The Septuagint as Biblical Commentary - Part 1

Greystone Conversations

What difference might it make to our relationship to the Septuagint if we saw it not only as a translation of the Hebrew OT into Greek and as a translation often used in the NT, but also as the first true commentary on the Hebrew Old Testament? How might this approach to the Septuagint illuminate our understanding of biblical hermeneutics and the nature of Holy Scripture?

In the exilic or early post-exilic period, Hebrew gave way to Aramaic as the lingua franca and classical Hebrew started to fade from use. Then, when the Jews became Hellenized on account of the diaspora provoked by the rise of Alexander the Great and of the Greek empires, Greek became the primary language for Jews. This combination of historical developments helps explain why the Septuagint became the Old Testament for many Jews leading up to and into the New Testament era, especially those living in Ptolemaic Egypt and other deeply Hellenized areas.
The Septuagint is primarily a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek--this much is common knowledge. But what is less known and appreciated is that the Septuagint may also be viewed as the first commentary on the Hebrew Old Testament. To be sure, this is true along the lines of what translation necessarily is: not simply a wooden replacement of one word in one language with the allegedly equivalent word in another language. Rather, all translations involve a measure of commentary, of explanation and sense-making, given the way languages work. And yet the ways that the Septuagint provides explanations of the Hebrew Scriptures disclose not only ancient views of how the biblical text works as text but also valuable insights into how the Scriptures read and interpret themselves, including the long-standing curiosity of how the New Testament writers read the Old Testament.

Given that the month of December has just begun, this is an excellent opportunity for us to think a bit about the Septuagint since an interesting example of its importance comes to us in Matthew 1:23 as a citation of Isaiah 7:14--those famous words of the Prophecy of Isaiah that he spoke to Ahaz, which in Hebrew says "behold the young woman shall conceive," but in the Septuagint reads, "Behold the virgin shall conceive." Matthew is citing the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Old Testament. This suggests that the language of the "virgin birth"--the virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth--is not only a faithful rendering of the meaning of the Hebrew word for a young woman but, in what is often overlooked even by the most enthusiastic defenders of the virgin birth among evangelicals, the very notion--which is to say the very vocabulary--of the "virgin" birth of Jesus is something we owe specifically to the Septuagint which uses the word virgin to clarify the nature of Mary's state when she brings us the Messiah.

Despite this rather key role in reading Scripture, the Septuagint has strangely enjoyed precious little serious attention among seminary students and writers in biblical and theological studies. With this in mind, today's Greystone Conversations episode is a conversation on this very subject with Matthew Albanese. This conversation will be a two-part series, with today's episode introducing the subject. Now in his final stage of finalizing his Doctorate of Philosophy at Oxford University, in which he worked on Septuagint Isaiah, Matthew Albanese is also one of Greystone's recently appointed Associate Fellows focusing his Greystone activity in the large area of what has long been termed "Oriental Studies." In the months and years to come, our Lord willing, we can look forward to Matthew teaching series and modules for Greystone in Christian Syriac, Aramaic, the Septuagint, and various portions of the canon of Christian Scripture.