First, I must apologize
for my absence. My family and I have since moved into a new apartment, I have
started a new job that the Lord in his Mercy and Grace granted to me, and the
time is near for the unborn Caleb, our first child, to enter the world. Thank
you for your understanding and prayers.
We have been discussing the state of
the early church and the extra-biblical writings she had produced; more
importantly, we have been discussing why it is even necessary for the modern
Christian to know about these writings and what – if any – impact these
writings should have on the everyday Christian. Should they impact our
Theology? Our belief in what the early church said and did as a community? Should
it impact our orthopraxy (correct or right practice)? I believe, along with
many Christians from all three major traditions, that they should effect all
the above. They should not, however, be considered as Holy Scripture the way
the New Testament books are held to be – as discussed in our prior blogs. There
are particular guidelines the early church Fathers laid out for us to know
which writings we could trust to be Holy Scripture (the word of God), which writings
to hold as valuable for the Christian effort, and which to be weary of.
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The
first piece of writing we will consider before we move onto our study of The
Didache, was not even written by the church Fathers; it wasn’t even written during
or after the time of Jesus; however, has an impact on how Christians throughout
the centuries have viewed scripture and other writings of the church.
In the
early to mid 3rd Century BC, a Hellenistic King in Egypt named
Ptolemy Philadelphus began the immense project of collecting a copy of every
known book (or writing, as they did not have “books” back then, not as we would
recognize them) for his collection in the Library at Alexandria, Egypt – one of
the 7 ancient wonders of the world. As told in a writing known as the Letter of Aristeas, the King
commissioned a translation of the Hebrew Pentateuch (first five books of the
Hebrew Scriptures) into Greek. This was a very practical endeavor as there were
many Hellenized Jews living in Alexandria who only knew Greek instead of their
native tongue (this is primarily due to the conquest of Alexander the Great
over the known world – hence the city that bares his name, along with dozens of
others). The tradition set down by the Letter
of Aristeas states that six elders was chosen from each tribe of Israel by
the High Priest Eleazer and sent to Alexandria from Jerusalem in order to
complete the translation in Greek. This means that 72 Elders were chosen for
the task (others sources say 70).
The
translation was later referred to as the Septuaginta
(the Latin word for 70), or Septuagint (Sep*to*ah*gent), also given the commons
symbol of LXX (Roman numeral for 70). Some of the oldest fragments of this
translation (Deuteronomy) are kept at John Rylands University Library in
Manchester, England & another fragment is in Cairo, Egypt. This Greek
translation became the most used translation of the Holy Scriptures for the
Jewish people well into the era of the early church Fathers and beyond; again,
Alexander Hellenized the known world – including Judea – and Greek was used as
the common language for centuries to come. Jewish communities began to realize
that the hated Christians, as being rooted in first century Judaism, were also
using the Septuagint as their primary source for the Scriptures, and they were
using it successfully to show the Messiah in the Scriptures. As a reaction to
this, many other Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures began to emerge;
some of which still used the Septuagint as a primary source.
So,
why is all this important to the Modern Christian? There are many reasons why
it is important. I will stick to two of them. (1) the Septuagint is the Holy Scriptures
that Jesus, the Apostles, and every other Jew in the first century knew and
used, and (2) The Greek words and connotations shed a lot of light on the
messianic passages that clearly point to Jesus of Nazareth fulfilling that
role, more so than the Hebrew text or later Greek versions created in spite of
Christian use.
On the first point,
consider: When Christ stood up in the Synagogue in the Gospel of Luke (4:16-21),
He was not reading a Scroll in Hebrew (Masoretic text), but that of the
Septuagint. Again, why is this important? Jesus, the son of God, God in the
flesh, not only decided to reveal himself to his townsfolk through the reading
of the Scriptures, but did it using the Scriptures of the time – the scroll at
the synagogue, which would have been Septuagint. Jesus is telling us that this
is an acceptable translation of the Scriptures. And not only that, but this translation
reveals the Christ throughout its pages. He did not request a copy of the
Hebrew scroll so that he can reveal himself as Messiah in the Hebrew text –
though, He certainly could have done so. I am not saying that the Masoretic
text is not accurate nor is it invalid – Simply that it was not the text that
our Lord knew and used while he was here on earth. And it is this reason that
the Church from the very beginning has used the Septuagint (even the Latin Vulgate
of the Roman Church used it primarily for their translation into Latin).
On the
second point: Ever cracked open your modern Bible (whether is be NKJV, ESV,
NIV, etc.) and read OT quotations given in the NT, and when you turned back to
your OT the text seemed to be something completely different? Or at the very
least some words were different, changing the impact of the NT passage? That is
because the vast majority of modern Bibles use the Hebrew OT (the Masoretic Text);
this was primarily the work of the Reformer’s belief that the Hebrew text must
be more accurate because it is the language of the Jewish people and because it
is the language that the Pentateuch was first written in. Though this is
admirable and important to consider, this is not the primary focus of the early
church. The primary focus of the early church was to use the Holy Scriptures to
point to Christ; something they were very successful at, thanks to the
Septuagint and Greek language (since its completion, the Septuagint was considered
a divine and acceptable translation).
However,
there is another reason why the Septuagint was rejected by the Reformers in the
16th century: the Septuagint included Books that reminded them of
Rome. The “Apocryphal” books, such as Tobit and Maccabees 1 & 2 among
others, were books that were very much known in the first century and a part of
the early church understanding of scripture and God’s people. To the Reformers,
these books – as well as other distinctives – reminded them too much of Rome. There
are many other arguments for and against the use of the Septuagint, but one
thing is clear; the Greek Septuagint – along with the “apocryphal” books – are the
Scriptures of Jesus and the Apostles, and this is the text the Church from the very
beginning supported as Holy Scripture and the word of God. This is supported by
the vast majority of Biblical scholars, secular and Christian alike.
This will help us understand the writings of the
early church when it comes up, and even if we move onto discovering those “apocryphal”
books later on.
Here is a link to two recorded bible study’s given
by Fr. Evan Armatas regarding the formation of the New Testament, in which he
speaks a little about the Septuagint. Very good recordings, listen to them both.
Until next Sunday, Enjoy!
With Love,
Devin (Athanasios) Green
