A Case for the Septuagint
For several years now, I’ve been using an English translation of the Septuagint (pronounced, sep-‘tü-ə-jənt) for my reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. For those of us who might not know, the Septuagint (sometimes seen as “LXX”) is the Greek translation of the Old Testament or Jewish Scriptures. Why would I use a Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures instead of the Aramaic/Hebrew version? There are a number of reasons, actually. While this might be a bit technical, I hope the post will be a brief answer to that question. I first heard about the Septuagint way back in college. I found it odd that people would use the Septuagint instead of the Masoretic Text, the version of the Old Testament that’s found in almost all Bibles. I have a misty memory of someone saying something along the lines of, “Jesus and the Apostles were Jews and spoke Hebrew. It makes sense, then, to use an English text based on the Hebrew Old Testament.” And that was it for me. I never really looked into it again....