In | The Septuagint: A Predecessor of the New Testament

Did you know that the most circulated form of the Old Testament in Jesus time was most likely a Greek translation, rather than the language in which most people believed it was originally written, Hebrew?

It’s impossible to know for sure. What we do know is that a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (what we now call the Old Testament) was widely circulated in the time of Jesus. It’s called the Septuagint.

Before the New Testament books were written and distributed, the Septuagint was “The Bible” for the predominantly Greek-speaking Christians throughout the Roman world. But where did this Greek Old Testament come from?

The origins of the Septuagint are shrouded in mystery and legend. As the legend goes, the ruler of Egypt commissioned a Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures in the 3^rd century bc for the great library of Alexandria. Egypt was then largely influenced by Greek language and ideas in the wake of Alexander the Great’s conquests of the region. 

The ruler of Egypt arranged for 72 translators, 6 elders from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, to do their work in isolation from each other. In the end, the translation of each was exactly the same—without a single variant. (This legend is first described in the “Letter of Aristeas.”)

This is how the Greek translation of the Old Testament got its name. Septuaginta means seventy in Latin. That explains why the Septuagint is also known simply as LXX, the Roman numerals for “seventy.”

Several prominent Jewish authors in the 1^st century ad mention the Septuagint, including Philo and Josephus. This translation was also found among the scrolls and fragments as part of the Dead Sea Scroll findings at Qumran.

It is likely that the Septuagint was widely circulated through the network of synagogues around the Mediterranean region, given the extent that Old Testament passages are cited by New Testament authors writing to Greek-speaking recipients. The Septuagint, therefore, was a predecessor of the Greek New Testament books that would be copied and distributed throughout the Roman Empire and beyond.

What happened to the Septuagint?

The Septuagint fell out of use by Jews, likely because of its popularity among Christians. It continued to be used extensively by Greek-speaking residents of the Eastern Roman Empire (or the Byzantine Empire), but the increasingly Latin-speaking West adopted Jerome’s Latin translation, The Vulgate, as their primary Old Testament text (as well as New Testament) for approximately 1,000 years.