A QUESTION has been sent to us with regard to the respective merits of the Authorized Version and the Septuagint. Some, it would appear, are in favor of taking the Septuagint as the only reliable authority.
We deprecate everything that would tend to weaken in the mind the truth of the inspiration of the Scriptures, which seems to be the main effort of Satan today. The wish is father to the thought, for the Scripture addresses itself to man’s conscience, and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.
But in spite of all that Jews, heathen, and apostate Christians have sought to do to upset the Bible, there it remains, and almost every day fresh discoveries are being made in the realms of science and archaeology which go to establish its accuracy. There can be no serious doubt that our Authorized Version is more trustworthy as a translation than the Septuagint. Of course our readers are aware that the Septuagint was a translation into Greek from the Hebrew text made between two and three hundred years before Christ. It was a translation, and not the inspired original. Where the original is no man can say. In God’s wisdom we have copies, but not the original. And yet it is an entire mistake to say that “the Hebrew texts are untrustworthy.” To the Jews had been committed the oracles of God, and they watched over this so carefully, and with such veneration, that serious errors in transcription were well-nigh impossible.
It is true that our Lord and the apostles quote from the Septuagint; sometimes, and by no means invariably. But this does not give divine sanction to the Septuagint as a whole. Paul quotes from a heathen poet (Titus 1:1212One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. (Titus 1:12)). Does this sanction all that the poet wrote? In a magazine such as this we cannot enlarge upon the subject, nor enter into details of comparison of texts in the Hebrew and Septuagint; this has been done by others. We would just add that in many places the Septuagint translation is erroneous; in many places additions are made to the text, in others portions are left out. The quotation from the Septuagint in the New Testament cannot be a divine sanction of these mistakes.
We must remember that Christianity was introduced in countries where the Greek language was in common use, and where none but the learned could have understood the Hebrew. The apostles and evangelists in quoting from the Old Testament must either have translated direct from the Hebrew to the Greek, or used a translation already in existence. As a matter of fact they generally did the latter; they were inspired of God to do so. This does not prove that the Septuagint was inspired, but that those particular texts quoted conveyed the mind of the Spirit for the object that He had in view.
The Septuagint was the work of pious men no doubt, but it was a human translation. The same is true of our Authorized Version. This does not touch the question of the inspiration of Scripture. Whilst the translations were the work of men, watched over and helped, no doubt, by God, the original was inspired not only in so far as its subject-matter was concerned, but the very words in which it was given (1 Cor. 2:1313Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:13)).
ED.