Septuagint

The Septuagint, traditionally abbreviated LXX, is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. It is among the most influential texts in the history of Western civilization, serving as the Bible of the Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora, the Scripture quoted by Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament, and the Old Testament of the early Christian Church for centuries before the rise of Latin and vernacular translations.

Origins and Composition

According to a famous legend preserved in the Letter of Aristeas, the Septuagint was produced in Alexandria in the third century BC when King Ptolemy II Philadelphus invited seventy-two Jewish scholars (six from each of the twelve tribes) to translate the Hebrew Torah into Greek for the great Library of Alexandria. The legend recounts that these seventy-two translators worked independently and miraculously produced identical translations, demonstrating divine inspiration.

Modern scholarship paints a more complex picture. The translation of the Pentateuch indeed appears to have been completed in Alexandria in the third century BC, likely between approximately 285 and 250 BC, in response to the genuine needs of a large Greek-speaking Jewish community whose members no longer read Hebrew fluently. The remaining books of the Hebrew Bible were translated over the following two centuries, with different translators and varying styles, until the entire Old Testament had been rendered into Greek by approximately the first century BC.

The Septuagint also came to include several books and additions not found in the Hebrew canon, traditionally called the deuterocanonical books or Apocrypha, such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, and the Maccabees. These works circulated as part of the Greek Bible and were accepted as Scripture by many ancient Jewish and Christian communities.

Importance for the New Testament

The Septuagint was the principal Bible of the New Testament authors. When the apostle Paul quoted the Old Testament in his letters, when the Gospel writers cited prophecies fulfilled in Christ, when the author of Hebrews built his elaborate exposition of Old Testament priesthood, they typically quoted from the Septuagint rather than directly translating from Hebrew.

Many of the most famous Christological prophecies in the New Testament depend on Septuagint readings. The translation of Isaiah 7:14 with parthenos (virgin) is the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew almah, and it is this Greek reading that Matthew quotes in citing the prophecy of the virgin birth. Similarly, many quotations in Romans, Hebrews, and other New Testament books follow Septuagint phrasing that differs in detail from the Masoretic Hebrew.

For this reason, the Septuagint is not merely a translation but a theological witness in its own right, an essential bridge between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek New Testament.

Brenton's English Translation

The Septuagint remained largely inaccessible to English readers until the nineteenth century, when Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton (1807-1862) undertook the first full English translation. Brenton was an Anglican layman and biblical scholar who devoted himself to making the Greek Old Testament available in English.

His translation, first published in 1844 and reissued in revised form in 1851, presented the Septuagint in parallel with his English rendering. Brenton aimed for a translation that would be faithful, dignified, and readable, drawing on the King James Version's style while staying close to the Greek text. He included introductions, notes, and parallel references that helped readers compare Septuagint readings with both the Hebrew and the New Testament.

Continuing Significance

The Septuagint remains the official Old Testament of the Eastern Orthodox churches and is highly esteemed in Catholic and academic biblical scholarship. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century revealed that many Septuagint readings, long thought to be loose paraphrases, in fact reflected Hebrew textual traditions older than the Masoretic Text.

Brenton's 1851 English Septuagint, being in the public domain, remains the most widely accessible English translation. It is freely available in print and digital editions, used by students of the Old Testament, by Eastern Orthodox readers, and by all who wish to engage with the Bible that Jesus and the apostles read.