The Three Old Testaments

Whenever the New Testament quotes the Old, I want to go back and read the original passage in its context. Sometimes you can really learn a lot about the NT passage that way. And sometimes you're confused because the OT passage doesn't say what the NT says it says. What's going on?

OK, when the Old Testament passage doesn't quite agree with the New Testament quote, there are a couple of other options. As I've pointed out, there are no quotation marks in the original texts. It's entirely possible the apostle is paraphrasing, just as we do at times when we quote a passage but don't need it to be word for word. It's also possible it's a composite quote — more than one passage merged together with only one author getting cited.

But sometimes it's because there's more than one Old Testament.

Here's an example. Hebrews 1 presents several OT quotes contrasting the Son with angels:

“In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands." (1:10)

There he's citing Psalm 102. In the OT, there are Lords and LORDS. Who is this speaking to? So we turn to Psalm 102 and ... it's not there at all:

In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands. (Psalm 102:25)

Puzzling. But Hebrews tends to quote the Septuagint. So I reach for a copy of that, and lo and behold

In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands. (Psalm 101:26, because LXX numbering is different)

And the whole Psalm is a prayer to God. Hebrews, then, is clearly equating the Son with the God who created heaven and earth.

But why the gymnastics? And what is the Septuagint?

Babylon conquered Judah. Persia conquered Babylon. Greece conquered Persia. And taught everyone Greek. After Alexander died, his kingdom was divided among his four main generals; Judah was ruled by Greek Egypt, and many Jews lived there. They translated their scriptures into Greek 200 years before Christ. It's called the Septuagint and abbreviated LXX because of the legend that it was created by 70 (well, 72) scholars.

This version of the Hebrew scriptures was used by Greek-speaking Jews and Christians. The New Testament authors often quote it. And for a variety of reasons, it doesn't always match our Hebrew Old Testament.

It's the LXX that gives us "the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel" (Isa 7:14). The Hebrew uses a much less specific term, alma, which can mean simply "young woman." Matthew was reading the Septuagint.

Our Old Testaments today are mostly based on the Masoretic Text, the traditional Jewish version of the Hebrew Bible. This is the one Jewish scribes passed down, copying it by hand generation after generation. It is used today as the basis for the Biblia Hebraica, which is the critical edition of the Masoretic Text, taking into account other manuscripts that have been found.

But many Christians today still use the Septuagint as their Old Testament. If you want one, you can get a copy of the Lexham English Septuagint. Or you could just get the Orthodox Study Bible, because that's what the Orthodox use.

The third version of the Old Testament is the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are a lot of myths floating about regarding the DSS. They are not all virtually identical to the Masoretic Text. The Great Scroll of Isaiah is very, very similar, but other scrolls show much more variation. And the DSS scrolls included the entire Qumran library, not just the Bible, so there were a lot of texts like commentaries or spiritual writings that are interesting but are not "supposed to be in the Bible".

They are a thousand years older than our earliest copy of the Masoretic Text, so they give us a view of what was certainly at least one text type available during the time of Jesus. If you're curious, you can buy this on Amazon, too.

OK, the truth is, there are more than three. I'm not going to go into detail about the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Aramaic Targums, or any of the others. My goal is to make you aware that there are other text types so you'll understand what's going on when you see in the footnotes of your Bible like

b. Hebrew; Septuagint and Vulgate do not have the Name.

The translators are telling you they made a decision to follow one text over others. Different translators will take different stances. Sometimes they'll follow the Septuagint over the Hebrew. Occasionally they'll follow the Dead Sea Scrolls instead of the Masoretic Text:

d. See Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint and 1 Chronicles 13:8; Masoretic Text celebrating before the Lord with all kinds of instruments made of pine.

And, of course, I want you to know why sometimes the OT quotations in the NT don't match.

The Bible is the word of God, but he chose to give it to us through very human hands. We should be aware of what that means. We should also know that we can trust it. God has given the church scholars who wrestle together with these issues to get us the best translations of his word so we can know and follow him.


Part of Bible 101

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