|
NotesontheSeptuagint.pdf R. Grant Jones’s abridged version in Adobe Reader format (960 kB)
Recently, several older, more scholarly works on this subject became available through Google Books. Those interested are encouraged to navigate to www.google.com, click on “more,” then on “Books,” and search. See, for instance, Crawford Howell Toy’s 1884 work, Quotations in the New Testament. -- R. G. Jones, 15 Aug 2008 |
| These pages were generated to satisfy
my curiosity about the New Testament authors’ reliance on the Septuagint
and to provide a framework to address the question of the appropriate source
text for Old Testament translations into English. For those who are
new to the Septuagint, I have provided an Introduction,
discussing the history of that translation. The
Septuagint in the Early Church addresses how the Western Church departed
from reliance on the Septuagint under the influence of Jerome, though earlier
writers had generally read the Septuagint and defended using it instead
of the Hebrew text. I have investigated the New Testament authors’
dependence on the Septuagint largely by comparing New Testament quotations
of the Old with both the Septuagint and an English translation of the Masoretic
(Hebrew) text. For each quotation, I have prepared a separate comparison
page, including the Greek of the New Testament, the Greek of the Septuagint,
and English translations of the New Testament, the Septuagint, and the
Masoretic text. The Septuagint
in the New Testament summarizes the methodology I employed in assessing
those comparisons and the results I discovered. The Table
of Quotations in New Testament Order includes a set of symbols to indicate
the extent of agreement (in terms both of meaning and of word choice) between
quotations and sources. A listing of quotations
in Old Testament order is available to facilitate source text location.
A large number of quotations agree in sense with the Septuagint, but disagree
with the Masoretic text - I have compiled a list
of these verses, and a list of the occasions
(far smaller in number) where the New Testament author preferred a Masoretic
reading to that of the Septuagint. Finally, in the appendix,
the reader will find a sample of readings from the Dead Sea Scrolls which
support the Septuagint against the Masoretic text; a listing and comparison
of differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text in the book
of Genesis; a table showing the books of the Septuagint as they appear
in Rahlfs and in the three great uncial manuscripts; and a collection of
patristic comments which have bearing on the translation of the Septuagint.
Please note: I am not an expert in either Greek or Hebrew. A physicist by education, I have no formal training in religion, theology or scripture studies. I urge readers to treat the results presented here with caution. Should anyone find errors - particularly in my categorization of the quotations as either in or out of agreement with the Masoretic text - I will gladly accept informed correction. The reader who (perhaps with wisdom) doubts the validity of my characterizations of the degree of agreement in meaning between quotations and source texts may wish to rely on the judgment of the Greek New Testament (4th edition), which is also presented in the Table of Quotations in New Testament order. |