was laid thousands of years ago. Satan laid the trap knowing that there would be guys who just love to argue and argue and argue. In fact that appears several times in scripture. It's one of the types of men among us. Some of the men who are listening right now, you're really good at arguing, you like nothing more than doing it. It's your happy place. The hard part for you is going to be telling yourself the wise thing, the Christian thing, is to be done arguing. I'm finished looking what the rabbis wanted us to believe, and I'm going to look at the scripture that God gave us. That is what I'm going to believe.

2:04:39 And then all this analysis gets a whole lot simpler. Then it's simply how do we exegete the Greek scripture? One language, translating into one language, very simple, single voice, single God, single result. For us to get from here to there is going to involve a period of transition, a period of pain and aggravation and confusion. But part of the reason for laying this stuff out is there shouldn't really be all that much of any of that. It should be easy for us to realize, okay, a mess was made, what's next? We should have the repentant heart of King Josiah to say, Lord have mercy, what do I have to do? And start cleaning up the mess, and repent of everything that we got wrong and fix everything that we can.

2:05:29 When we have nothing left but Greek, we will be there.