In October of 2013, I took on a new reading challenge. I decided to read the entirety of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible which was made in Ptolemaic Egypt. I finished the project a few days ahead of International Septuagint Day (February 8).

For those unfamiliar with it, the Septuagint is a very important version of the Bible. Although originally produced for the Greek-speaking Jewish community in Egypt, the Septuagint was the Old Testament used by the first Christians, who quoted it in the New Testament. Most readers don’t bother to look at the Old Testament quoted in the New, but anyone using a King James Bible or almost any of the popular Protestant translations who does bother to cross reference the Old Testament passage quoted, may notice that the Old Testament original isn’t the same as the New Testament quotation. The reason for this is that first St. Jerome, and then Martin Luther and the other major Protestant leaders, preferred the Hebrew Masoretic Text (which represents the Jewish tradition c. 500 AD at the earliest) to the Septuagint (which is a reflection of the Jewish tradition c. 200 BC). Jerome’s assumption when he compiled the Vulgate Latin Bible that the West would use for the next 1600 years was that if he couldn’t find the Hebrew original for a particular book in the Old Testament, or if that book was different than in the Septuagint, then the Septuagint was obviously wrong. Modern scholarship has shown that it was Jerome who was wrong. Fragments of various Biblical books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in the Twentieth Century have proven that the variations found in the Septuagint existed and formed an alternate reading of many of the books of the Hebrew Bible. In many cases, the variations are slight, but others are substantial.

In any event, Jerome’s Vulgate, which disfavored the Septuagint, served in turn as the basis for all Protestant Bibles. Aside from creating some terrible translation errors – Jerome notably misread the Hebrew word for “shining” as a similar word meaning “horned”, thus creating an entire genre of horned Moses statues in the Middle Ages – the Vulgate created the translational disconnect between the Old and New Testaments. Luther went a step farther and decided that any book that did not exist in Hebrew should be moved to the back and labeled “Apocrypha”, the first step to forgetting about them. Certainly, Luther had his own confessional reasons for doing this. For example, the Second Book of Maccabees talks about the effectiveness of prayers for the dead, and Luther was attacking indulgences premised on providing spiritual aid for dead souls in Purgatory. Sadly, the subsequent discovery at Qumran of Hebrew originals for many of the “apocryphal” books hasn’t seemed to have any effect on their exclusion from the canon in Protestant circles.

It should be noted that unlike the Latin West, the Orthodox East never abandoned the Septuagint. All translations of the Bible into the various languages of the churches of the Orthodox Communion are based on the Septuagint. Also, unlike in the West where Latin was the only permitted liturgical language, the East always translated the Bible into the vernacular of the worshippers. And, unlike in the West, the Bible wasn’t chopped up with some books swept under the rug by being relegated to an appendix.

I decided that it was worthwhile to read the entire Septuagint, and so I did. It was an amazing experience because, aside from reacquainting me with some of the more obscure books and passages of the Bible, each book had its own style of Greek since no one person translated the whole. The tone shifted from the extreme conservatism of the Hebraisms in the Pentateuch, generally characterized by verb-noun repetition in the manner of “he dreamed a dream” or “he cried out a cry”, to the tediously ornate and originally Greek book of 3 Maccabees. I eagerly read the elegant and beautiful poetry of the Song of Songs and noted that the translator of Ecclesiastes put the Greek preposition for “with” (συν) into the text in many places where the original Hebrew used the direct object-marking particle את.

I was amazed at the sophisticated yet entirely readable philosophy at the beginning of 4 Maccabees, and generally enjoyed many of the other stories of books derogatively labeled as “apocrypha” in the West. Because of its inclusion in the Slavonic Bible, I even read the text known in the Vulgate as IV Ezrae, which modern scholars call 4 Ezra – 6 Ezra, but I had to read that book in Latin in my copy of the Vulgate because the Greek original of the text was lost. I even read the Book of Odes, which is not properly part of the Old Testament but nevertheless found its way into the Old Testament right after the Psalms (which book included the 151st Psalm, of course).

More than anything, I was struck by the way that the Greek Old Testament is in harmony with the terms that would later be used by Christians. It is no surprise that the Jewish community stopped reading the Septuagint in the first centuries of the Christian era. Because the same language and terminology is used, and because in many passages it actually sounds as though a Christian was writing the text, a translation of the Hebrew canon into Greek that was entirely serviceable one hundred years before was made suddenly unacceptable for the Jewish community. In particular, one cannot read deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah chapters 40-55) without feeling that there is an incredibly strong prophecy in favor of Christianity in the Old Testament. Ironically, Jerome attacked the Septuagint because it was not faithful to the Hebrew canonical versions of the various books of the Old Testament, yet the Hebrew canonical versions had likely been chosen because they resembled the Septuagint versions less, and were less likely to be used as polemical ammunition against Jews by Christians.

It is also undisputed that the pronunciation of names is clearly more authentic in the Septuagint than in the Masoretic text, since the vowel notations were not added until some 800 years after the Septuagint at the earliest. Thus, in the Book of Esther her kinsman’s name is Mardochaios, a name that is not acceptable from a conservative Jewish perspective because it is based on the name of the Babylonian deity Marduk, but which makes much more sense than an artificially constructed “Mordechai”. Moses’ sister is Mariam, a name that appears again prominently in the New Testament and lends credence to the name’s likely Egyptian origin – mari (m.) or mariah (f.) meaning “beloved”. Not only that, but in the Book of Judges Samson is seduced by Dalida, not Delilah (according to one of the two versions of Judges in the Septuagint tradition – that book, like Daniel, is presented in two separate versions that have significant differences between them).

The variance among the translations is also evident in the way that the Greek word πανουργος retains its original, negative sense of “someone who is willing to do anything” in the Book of Ecclesiastes, but is used in a later, alternate sense of “smart” and with positive connotations in Proverbs, Job and other books of the wisdom literature tradition. One other point that was frustrating me was that I noticed everywhere the god Baal was mentioned, it had the feminine article, thus ἡ Βααλ. I finally was able to clarify the reasoning behind this practice – the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible by Brill Publishing (the famous DDD) stated that the feminine article noted that the word was to be read aloud not as “Baal” (which would be unacceptable in a Hebrew temple) but ἡ αισχυνη (“the disgrace”).

I also found the order of books useful. The confident optimism of Proverbs (which are reputed to be instructions by David to Solomon) is followed by the world-weary pessimism of Ecclesiastes (supposedly by Solomon, refuting some of the points in Proverbs), which is then followed by Job, which restores the notion of righteousness by adding the idea that we cannot understand the fulness of God's plan.

Although I am attempting to review the Septuagint in particular, rather than the Old Testament generally, I do have to say a few words about the impression that I got from reading the entirety of the Old Testament in a short period of time. The overwhelming notion of righteousness was helping the poor and vulnerable, and when the authors of the Old Testament books talk about wicked people they are usually those who oppress the vulnerable and defenseless and deny help that they could readily give to those in need. There was very little said about sexual morality, and when something was said the most common topics were avoiding whoring and adultery. Aside from the two short passages in Leviticus commanding death for homosexuality the only other mention of homosexuality that I found was in the story of David and Jonathan. King Saul openly accused Jonathan of an improper relationship with David, and Saul’s daughter “despised” David because she saw him dancing and singing at a Temple ceremony, which seems to imply that he was acting in a feminine manner. There are other passages that leave strong doubts about the nature of their relationship, and interestingly enough, other than Saul and his daughter, no one really seems to care if they were more than just friends.

Another point that seemed very clear was that there was no notion of legalistic Judaism at that time. People celebrated the three big holidays of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, and the one day of Yom Kippur, and other than that would take a goat or a sheep up to a temple and sacrifice it when they thought they did something wrong. Rosh Hashanah was obviously not the first day of the year, since everywhere its month is referred to as the “seventh month”, and although there are three full books describing the Maccabees (1, 2 and 4 Maccabees – 3 Maccabees is actually about supposedly oppression of Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy Philopator), including an extended passage on the rededication of the Temple and how it should be celebrated for 8 days in the fashion of Sukkot, the “Hanukkah miracle” of one day’s supply of oil lasting for eight days magically appears only about 800 years after the event. In short, it was a far simpler, relaxed religion in many ways, lacking the millions of formalistic details that were later added in the mishna and the Talmud, and after that by countless rabbis with busy pens.

It should be noted that the Septuagint is not substantially different from the Masoretic Text in most places (I have heard that there are roughly 500 differences in total). A few books are slightly different; Job, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are all slightly shorter in the Septuagint, but Daniel has all of the additions that Protestants took out (Susanna, the Song of the Three Young Men and Bel and the Dragon), Esther has all its additions and all of the books that were translated back in the second century BC are left in, whether or not they are considered canon today. For completeness’ sake, the list of books in the Septuagint is as follows: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1-4 Kingdoms (called 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings in Western Bibles), 1-2 Paralipomenon (1-2 Chronicles in the West), 1 Esdras (called 3 Ezrae in the Vulgate), 2 Esdras (called Ezra-Nehemiah in the West and 1-2 Ezrae in the Vulgate), 3 Esdras (Greek original lost – read in Vulgate), Esther, Judith, Tobit, 1-4 Maccabees, Psalms, Odes, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Psalms of Solomon, Osee, Amos, Michaias, Joel, Abdias, Ionas, Naum, Ambakum, Sophonias, Aggaios, Zacharias, Malachias, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Letter of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. I left the minor prophets as listed in the Septuagint but changed the major prophets to their English-recognized forms.

It was well worth the read.