Chapter 5

Key Terms and Concepts — A Roadmap for the Journey

Before we dive into the deep waters of the arguments in this book, we need to make sure we're all speaking the same language. Over the next thirty-one chapters, we're going to encounter a number of technical terms — some from the world of biblical scholarship, some from the history of the Jewish and Christian traditions, and some from the ancient languages themselves. If you've never studied textual criticism or the history of the biblical canon, some of these terms might feel unfamiliar. That's perfectly okay. This chapter is your field guide. Think of it as the glossary you'll want to keep close at hand as we move forward together.

I want to be upfront: none of these terms are terribly complicated once they're explained clearly. Scholars sometimes make things sound more intimidating than they need to be. My goal here is to strip away the jargon and give you a plain-language explanation of every major concept you'll need. We'll define the terms, give examples, and explain why each one matters for the arguments we'll be building in the rest of the book.

If you're already familiar with some of these terms, feel free to skim those sections. But even if you've studied some of this before, I'd encourage you to read through the whole chapter. The way I define certain terms reflects the specific arguments of this book, and some of my definitions may challenge assumptions you've picked up along the way.

Let's get started.

The Septuagint (LXX)

The Septuagint is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is the oldest translation of the Hebrew Bible into any language, and it is — without exaggeration — one of the most important documents in the history of Western civilization. The word "Septuagint" comes from the Latin word septuaginta, meaning "seventy." The abbreviation "LXX" is the Roman numeral for seventy. Both names come from the ancient tradition that approximately seventy (or seventy-two) Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Torah into Greek in Alexandria, Egypt, sometime in the third century BC — around 250 BC or so.¹

Now, here's where it gets a little more nuanced, and I want to be careful to explain this clearly. When scholars use the term "Septuagint," they can mean two different things depending on the context:

In the narrow sense, the Septuagint refers to the original Greek translation of the five books of Moses — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — produced in Alexandria around 250 BC. This is the translation described in the ancient document known as the Letter of Aristeas, which we discussed in Chapter 2. That translation of the Torah was the first and most carefully produced part of the Greek Old Testament.

In the broader sense — and this is the sense in which we will most often use the term in this book — the Septuagint refers to the entire Greek Old Testament. Over the next two centuries after the Torah was translated, the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures were also translated into Greek: the historical books, the prophets, the psalms, the wisdom literature. In addition to translating the books found in the Hebrew Bible, the Greek Old Testament also included books that were originally composed in Hebrew or Aramaic but survived only in Greek — books like Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, and 1–2 Maccabees. These are the books that Catholics call the "deuterocanonical" books and that Protestants have traditionally called the "Apocrypha." We'll get to that terminology shortly.²

So when I say "the Septuagint" in this book, I generally mean the entire Greek Old Testament — the translations of the Hebrew books plus the additional books that were part of the collection. When I need to be more precise, I'll say "the LXX Pentateuch" or "the LXX translation of Isaiah" or "the deuterocanonical books within the LXX."

Why does the Septuagint matter for us today? Because the Greek translation was made from Hebrew manuscripts that were available in the third, second, and first centuries BC — manuscripts that, in many cases, were older than the Hebrew manuscripts that eventually became the Masoretic Text. This means the Septuagint gives us a window into what the Hebrew Bible said before the standardization process that produced the MT. In some cases, the LXX preserves readings that are more original than the MT. In other cases, the Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed that the LXX translators were working from a Hebrew text that differed from the MT — and that this different Hebrew text was a legitimate, ancient reading. We'll unpack all of this in detail as the book progresses.³

The Masoretic Text (MT)

The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible as it exists today. It is the Hebrew text behind virtually every modern English Old Testament translation you've ever read — the King James Version, the English Standard Version, the New International Version, the New American Standard Bible, and so on. When your pastor opens his Bible to preach from the Old Testament, the English words he reads are almost always translated from the Masoretic Text.⁴

The name "Masoretic" comes from the Hebrew word masorah (מָסוֹרָה), which means "tradition" — specifically, the tradition of how the biblical text was to be copied, read, and pronounced. The Masoretes were Jewish scribes and scholars who worked primarily between the sixth and tenth centuries AD. Their most important contribution was adding vowel marks, accent marks (called cantillation marks), and marginal notes to the Hebrew text. You see, the original Hebrew Bible was written using only consonants — no vowels. Readers had to supply the vowels from memory and tradition. Over time, as Hebrew ceased to be a widely spoken language, the risk of losing the correct pronunciation — and therefore the correct meaning — of the biblical text grew. The Masoretes solved this problem by inventing a system of dots and dashes placed above, below, and within the consonants to indicate the correct vowels and pronunciation.⁵

Now here's the crucial point that most Protestant Christians don't know: the oldest complete manuscript of the Masoretic Text is the Leningrad Codex, which dates to approximately 1008 AD. Let that sink in for a moment. The Hebrew text behind your English Bible was copied a full thousand years after Christ. The second-most important MT manuscript, the Aleppo Codex, dates to approximately 930 AD. While these manuscripts faithfully preserve a textual tradition that is much older, the physical manuscripts themselves are relatively late.⁶

By contrast, the Septuagint translation was produced in the third to first centuries BC — meaning the LXX translators were working from Hebrew manuscripts that predated the Leningrad Codex by over a thousand years. And the Dead Sea Scrolls — which include Hebrew manuscripts from as early as the third century BC — show us that the Hebrew text was not yet standardized in the Second Temple period. Multiple textual traditions coexisted, and the Hebrew text used by the LXX translators sometimes differed significantly from the text that eventually became the MT.

This doesn't mean the Masoretic Text is unreliable. Far from it — the Masoretes were remarkably careful copyists, and the MT preserves a text of great antiquity and accuracy. But it does mean the MT is not the only witness to the original Hebrew, and it is not always the best witness. We'll explore this in depth in Chapters 12–18, where we examine the evidence that some readings in the MT were deliberately altered in the second century AD by rabbinic scholars who wanted to distance the Hebrew text from the Septuagint and from its Christian interpreters.⁷

Vorlage

This is a German word (pronounced roughly "FOR-lah-guh") that scholars use constantly when discussing the Septuagint and textual criticism. It simply means "template" or "source text." When we say "the Vorlage of the Septuagint," we mean the Hebrew text that the LXX translators had in front of them when they did their translation work.⁸

Why is this word important? Because the Hebrew Vorlage used by the LXX translators was not identical to the Hebrew text that eventually became the Masoretic Text. This is one of the most important discoveries of modern biblical scholarship. For centuries, scholars assumed that whenever the Greek Septuagint differed from the Hebrew Masoretic Text, it must be because the Greek translators made a mistake, or took a liberty, or were sloppy in their work. But the Dead Sea Scrolls changed everything. When the scrolls were discovered at Qumran beginning in 1947, scholars found Hebrew manuscripts that matched the Septuagint's readings in places where the LXX differed from the MT. This proved that the LXX translators weren't making mistakes — they were faithfully translating a different Hebrew text.

Here's a concrete example. The Masoretic Text of the book of Jeremiah is about one-eighth longer than the Septuagint version of Jeremiah — that's a huge difference. For centuries, scholars debated whether the Greek translators had abbreviated the original or the Hebrew scribes had expanded it. Then, at Qumran, fragments of Jeremiah were found in Hebrew that matched the shorter version — the same version reflected in the LXX. This proved that both versions existed in Hebrew, and that the LXX translators were working from a legitimate, ancient Hebrew Vorlage that happened to be shorter than the Vorlage that eventually became the MT.⁹

So whenever you see the word "Vorlage" in this book, just think: "the Hebrew source text that the translator was looking at." The whole point is that different translators, at different times, could have been looking at different Hebrew source texts. And this is exactly what the evidence shows.

Proto-Masoretic and Proto-Septuagintal

These are terms that scholars use to describe the earlier, pre-standardization forms of the textual traditions that eventually became the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. Think of them as the "ancestors" of the two great text types.

A proto-Masoretic text is a Hebrew manuscript that is very close to what we now know as the Masoretic Text, but it predates the work of the Masoretes by centuries. Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are proto-Masoretic — they contain a Hebrew text that is essentially the same as the later MT, though with minor variations here and there. The famous Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaiah-a) from Qumran is a good example. It's generally proto-Masoretic, but it contains a number of individual readings where it agrees with the Septuagint against the MT. This tells us that even within the proto-Masoretic tradition, there was a degree of textual variation that hadn't yet been ironed out.¹⁰

A proto-Septuagintal text is a Hebrew manuscript that reflects the type of text from which the Septuagint was translated. These manuscripts differ from the proto-MT in significant ways. The best examples are certain Qumran manuscripts of Samuel (4QSamuel-a and 4QSamuel-b), which are strikingly close to the Hebrew text behind the LXX of Samuel — and significantly different from the MT of Samuel. Indeed, the MT of Samuel is widely recognized as one of the most poorly preserved books in the entire Masoretic tradition, and the Qumran evidence shows that the LXX translators of Samuel had access to a superior Hebrew text.¹¹

Why do these terms matter? Because they help us avoid a common mistake: the assumption that there was one, single, unified Hebrew text in antiquity. There wasn't. In the centuries before Christ, multiple Hebrew text types coexisted. Some Hebrew manuscripts were closer to what became the MT. Others were closer to the Hebrew behind the LXX. Still others were unique — the Dead Sea Scrolls contain some manuscripts that don't clearly match either tradition. The textual landscape of the Second Temple period was diverse, and the Septuagint gives us access to a textual tradition that is independent of the one that became the MT.¹²

Deuterocanonical, Apocrypha, and Protocanonical

These three terms refer to the same basic distinction — but they carry very different connotations depending on which Christian tradition you belong to. Understanding the terminology is essential for our discussion, because the words we use to describe these books shape how we think about them.

The word protocanonical (from the Greek protos, meaning "first") refers to the books that have always been accepted as Scripture by all Christians — the thirty-nine books of the Protestant Old Testament. These are the books whose canonical status was never seriously disputed. Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants all agree that these books are inspired Scripture.¹³

The word deuterocanonical (from the Greek deuteros, meaning "second") refers to the additional Old Testament books accepted as Scripture by Catholics and most Orthodox Christians, but not by Protestants. These include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah), 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additions to Daniel and Esther. The term "deuterocanonical" does not mean "second-rate" or "less inspired." It simply means that these books were received into the formal canon at a somewhat later stage in the process of canonical recognition — or, more precisely, that their canonical status was discussed and debated more extensively than the protocanonical books before being formally affirmed.¹⁴

The word Apocrypha (from the Greek apokryphos, ἀπόκρυφος, meaning "hidden" or "concealed") is the term that Protestants have traditionally used for these same books. The term originally had a neutral or even positive connotation — "hidden" books could mean books containing secret or esoteric wisdom. But over time, in Protestant usage, the term took on a negative flavor, implying that these books were dubious, unreliable, or of questionable authority.¹⁵

It's also worth noting — and this surprises many Protestants — that the deuterocanonical books were included in every major Christian Bible for over a thousand years. They were in the great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus). They were in Jerome's Vulgate. They were in the first printed Bibles. They were in Luther's German Bible (though Luther moved them to a separate section between the Old and New Testaments with a note that they were "useful and good to read" but not equal to Scripture). They were even in the original 1611 King James Bible — a fact that shocks many modern Protestants who consider the KJV to be the gold standard of Protestant Bibles. The translators of the King James Version included the deuterocanonical books as a matter of course. They did not consider these books to be on the same level as the protocanonical books, but neither did they think they should be removed entirely. The complete removal of the deuterocanonical books from Protestant Bibles was a gradual process that wasn't completed until the early nineteenth century, when the British and Foreign Bible Society decided to stop including them — partly to save printing costs, and partly under pressure from Scottish Calvinist societies who objected to their inclusion on theological grounds. We'll trace this entire history in Chapters 29–30.¹⁶

One more common error that I should correct here. Many people assume that the deuterocanonical books were all written in Greek and therefore can't be considered part of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is simply false. Most of the deuterocanonical books were originally composed in Hebrew or Aramaic. Sirach was written in Hebrew — and substantial fragments of the Hebrew text have been found at Qumran, at Masada, and in the Cairo Genizah. Tobit was found at Qumran in both Aramaic and Hebrew. Baruch was very likely composed in Hebrew. Only the Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Maccabees were originally written in Greek. The language of composition is not a valid criterion for excluding these books, any more than the Aramaic portions of Daniel and Ezra disqualify those books from the canon.¹⁷

Canon and Canonical

The word canon comes from the Greek word kanōn (κανών), which originally meant a "reed" or a "measuring rod" — a straight stick used for measurement. Over time, it came to mean a "rule" or "standard" — something by which other things are measured. In the context of the Bible, the "canon" refers to the official list of books recognized as authoritative, inspired Scripture.¹⁸

When we say a book is "canonical," we mean it is recognized as belonging to the Bible — it is an authoritative book that the church receives as the Word of God. When we say a book is "non-canonical," we mean it is not recognized as part of the Bible, whatever other value it may have.

Now, here is a distinction that is absolutely crucial for the arguments in this book, and it's one that many Christians — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox — don't always appreciate: there is a significant difference between Scripture and canon.

Scripture refers to books that a community treats as authoritative — books that are read in worship, cited as the basis for doctrine, copied with care, and appealed to as the Word of God. A book can function as Scripture in a community long before any formal list or "canon" is drawn up.

Canon, on the other hand, refers to a formal, closed list of authoritative books — a definitive catalog that says, "These books are in, and those books are out." The creation of such a list is a deliberate, institutional act — usually made by a council, a leading authority, or a community consensus.

Why does this distinction matter? Because the deuterocanonical books were treated as Scripture — read in worship, quoted as authoritative, used to establish doctrine — by Jews and Christians alike for centuries before anyone tried to create a formal, closed canon. The early church fathers quoted Wisdom, Sirach, and the Maccabees as Scripture. The great fourth-century codices included them alongside Genesis and Isaiah and the Psalms. The councils of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) formally listed them among the canonical books. The question of whether these books "belong in the Bible" is not as simple as looking at a list — because for most of Christian history, there was no single, universally agreed-upon list. There were books that everyone treated as Scripture, and the deuterocanonical books were among them.¹⁹

Textual Criticism

The term "textual criticism" sounds negative — as if scholars are criticizing the Bible. But that's not what it means at all. Textual criticism is the scholarly discipline of carefully comparing different manuscripts and versions of a text to determine the most likely original reading. It's detective work, not destruction. A better name for it might be "textual restoration" — scholars are trying to recover what the author originally wrote by comparing the surviving copies.²⁰

Why is textual criticism necessary? Because we don't have the original manuscripts of any book of the Bible — what scholars call the "autographs." What we have are copies of copies of copies, made by scribes over many centuries. The vast majority of scribes were remarkably careful and faithful in their work. But over the course of centuries of hand-copying, small errors inevitably crept in. A tired scribe might skip a line. Another might accidentally write a word twice. A scribe's eye might jump from one similar word to another, causing him to omit a phrase. And in some cases — as we will argue in this book — changes were made deliberately, not accidentally.

Textual criticism gives us the tools to detect these changes and to figure out, as best we can, what the original text said. The basic method involves comparing all the available witnesses — in the case of the Old Testament, this means the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Aramaic Targums, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Latin Vulgate — and evaluating the differences. When these witnesses disagree, the textual critic asks: Which reading is more likely to be original, and how can we explain the origin of the other reading(s)?²¹

Textual critics use a number of principles to guide their work. One of the most important is called lectio difficilior — Latin for "the more difficult reading." The idea is that scribes were more likely to simplify a difficult reading than to make an easy reading harder. So if one manuscript has a straightforward reading and another has a puzzling one, the puzzling reading is more likely original.

Another important principle is lectio brevior — "the shorter reading." The general assumption is that scribes were more likely to add material than to omit it. So when one manuscript has a longer text and another has a shorter text, the shorter text is often considered more original. However — and this is very important for our book — this principle does not apply when there is evidence that material was deliberately removed. If a scribe intentionally cut out a passage for theological reasons, the longer reading is original, not the shorter one. We'll see this principle at work in our discussion of the Messianic passages in Chapters 14–15 and in the Genesis chronologies in Chapters 16–17.²²

There are also what scholars call external criteria — evidence from outside the text itself. For instance: How old is the manuscript? How wide is its geographical distribution? Does the reading have support from multiple independent textual traditions (LXX, DSS, SP, Targum)? A reading supported by the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Samaritan Pentateuch against the Masoretic Text is extremely strong, because three independent witnesses all point to the same reading.

Let me give you a simple analogy. Imagine you have four copies of a letter written by your grandmother. Three of the copies were made independently by different family members in the 1950s. One copy was made in 2010 by a cousin who you know sometimes "corrected" things she thought were mistakes. If the three 1950s copies all agree on a particular sentence, but the 2010 copy has a different version, which is more likely to be what your grandmother actually wrote? The three earlier, independent copies — obviously. That's essentially what textual criticism does with the biblical manuscripts. The LXX, the DSS, and the SP are like those independent 1950s copies. The MT, for all its careful preservation, is the tradition that went through the second-century rabbinic editorial process.

For our purposes, the most important thing to understand about textual criticism is this: it allows us to compare the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text and to make informed judgments about which text is more likely to preserve the original reading. This is the foundation of the "Septuagint priority" argument that runs through this book.

Hebraica Veritas

This is a Latin phrase meaning "the Hebrew truth." It was coined by Jerome (c. 347–420 AD), the great scholar who translated the Bible into Latin to produce the version known as the Vulgate. Jerome's principle was straightforward: since the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, the original Hebrew text should be the ultimate authority for determining the correct reading. Translations — including the Septuagint — should be corrected against the Hebrew whenever the two disagree.²³

On the surface, this sounds perfectly reasonable. Why wouldn't we prefer the original language over a translation? But the principle has a hidden — and very significant — problem: which Hebrew text? When Jerome said Hebraica veritas, he meant the Hebrew text available to him in the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD. That Hebrew text was the proto-Masoretic text — the ancestor of the Masoretic Text we know today. And as we've already noted, that text had already undergone a process of standardization and editorial revision by the rabbinic scholars of the second century AD.

Jerome's great contemporary and intellectual opponent, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), saw the problem clearly. Augustine argued that the Septuagint should be preferred over the Hebrew in many cases, because the LXX was translated from Hebrew manuscripts that predated the rabbinic revisions. Augustine even suggested that the LXX translators were inspired by the Holy Spirit — that their translation carried divine authority in its own right. Jerome disagreed. This debate between Jerome and Augustine — the Hebraica veritas versus the authority of the Septuagint — is one of the most important debates in the history of the Christian Bible, and we will devote an entire chapter to it (Chapter 27).²⁴

We'll come back to Hebraica veritas repeatedly throughout this book. It's one of the key concepts to understand, because the Protestant tradition inherited Jerome's preference for the Hebrew — and built its entire Old Testament on it — without fully reckoning with the problems that preference entails.

Codex and Manuscript

These terms describe the physical forms that ancient texts took, and they come up constantly in any discussion of the Bible's history.

A manuscript is simply a text that has been written by hand — from the Latin manu ("hand") and scriptum ("written"). Before the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, every copy of the Bible was a manuscript. The term is used broadly to refer to any hand-written copy of a biblical text, whether it's a complete Bible, a single book, or just a fragment.

A scroll is the older format for a manuscript. A scroll is a long sheet of parchment (animal skin) or papyrus (a plant-based material) that is rolled up for storage. You unroll it to read it, rolling from one end to the other. All the books of the Bible were originally written on scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, are literally scrolls — rolled-up documents stored in clay jars in caves near the Dead Sea. When Jesus stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth and was handed the scroll of Isaiah (Luke 4:17), he was using this format.²⁵

A codex (plural: codices) is the format that replaced the scroll — essentially, what we would recognize as a book with pages. Instead of a long, continuous roll, a codex consists of flat sheets that are stacked, folded, and bound together along one edge. The codex format was invented sometime around the first or second century AD, and it was adopted by Christians with remarkable speed. In fact, early Christians were among the first to prefer the codex format over the scroll. By the fourth century, the great Christian Bibles were all codices.²⁶

Several specific codices are of enormous importance for our study, and their names will appear repeatedly throughout the book. Let me introduce them briefly here:

Codex Vaticanus (designated by the letter "B") — Dating to the fourth century AD (c. 325–350), this is one of the oldest and most important manuscripts of the Greek Bible. It contains most of the Old Testament in Greek (including the deuterocanonical books) and most of the New Testament. It is housed in the Vatican Library in Rome, hence its name. For Septuagint studies, Vaticanus is arguably the single most important manuscript we possess.²⁷

Codex Sinaiticus (designated by the Hebrew letter aleph, א) — Also dating to the fourth century AD (c. 330–360), this codex was discovered by the German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf at St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in the mid-nineteenth century. It is the oldest known complete New Testament, and it contains much of the Old Testament in Greek as well — again, including deuterocanonical books. Portions are now held at the British Library, Leipzig University, and St. Catherine's Monastery.²⁸

Codex Alexandrinus (designated by the letter "A") — Dating to the fifth century AD (c. 400–440), this codex contains nearly the entire Greek Bible. It is housed in the British Library. It is especially important as a witness to the text of the Old Testament, including the deuterocanonical books.²⁹

These three codices — Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus — are the pillars of Septuagint scholarship. All three include the deuterocanonical books alongside the protocanonical books, with no separation, no secondary status, no indication that they were considered inferior or less authoritative. This is powerful evidence for the canonical status of the deuterocanonical books in the early church.

On the Masoretic side, the two most important manuscripts are:

The Aleppo Codex — Dating to approximately 930 AD, this was for centuries considered the most authoritative manuscript of the Masoretic Text. Tragically, a significant portion of it was damaged or destroyed in riots in Aleppo, Syria, in 1947.³⁰

The Leningrad Codex — Dating to 1008 AD, this is the oldest complete manuscript of the Masoretic Text. It is the base text for the standard critical editions of the Hebrew Bible used by scholars today (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Biblia Hebraica Quinta), and it is therefore the Hebrew text behind virtually all modern English Old Testament translations.³¹

Notice the date difference: the great Greek codices (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus) date to the fourth and fifth centuries AD. The great Hebrew codices (Aleppo, Leningrad) date to the tenth and eleventh centuries AD. The Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament are, in many cases, older than the Hebrew manuscripts — by 500 to 700 years. This is another reason the Septuagint is so important: it gives us access to an earlier stage of the text's history than the Masoretic manuscripts do.

Recension

A recension is a deliberate, systematic revision of a text. The word comes from the Latin recensio, meaning "review" or "revision." It's different from the gradual, unintentional changes that accumulate when texts are copied by hand over centuries. A recension is an intentional effort by an editor or group of editors to standardize, correct, or update a text.³²

This concept is important for our study because both the Greek and Hebrew Old Testaments underwent recensions at various points in their history.

On the Greek side, the most famous recension is Origen's Hexapla — a monumental work produced in the third century AD (c. 240 AD) by the great Christian scholar Origen of Alexandria. The Hexapla (meaning "sixfold") was a massive document that arranged the Old Testament in six parallel columns: (1) the Hebrew text, (2) the Hebrew transliterated into Greek letters, (3) the Greek translation of Aquila, (4) the Greek translation of Symmachus, (5) the Septuagint, and (6) the Greek translation of Theodotion. Origen's purpose was to compare these versions and to bring the Septuagint into closer alignment with the Hebrew text current in his day. While his scholarly intentions were admirable, the unintended consequence was that many copies of the Septuagint were subsequently "corrected" toward the Hebrew — muddying the waters for later scholars trying to recover the original Greek text.³³

Two other important recensions of the LXX were produced by Hesychius (in Egypt) and Lucian of Antioch (in Syria). Each of these scholars produced a revised edition of the Septuagint that was used in their respective regions. Jerome, writing in the late fourth century, mentions all three recensions: "Alexandria and Egypt in their Septuagint prefer Hesychius as their authority. Constantinople to Antioch approves the copies of Lucian the martyr. The intermediate Palestinian provinces read the manuscripts which, elaborated by Origen, Eusebius and Pamphilus promulgated."³⁴

On the Hebrew side, the most significant "recension" — though scholars debate whether the term is exactly right — was the standardization of the Hebrew text carried out by rabbinic scholars in the second century AD, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple (70 AD) and during the period of Rabbi Akiba and his circle. This process involved selecting one form of the Hebrew text as authoritative and suppressing all others. The result was a remarkably unified Hebrew text — but at the cost of eliminating the textual diversity that had existed in the Second Temple period. The Dead Sea Scrolls show us what was lost: a rich variety of Hebrew texts, some closer to the LXX and some closer to the MT, all coexisting before the rabbis imposed their standardization.³⁵

We'll discuss the three replacement Greek translations — those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion — in Chapter 13. These translations were produced by Jewish scholars in the second century AD to replace the Septuagint, which by that time had become the Bible of the Christians. They represent another form of recension — a deliberate effort to provide a new Greek translation of the Hebrew that would differ from the Christian LXX.

The Samaritan Pentateuch

Although this term doesn't appear in the master list for this chapter, it comes up often enough in our discussion that I should define it here. The Samaritan Pentateuch (often abbreviated SP) is the version of the first five books of the Bible — the Torah or Pentateuch — preserved and used by the Samaritan community. The Samaritans, as you may remember from the New Testament (the parable of the Good Samaritan, the woman at the well in John 4), were a group closely related to the Jews but considered heretical by mainstream Judaism. They accepted only the Torah — the five books of Moses — as Scripture, and they maintained their own textual tradition of these five books.³⁶

Why does the Samaritan Pentateuch matter for our study? Because it provides a third independent witness to the text of the Torah, alongside the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. The SP diverged from the Jewish textual tradition very early — scholars debate exactly when, but it was certainly long before the standardization of the MT in the second century AD. This means that when the SP agrees with the LXX against the MT, we have two independent witnesses pointing to the same reading — which is strong evidence that the LXX/SP reading is more original and the MT has been changed.

This is especially important for the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11, which we'll examine in Chapters 16 and 17. In those genealogies, the numbers differ dramatically between the three witnesses (LXX, MT, SP), and there is compelling evidence that the MT's numbers were deliberately reduced. Where the SP agrees with the LXX — as it does in a number of key entries — this provides independent confirmation that the MT's numbers have been altered.³⁷

Seder Olam

The Seder Olam (Hebrew for "Order of the World") is a Jewish chronological work traditionally attributed to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, a prominent rabbinic scholar of the second century AD — a student of Rabbi Akiba. It is the oldest known rabbinic chronological work, and it attempts to lay out the entire history of the world from creation to the second century AD based on the biblical text.³⁸

Why does this obscure rabbinic text matter for our study? Because several scholars — including S. Douglas Woodward, whose work features prominently in this book — have argued that the Seder Olam was not merely a neutral attempt to calculate biblical chronology. They argue it was a deliberate effort to compress the biblical timeline in order to undermine the Christian claim that Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecies "in the fullness of time."

Here's the basic argument. The Seder Olam compresses the chronology of the Persian period by approximately 165 years. It does this by claiming that the entire Persian Empire lasted only 52 years — when in fact, the Persian Empire lasted over 200 years (from Cyrus's conquest of Babylon in 539 BC to Alexander the Great's conquests in the 330s BC). This compression moves the date of Daniel's prophecy of the "seventy weeks" (Daniel 9:24–27) — one of the most important Messianic chronological prophecies in the Old Testament — so that it no longer points to the first century AD. If the Seder Olam's compressed chronology is accepted, the seventy weeks do not terminate in the time of Jesus. The prophecy is effectively defused.³⁹

The Seder Olam will play an important role in Part III of this book, where we examine the evidence for deliberate alteration of the Masoretic Text's chronological data. Understanding what the Seder Olam is and where it came from is essential background for that discussion.

I should note that not all scholars agree that the Seder Olam's chronological compression was motivated by anti-Christian polemic. Some argue that Rabbi Yose was simply working with the data available to him and arrived at different numbers through different interpretive methods. We'll present this objection fairly in Chapter 16. But the cumulative pattern — compression that consistently moves the chronology in a direction unfavorable to Christian claims — is difficult to explain as mere coincidence. When the same community that produced the replacement Greek translations (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion) to replace the Christian Septuagint also produced a chronological scheme that undermined Christian Messianic calculations, the evidence for a deliberate program of textual and chronological revision becomes very strong.

A Few More Terms for the Road

Before we close this chapter, let me briefly define a handful of additional terms that you'll encounter as we go along. These aren't the main terms of the book, but knowing them will help you follow the discussion more easily.

Masorah

The Masorah refers to the system of marginal notes, annotations, and textual markers that the Masoretes added to the Hebrew biblical text. These notes include information about unusual spellings, the number of times a word appears, the middle letter of a book, and other details designed to help scribes copy the text accurately. The Masorah is divided into the Masorah parva (small Masorah — notes in the side margins) and the Masorah magna (large Masorah — notes in the top and bottom margins). While the Masorah demonstrates the extraordinary care the Masoretes took in preserving the text, it's important to remember that the Masoretes were preserving a text that had already been through the second-century rabbinic standardization. They were meticulous guardians of a text that had already been edited.⁴⁰

Homologoumena and Antilegomena

These Greek terms are used in discussions of the canon. Homologoumena (ὁμολογούμενα, "agreed upon") refers to books whose canonical status was universally accepted — no one disputed them. Antilegomena (ἀντιλεγόμενα, "spoken against") refers to books whose canonical status was disputed by at least some authorities. Among the Old Testament books, for instance, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon were antilegomena in some rabbinic discussions — their canonicity was debated. The deuterocanonical books have been antilegomena in the sense that their status has been disputed between Catholic/Orthodox and Protestant traditions. In the New Testament, books like Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude, and Revelation were considered antilegomena by some early authorities.⁴¹

Pseudepigrapha

The pseudepigrapha (from the Greek pseudos, "false," and epigraphē, "inscription/title") are ancient Jewish and Christian writings attributed to famous biblical figures but not accepted as canonical by any major Christian tradition (with a few exceptions — the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, for instance, includes 1 Enoch and Jubilees in its canon). The most important pseudepigraphal works for our study are 1 Enoch (which we'll discuss in Chapter 32) and Jubilees (Chapter 33). These works are valuable historical and theological documents even though they are not part of the biblical canon in most traditions.⁴²

Targum

A Targum (plural: Targumim) is an Aramaic translation or paraphrase of a Hebrew biblical text. After the Babylonian exile, Aramaic gradually replaced Hebrew as the everyday language of the Jewish people. In the synagogues, the Hebrew Scripture would be read aloud, and then a meturgeman (translator) would provide an Aramaic translation for the benefit of the congregation. Over time, these translations were written down and became the Targumim. The Targums are valuable for understanding how ancient Jewish communities interpreted the biblical text, and they sometimes preserve interpretive traditions that shed light on the differences between the LXX and the MT.⁴³

Peshitta

The Peshitta (meaning "simple" or "common" in Syriac) is the standard Syriac translation of the Bible. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic that was spoken in the region around Edessa (modern southeastern Turkey). The Old Testament Peshitta was translated primarily from Hebrew, though some books show influence from the LXX. The Peshitta is another important textual witness that can sometimes help us evaluate differences between the LXX and the MT.⁴⁴

The Roadmap Ahead

With these terms in hand, you're now equipped to follow the arguments in the rest of this book. Let me briefly recap the journey ahead.

In Part I (Chapters 1–5, which we are now completing), we've laid the foundation. We've introduced the Septuagint, the deuterocanonical books, the Dead Sea Scrolls as an independent witness, and the key terms and concepts you'll need.

In Part II (Chapters 6–11), we'll build the case that the Septuagint was the Bible of the apostles and the early church. We'll look at how the New Testament quotes the Old Testament — and show that the apostles overwhelmingly used the Septuagint, not the Hebrew text behind our modern Bibles. We'll examine specific passages where the NT follows the LXX against the MT, and we'll explore how the early church fathers understood and used the Greek Bible.

In Part III (Chapters 12–18), we'll examine the evidence for deliberate corruption of the Masoretic Text. We'll investigate the role of Rabbi Akiba and the Bar Kokhba Revolt in driving the rabbinic reaction against the Septuagint. We'll look at the replacement translations (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion). We'll examine specific Messianic passages where the LXX and MT diverge. And we'll dive deep into the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11, where the evidence for deliberate alteration is strongest.

In Part IV (Chapters 19–27), we'll turn to the deuterocanonical books and build the case for their inclusion in the canon. We'll look at their use in Second Temple Judaism, their influence on the New Testament, and the specific theological contributions of each book. We'll examine the great debate between Jerome and Augustine over the Old Testament canon.

In Part V (Chapters 28–31), we'll trace the history of the deuterocanon's removal from Protestant Bibles — from the Reformation to the Bible societies — and we'll assess the theological consequences of that removal.

In Part VI (Chapters 32–34), we'll examine additional witnesses: 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and other disputed books, and we'll present the cumulative Septuagint priority argument.

In Part VII (Chapters 35–36), we'll bring everything together in a final synthesis, examining the prophetic and Messianic texts in the deuterocanon and offering our conclusion.

It's a long journey, but I promise you it's a rewarding one. What we'll discover together may change the way you read your Bible — and it will almost certainly deepen your appreciation for the richness and complexity of the Word of God.

I should say one more thing before we close this chapter. Some readers may worry that examining the textual history of the Bible will undermine their confidence in it. I want to assure you that the opposite is true. When we study the manuscript evidence carefully — when we compare the Septuagint, the Masoretic Text, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the other witnesses — what we find is not a Bible that falls apart under scrutiny. We find a Bible that has been remarkably well preserved across thousands of years, in multiple languages, by diverse communities. Yes, there are differences between the textual traditions. Yes, some of those differences are significant. But the core message — the story of God's love for His creation, His promises to Israel, the coming of the Messiah, the hope of resurrection and eternal life — shines through every textual tradition with extraordinary clarity and consistency.

What this book argues is not that we can't trust our Bibles. It argues that we can trust them even more if we're willing to look at all the evidence — including the evidence from the Septuagint and the deuterocanonical books that most Protestants have never been taught. God has given us a rich treasury of textual witnesses. We should not be afraid to use them all.

Let's move forward.