Septuagint, The
: A Critical Analysis

Most of academia does not consider the Jewish Scriptures and the Old Testament portion of the Christian Bible to be one and the same. According to them, the original text of this part of God's Word has been lost and is in need of "recovery." To restore the original text, they maintain that the Hebrew Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint must be compared. The Septuagint (LXX) is an ancient translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Hellenistic Greek. This is almost the only hard fact concerning this translation that is truly verifiable. As the LXX is supposedly over 1,100 years older than the most ancient surviving Hebrew manuscripts, and as it often reads differently from them, text critics presume that the LXX was translated from an older, thus more reliable, Hebrew text. Believing the LXX contains readings that have been lost or corrupted in the Hebrew Scriptures, critics hold that the Septuagint may be used in determined places to "correct and restore" these adulterated readings. Such is the status that the LXX holds in Old Testament text critical circles. Indeed, one constantly reads that the Septuagint was "the" Bible of the early Christians. But-we wonder-is such veneration by academia justified? Does the New Testament frequently quote from the LXX instead of the Hebrew? Rather than offering fanciful theories, this fresh critical analysis examines the above questions by presenting numerous side-by-side comparisons of the LXX Greek and Hebrew Masoretic text, as well as significant mathematical contrasts. This approach allows readers to discover the truth for themselves. The result will be surprising.