Chapter 6

The New Testament's Old Testament

How the Apostles Quoted the Septuagint

Here is a question that might surprise you: When the apostles opened their Scriptures to preach, teach, and write — what Bible were they using? If you grew up in a Protestant church, you probably assume they were reading from the Hebrew Old Testament — more or less the same text that sits behind your English Bible today. But the evidence tells a very different story. And understanding that story changes everything about how we think about the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the relationship between them.

In this chapter, I want to walk you through one of the most important — and most overlooked — facts in all of biblical studies. It's a fact that, once you see it, you simply can't unsee. Here it is: the overwhelming majority of Old Testament citations in the New Testament follow the Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament — rather than the Hebrew text that later became the Masoretic Text. This single fact demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the LXX was the primary Bible of the apostles and the early church. And it has profound implications for how we should regard the Septuagint today.

The World the Apostles Lived In

To understand why the apostles quoted the Greek Old Testament, we first need to understand the world they lived in. As we discussed in Chapter 2, Alexander the Great's conquests in the fourth century BC transformed the entire eastern Mediterranean into a Greek-speaking world. By the time Jesus was born, Greek — specifically the common dialect called koinē (κοινή), meaning "common" — was the universal language of commerce, education, and culture across the Roman Empire. It was the English of the ancient world.

This was true even in Palestine. We sometimes imagine first-century Israel as an entirely Aramaic-speaking society, but the reality was far more complex. Palestine was thoroughly multilingual. Aramaic was the everyday spoken language for many Jews. Hebrew was the sacred language of the Temple and the synagogue, though by this point it had largely become a scholarly and liturgical language rather than a language of daily conversation. And Greek was everywhere — on inscriptions, in government documents, in trade, and in the synagogues of the Diaspora. Martin Hengel's massive study Judaism and Hellenism demonstrated conclusively that Greek culture and language had penetrated deeply into Palestinian Judaism — even in Jerusalem itself — centuries before Christ.¹

Consider the evidence from the New Testament itself. The apostles had both Semitic and Greek names — Saul/Paul, Simon/Peter, Levi/Matthew, John/Mark, Joseph/Justus.² Paul wrote all his letters in Greek, even to congregations that included Jewish believers. The Gospels were composed in Greek. The entire New Testament — every book of it — was written in Greek. And when the New Testament authors quoted the Old Testament, they overwhelmingly quoted it in its Greek form: the Septuagint.

This shouldn't surprise us. The Septuagint had been in wide circulation for over two centuries by the time of Christ. As Natalio Fernández Marcos observed, the use of the LXX as Holy Scripture was practically as old as the church itself.³ Martin Hengel put the point even more bluntly: the LXX was the Bible of the earliest Christians. Møgens Müller — a professor at the University of Copenhagen — went so far as to call the Septuagint The First Bible of the Church, which was the title of his well-known book on the subject.⁴

The Numbers: How Often Does the NT Quote the LXX?

So let's look at the evidence. How often does the New Testament actually quote the Septuagint? The answer is: almost all the time.

Scholars have counted approximately 300 or more direct Old Testament quotations in the New Testament — that is, places where a NT author explicitly cites an OT passage, often introduced by a formula like "it is written" or "the Scripture says" or "the prophet Isaiah said." The exact number depends on how strictly you define a "quotation" versus an "allusion," and scholars have proposed different counts. But the trend is unmistakable.

Steve Moyise, in his study of the Septuagint in the New Testament, estimated that of approximately 316 quotations of the OT in the NT, over half are cases where the Greek Old Testament is in substantial agreement with the Masoretic Text — meaning both traditions give roughly the same reading, and the NT follows this shared reading.⁵ That's the largest category: passages where the LXX and the Hebrew agree, and the NT follows this common reading. But notice: even in this largest category, the NT author is still quoting the Greek form — which tells us the Greek text was the one open on the desk, so to speak.

The really significant cases — the ones that reveal the most about the apostles' Bible — are the passages where the LXX and the Hebrew disagree, and the NT author clearly follows one against the other. In these cases, the NT authors overwhelmingly side with the Septuagint. As Lanier and Ross note in The Septuagint, the quantification of these agreements has been attempted by multiple scholars, and while exact numbers vary depending on methodology, the overall pattern strongly favors the LXX.⁶

Fernández Marcos similarly noted the dominance of the Septuagint in NT quotation patterns.⁷ And Karen Jobes and Moisés Silva, in their important work Invitation to the Septuagint, provided further analysis confirming this pattern.⁸ The evidence is not in dispute among scholars. The only debate is over what it means — and we'll get to that shortly.

Four Patterns of NT Quotation

To understand how the New Testament uses the Old Testament, it helps to sort the quotations into four categories. Lanier and Ross identified these four patterns in their analysis, and they provide a helpful framework for thinking about the data.⁹ Let me walk you through each one, with examples.

Category A: The NT Follows the LXX and the Hebrew Together

This is the largest category — quotations where the Septuagint and the Hebrew agree (or nearly agree), and the NT follows this shared reading. In these cases, you can't tell from the NT quotation alone which text the author was using, because both say essentially the same thing.

A good example is the quotation of Leviticus 19:18 — "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" — which appears in Matthew 19:19, Mark 12:31, and Romans 13:9. The Hebrew and the Greek agree closely on this text, and the NT follows the shared reading. It's a straightforward quotation that doesn't tell us much about which text the author was working from.

Another example is Romans 4:3, where Paul quotes Genesis 15:6: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." Again, the Hebrew and the LXX agree closely, and Paul follows this shared tradition. He introduces it with the word graphē (γραφή, "Scripture") — the same word used throughout the NT to refer to the authoritative writings of Israel.

Another example is the quotation of Exodus 20:12 — "Honor your father and your mother" — cited in Ephesians 6:2–3 and elsewhere. Once more, the LXX and the Hebrew agree closely, and the NT follows the shared reading.

These cases are unsurprising. The Septuagint translators generally did an excellent job of rendering the Hebrew into Greek (as we discussed in Chapter 2). So the majority of OT passages read very similarly in both traditions. The NT authors could have been using either — but given that they were writing in Greek, to Greek-speaking audiences, the natural assumption is that they were working from the Greek text. And notice something important here: even in Category A — where both traditions agree — the NT authors are writing in Greek. They are using Greek vocabulary, Greek sentence structure, and Greek idioms drawn from the LXX. The Greek Old Testament is always the medium through which they access the Old Testament, even when the Hebrew original would say roughly the same thing. This tells us something about their working habits: the LXX was the text they had in front of them, the text they knew by heart, the text they reached for instinctively when they wanted to cite Scripture.

We should also mention that many NT allusions — as opposed to direct quotations — also follow the LXX. An allusion is a reference to an OT passage without a formal quotation. The NT is filled with hundreds of allusions to the OT, and scholars like Richard Hays have shown that these allusions consistently echo the Greek form of the OT, not the Hebrew. This means the LXX's influence on the NT extends far beyond the passages where an author explicitly says "it is written." It permeates the entire fabric of NT thought and language.

Category B: The NT Follows the LXX Against the Hebrew

This is the most important category for our argument — and it's the one that reveals the most about the apostles' Bible. In these passages, the LXX and the Hebrew disagree, and the NT author clearly follows the Septuagint against the Hebrew. These are the cases where the evidence is most decisive.

A striking example is the quotation of Psalm 95 (94 in the LXX numbering) in Hebrews 3:7–11. The author of Hebrews quotes this psalm at length, and he follows the LXX text closely. In the key phrase about the wilderness rebellion, the Hebrew text uses the proper nouns "Meribah" and "Massah" — the names of specific places in Israel's wilderness wanderings. But the LXX translates these as common nouns: parapikrasmos (παραπικρασμός, "rebellion") and peirasmos (πειρασμός, "testing"). The author of Hebrews follows the LXX's common nouns, not the Hebrew's proper nouns.¹⁰ He attributes this text to "the Holy Spirit" (Heb 3:7) — treating the LXX wording as the very words of God.

Another example — and I'll just preview this briefly here, since we'll study it in great depth in Chapter 9 — is Acts 15:16–17, where James quotes Amos 9:11–12 at the Jerusalem Council. James's entire argument for welcoming the Gentiles into the church depends on the LXX reading. The LXX of Amos 9:12 reads: "that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord" — hopōs an ekzētēsōsin hoi kataloipoi tōn anthrōpōn ton kyrion (ὅπως ἂν ἐκζητήσωσιν οἱ κατάλοιποι τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸν κύριον). But the Hebrew reads something very different: "that they may possess the remnant of Edom" — lema'an yirshu et she'erit edom (לְמַ֨עַן יִֽירְשׁ֜וּ אֶת־שְׁאֵרִ֤ית אֱדוֹם). The two readings are completely different in meaning. The LXX speaks of Gentiles seeking God; the Hebrew speaks of Israel conquering Edom. James builds his case for Gentile inclusion on the LXX reading. If the Hebrew reading were the only one available, James's argument would not exist.¹¹ We'll explore this passage fully in Chapter 9.

Perhaps the most dramatic example — which we'll treat at length in Chapter 10 — is Hebrews 10:5, quoting Psalm 40:6 (LXX Psalm 39:7). The LXX reads: "a body you have prepared for me" — sōma de katērtisō moi (σῶμα δὲ κατηρτίσω μοι). The Hebrew reads: "ears you have dug for me" — oznaim karita li (אָזְנַ֣יִם כָּרִ֣יתָ לִּ֑י). These are not even close. The author of Hebrews builds his entire argument about Christ's incarnation and sacrificial offering on the LXX reading — that the Father prepared a body for the Son so that He could offer Himself as the ultimate sacrifice (Heb 10:5–10). As S. Douglas Woodward emphatically argues, this represents one of the most striking differences between the two textual traditions — the LXX provides a clear reference to the incarnation of God in the flesh, while the Hebrew reading about "ears" eliminates the incarnational reference entirely.¹² If the Hebrew is correct and the LXX wrong, one of the most important Christological passages in the entire New Testament collapses.

One more preview: Deuteronomy 32:43 LXX, quoted in Hebrews 1:6. The LXX reads: "Let all God's angels worship him" — proskynesatōsan autō pantes angeloi theou (προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι θεοῦ). This phrase is entirely absent from the standard Masoretic Text. The author of Hebrews uses this verse to establish the superiority of Christ over the angels — a foundational argument of the entire epistle. A Dead Sea Scroll manuscript (4QDeuteronomy) supports the LXX reading, confirming that this was not invented by the Greek translators but reflects an ancient Hebrew original that the MT later dropped.¹³ We'll examine this in detail in Chapter 8.

Category C: The NT Follows Neither the LXX nor the Hebrew Exactly, but Is Closer to the LXX

In some quotations, the NT author doesn't follow either the LXX or the Hebrew exactly — he adapts the text, perhaps combining two passages or paraphrasing for his argument. But when we compare the NT wording with both the LXX and the MT, it's clearly closer to the Greek.

A good example is Romans 9:27, where Paul quotes Isaiah 10:22. His wording is meaningfully different from both the Hebrew and the LXX, but the overall shape of his quotation is closer to the Greek tradition than to the Hebrew.¹⁴ This suggests that Paul was working from the LXX as his base text and then adapting it for his theological argument.

This pattern appears throughout the Pauline letters. Paul quotes Scripture frequently, and when he modifies an OT text — shortening it, combining it with another passage, or adapting it for his audience — the base text he is modifying is almost always the Septuagint, not the Hebrew. J. Ross Wagner demonstrated this convincingly in his study of Paul's use of Isaiah in Romans, showing that Paul's scriptural reasoning was grounded in the Greek text of Isaiah.¹⁵

Another important example in this category is Paul's use of Hosea 2:23 and 1:10 in Romans 9:25–26. Paul's quotation doesn't perfectly match either the LXX or the MT, but his wording and his sequence of the passages align more closely with the Greek tradition. Wagner showed in careful detail how Paul was working within the Greek Isaiah — not merely borrowing isolated proof-texts, but thinking theologically through the Greek text and drawing out its implications for the Gentile mission. This is significant: Paul wasn't just translating Hebrew ideas into Greek for convenience. He was doing his theology in the Greek Old Testament.

We should note that this category is quite important for understanding how the apostles actually used Scripture. Modern readers sometimes imagine that the apostles were like seminary professors looking up passages in their critical editions and carefully comparing texts. The reality was much more organic. The apostles knew the Scriptures by heart — they had memorized them, meditated on them, and preached from them for years. And the text they knew by heart was the Greek text. When they quoted from memory, their memory was shaped by the LXX. Even when their quotations weren't word-for-word matches with any known manuscript, the underlying pattern was unmistakably Greek.

Ancient standards for quotation were also quite different from modern standards. As Charles Hill has observed, the main goal in antiquity was not to provide a word-for-word replica of a quoted source but to capture its essence accurately. By the standards of their day, the NT authors' quotation precision was actually quite high — higher than often granted by modern critics. And the text they were being precise about was the LXX.

Category D: The NT Follows the Hebrew Against the LXX

Fairness requires us to acknowledge that there are cases where a NT author follows the Hebrew text rather than the LXX. These exist — but they are a minority.

The clearest example is Matthew 2:15, where Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1: "Out of Egypt I called my son." The Hebrew reads "my son" (beni, בְּנִ֑י), but the LXX reads "my children" (ta tekna autou, τὰ τέκνα αὐτοῦ). Matthew follows the Hebrew's singular "my son" — which suits his Christological purpose, since he's applying this text to Jesus as God's Son.¹⁶

This isn't surprising. Matthew was writing for a Jewish audience and appears to have had access to both the Hebrew and Greek traditions. Some scholars have noted that Matthew's so-called "fulfillment quotations" — the ones he introduces with "this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet" — tend to be closer to the Hebrew than his other OT quotations, which more consistently follow the LXX. This suggests that Matthew may have consulted Hebrew texts for certain key prophecy-fulfillment citations, while using the LXX as his default Bible for everything else.¹⁷

But the critical point is this: even accounting for all the cases where a NT author follows the Hebrew, the overall pattern overwhelmingly favors the LXX. The Category D cases are a small minority. And even in Matthew — the most "Hebrew-leaning" of the Gospel writers — many of his quotations still follow the Greek.

How Individual NT Authors Used the LXX

Let's look briefly at how specific NT authors used the Septuagint. The patterns vary somewhat from author to author, but the overall trend is consistent.

Matthew

Matthew is the most complex case. As I mentioned, he tends to mix LXX and Hebrew traditions. His "fulfillment quotations" sometimes lean toward the Hebrew, but his other OT citations generally follow the LXX. This makes sense for a Jewish Christian writing to a Jewish audience — he would have been familiar with both textual traditions. Even when Matthew's quotations lean toward the Hebrew, he is still writing in Greek and often shows the influence of the LXX in his vocabulary and phrasing. As Timothy Michael Law observed, scholars have tried with statistical precision to determine how often Matthew uses the Septuagint versus the Hebrew, but this is nearly impossible to calculate with certainty because many citations were adapted from Mark and other sources, and when Matthew modified them, he sometimes nudged them toward the Hebrew form.¹⁸

Mark

Mark's OT quotations consistently follow the LXX. This is unsurprising — Mark was writing for a Gentile, Roman audience that would have known the Scriptures primarily in Greek, if at all. Mark's Gospel contains fewer explicit OT quotations than Matthew, but when he does quote Scripture, the Greek Old Testament is clearly his source.

Luke

Luke is one of the most consistent users of the Septuagint in the entire New Testament. This makes perfect sense: Luke was a Greek-speaking Gentile (Col 4:14), writing for a Greek-speaking audience. His Gospel and the book of Acts are saturated with LXX language and quotations. In fact, Luke's literary style in certain passages — especially the birth narratives in Luke 1–2 — deliberately imitates the style of the Septuagint, giving his writing the feel of the Greek Old Testament. It's as if Luke wanted his readers to feel that the story of Jesus was a continuation of the story told in the Greek Scriptures.

As Law noted, the impact the Septuagint had on the language and theology of Luke's writings is profound. The vocabulary, the phrasing, the theological concepts — Luke breathed the air of the Septuagint.¹⁹

John

John is an interesting case. His Gospel shows awareness of both the Greek and Hebrew traditions. Some of his quotations follow the LXX, while others appear to reflect an independent translation or knowledge of the Hebrew. This has led scholars to a range of conclusions about John's textual sources.²⁰ But even in John, the predominant influence is the Greek Old Testament. The theology of John's prologue — "In the beginning was the Word" (Logos, λόγος) — is deeply shaped by the LXX's wisdom tradition, particularly the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach (as we'll explore in Chapters 21 and 22).

Paul

Paul is the most prolific user of the Old Testament in the NT, and he overwhelmingly quotes the Septuagint. This is significant because Paul was trained as a Pharisee under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3) and was thoroughly fluent in Hebrew. If anyone had reason to quote from the Hebrew text, it was Paul. Yet he consistently quotes the LXX — even when the LXX disagrees with the Hebrew.

Let me give you just a few examples of Paul's LXX dependence to illustrate the point. In Romans 3:10–18, Paul strings together a chain of OT quotations to prove that all people — Jew and Gentile alike — are under sin. This chain includes material from Psalms 14, 5, 140, 10, and Isaiah 59, among others. The entire catena follows the Greek text. Most notably, Paul draws from Psalm 14:1–3 — and his version includes extended material that is present in the LXX of this psalm but is absent from the Masoretic Text. We'll treat this passage in detail in Chapter 9, but the point here is simple: Paul's foundational argument for universal sinfulness in his most important epistle depends on the LXX text.

In Romans 11:34, Paul asks, "Who has known the mind of the Lord?" He's quoting Isaiah 40:13, and he follows the LXX's noun kyriou (νοῦν κυρίου, "mind of the Lord"). The Hebrew, however, reads differently: ruah YHWH (רוּחַ יהוה, "Spirit of the LORD"). As Woodward observes, this is a significant difference — the NT and LXX speak of God's mind, while the MT speaks of God's Spirit, a different theological concept.³¹ Paul follows the LXX.

And then there is Paul's triumphant declaration in 1 Corinthians 15:54–55, where he combines Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14 to celebrate the resurrection: "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" Paul's wording matches the LXX in both quotations. The MT of Isaiah 25:8 is similar in general meaning but uses different vocabulary. The MT of Hosea 13:14 is even more different — and some scholars argue the Hebrew verse is actually a threat of judgment rather than a promise of victory, which would make Paul's use entirely dependent on the LXX's rendering. We'll examine these passages in detail in Chapter 10.

Wagner's detailed study of Paul's use of Isaiah in Romans showed that Paul was deeply engaged with the Greek text of Isaiah — not just casually quoting it, but thinking within it, building arguments from its specific Greek wording, and drawing theological conclusions that depend on the LXX's rendering.²¹ David Lincicum reached a similar conclusion about Paul's engagement with Deuteronomy.²²

This is remarkable. Here was a man trained in the Hebrew Scriptures from childhood, who sat at the feet of one of the greatest rabbis of his generation — and when he wrote to the churches, he consistently opened the Greek Bible. Why? The most likely explanation is simple: Paul believed the Greek Septuagint was a faithful and authoritative rendering of God's Word, suitable for teaching, preaching, and theological argumentation.

The Author of Hebrews

The epistle to the Hebrews may be the most LXX-dependent book in the entire New Testament. Richard Longenecker observed that nowhere in the NT is the listing of biblical quotations more difficult than in Hebrews, because of the sheer quantity of citations and the author's tendency to combine, paraphrase, and adapt them.²³ But virtually all of these quotations follow the LXX. The author builds entire theological arguments on LXX readings that have no counterpart in the Hebrew text — as we saw with Hebrews 10:5 ("a body you have prepared for me") and Hebrews 1:6 ("Let all God's angels worship him"). We'll devote significant attention to Hebrews in Chapter 10.

What makes the author of Hebrews so significant for our argument is that he was clearly a sophisticated theologian — one of the most skilled exegetes in the entire NT. He wasn't naively quoting a translation because he didn't know any better. He was carefully, deliberately constructing theological arguments — arguments about the incarnation, about the superiority of Christ over the angels, about the new covenant replacing the old, about the heavenly tabernacle and Christ's eternal priesthood — and he was doing so entirely from the Septuagint. Martin Karrer, in his study of the relationship between Hebrews and the Septuagint, showed how deeply this author's theology was shaped by the specific wording of the Greek OT.³⁴

The letter to the Hebrews has a special poignancy for our argument because of its prosopological hermeneutic — a fancy term for the author's practice of identifying different speakers within the OT quotations. He hears the Father speaking to the Son (Heb 1:5), the Son speaking to the Father (Heb 10:5–7), and the Holy Spirit speaking to the church (Heb 3:7–11). In each case, the divine speakers are speaking the words of the Septuagint. The author treats the LXX wording as the very voice of God — not merely as a human translation, but as the medium through which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit continue to address the church. That is a remarkably high view of the Greek Old Testament.

The General Epistles

The LXX's influence extends throughout the General Epistles as well. First Peter, for example, draws heavily on the Septuagint. Karen Jobes demonstrated in her study of the Septuagint textual tradition in 1 Peter that Peter's OT quotations consistently follow the LXX — including passages where the Greek diverges from the Hebrew.³⁵ The epistle of James, too, shows deep dependence on the LXX, particularly in its wisdom teaching that echoes Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon (as we'll see in later chapters). And Jude — who quotes 1 Enoch in verses 14–15 — operates entirely within the world of the Greek Jewish Scriptures and Second Temple literature.

What the Apostles' Bible Tells Us About Timothy's Bible

I want to pause here and draw attention to a point that I think is often missed but is enormously significant. It concerns one of the most famous verses in the entire Bible about Scripture itself.

In 2 Timothy 3:15–16, Paul writes to his protégé Timothy:

"...from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." (ESV)

This is the passage that gives us the precious doctrine of inspiration — theopneustos (θεόπνευστος), "God-breathed." All Scripture is God-breathed. But here's the question that too few people ask: What Scripture is Paul talking about?

This point has radical implications. When Paul affirmed the divine inspiration of Scripture, the Scripture he and Timothy both knew and used was the Septuagint. This doesn't mean Hebrew Scripture was uninspired — of course not. But it means the LXX was included within the scope of Paul's affirmation. The apostle was not making a theoretical statement about some hypothetical original text that no one had access to. He was making a statement about the actual Scriptures that Timothy — and the churches — were reading. And those Scriptures were in Greek.

How the Apostles Taught from the Scriptures

The book of Acts gives us several vivid pictures of the apostles teaching from the Scriptures — and in every case, the evidence points to the LXX as their text.

In Acts 17:2, we read that Paul went into the synagogue in Thessalonica and "reasoned with them from the Scriptures." In Acts 18:28, Apollos "powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus." In Acts 8:32–35, the Ethiopian eunuch is reading from the prophet Isaiah — and the text he's reading is clearly the Greek version, since he is a Greek-speaking Gentile reading a Greek scroll. Philip "beginning with this Scripture... told him the good news about Jesus."

In every case, the "Scriptures" in question were the Greek Scriptures. The early church was a Greek-speaking movement, and its Bible was the Greek Bible. This was not a temporary convenience or a second-best option. It was the providential means by which God made His Word available to the nations.

Think about what was happening in these scenes. In Thessalonica, Paul went into the synagogue for three consecutive Sabbaths and "reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead" (Acts 17:2–3). He was opening the scroll of the Greek Old Testament and showing his audience — many of whom were Greek-speaking Jews and God-fearing Gentiles — that Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecies. His arguments worked because his audience knew the same Greek text he was using. They could follow along. They could check his work. And many of them were persuaded — "some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women" (Acts 17:4). The LXX was the shared text that made this missionary preaching possible.

In Berea, the situation was even more telling. Luke records that the Bereans "received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11). The word Luke uses for "examining" is anakrinontes (ἀνακρίνοντες) — a legal term meaning to investigate or interrogate evidence. The Bereans were doing serious textual investigation. And they were doing it from the Greek Scriptures. The LXX was the text they were "searching" to verify Paul's claims about Jesus.

In Ephesus, Apollos "powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus" (Acts 18:28). Again, the Scriptures in view are the Greek Scriptures. Apollos was an Alexandrian — from the very city where the Septuagint was born. He was "an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures" (Acts 18:24). His competence was in the LXX.

The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 provides perhaps the most vivid illustration of all. Here was a high-ranking official from the court of the Candace (queen) of Ethiopia, sitting in his chariot reading from the prophet Isaiah. He was reading a Greek scroll — a copy of the LXX. Philip "beginning with this Scripture... told him the good news about Jesus" (Acts 8:35). The gospel was proclaimed through the Septuagint. The eunuch believed and was baptized. The LXX was the textual bridge that carried the good news from the Jewish Scriptures to a Gentile heart.

As Calvin aptly described it, the spread of the Greek Old Testament was a remarkable work of God's providence, keeping knowledge of Israel's Scriptures alive and accessible even as knowledge of Hebrew diminished in the wider world.²⁴ God was preparing the way for the gospel. The Septuagint was not an accident of history — it was a divine provision for the church's mission.

The Significance of NT Attribution Formulas

One more piece of evidence deserves attention. When the NT authors quote the Old Testament, they introduce their quotations with formulas that ascribe the highest possible authority to the text. They say things like "it is written" (gegraptai, γέγραπται), "the Scripture says" (hē graphē legei), "the Holy Spirit says" (Heb 3:7), "the Lord said by the prophet" (Matt 2:15), and "David, moved by the Holy Spirit, declared" (Mark 12:36).

Here's the key observation: these attribution formulas appear across all four categories of quotation — including Category B, where the NT follows the LXX against the Hebrew. As Lanier and Ross carefully demonstrated, the NT authors attributed the same divine authority to quotations drawn from the Greek text that they attributed to quotations matching the Hebrew.²⁵ They didn't distinguish between "reliable" quotations (the ones matching the Hebrew) and "less reliable" quotations (the ones matching only the LXX). To them, the LXX text was Scripture — full stop.

Consider Acts 1:16–20, where Peter quotes Psalm 69:25 (LXX 68:26). The quotation aligns more closely with the Old Greek than with the Hebrew. And Peter introduces it with the most comprehensive attribution formula in the entire NT: "the graphē... which the Holy Spirit spoke... by the mouth of David... in the Book of Psalms." Every possible seal of divine authority is applied — to a quotation that follows the Greek, not the Hebrew.²⁶

The LXX Shaped NT Vocabulary and Theology

The influence of the Septuagint on the New Testament goes far beyond direct quotations. The entire theological vocabulary of the NT was shaped by the LXX. When the NT authors needed words for concepts like "righteousness," "salvation," "covenant," "atonement," "mercy," and "glory," they reached for the words the LXX translators had already established as the standard Greek equivalents of the Hebrew theological terms.

Think about some of the most important words in NT theology:

Christos (Χριστός, "Christ," "Anointed One") — this is the LXX's standard translation of the Hebrew mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ, "Messiah"). When the NT calls Jesus "the Christ," it is using the LXX's vocabulary. The word Christos doesn't exist as a theological title apart from the LXX. It was the Greek translators who turned the Hebrew concept of "the anointed one" into the Greek title that would become the most recognizable name in human history.

Ekklēsia (ἐκκλησία, "church," "assembly") — this word was used in the LXX to translate the Hebrew qahal (קָהָל, "assembly of Israel"). When Jesus said "I will build my church" (Matt 16:18), He was using a word already loaded with LXX meaning — the gathered people of God. For His Greek-speaking hearers, this word immediately connected the new community of believers with the ancient assembly of Israel in the wilderness. The church didn't spring from nowhere — it was the continuation and fulfillment of the qahal that Moses had gathered at Sinai. And that connection was made possible by the LXX's vocabulary.

Diathēkē (διαθήκη, "covenant") — the LXX's rendering of the Hebrew berith (בְּרִית). Every time the NT speaks of the "new covenant" (kainē diathēkē), it is building on the LXX's covenantal vocabulary. Interestingly, the Greek word diathēkē can also mean "testament" or "last will" — and the author of Hebrews exploits this double meaning in Hebrews 9:15–17 to argue that Christ's death activated the new covenant like a testator's death activates a will. This theological argument works only in Greek — it depends on the LXX's choice of diathēkē over other possible Greek words for "covenant" (like synthēkē, which means a bilateral agreement). The LXX's vocabulary choice made this theological argument possible.

Nomos (νόμος, "law") — the LXX's translation of torah (תּוֹרָה). The word torah has a broader meaning than the English word "law" — it means "instruction" or "teaching." The LXX's choice of nomos shaped how the NT authors (especially Paul) discussed the relationship between law and grace. Some scholars have argued that the more legalistic connotations of nomos may have contributed to Paul's sharp law/grace dichotomy — an argument that would have landed differently if Paul had been working with the Hebrew concept of torah as "instruction." Whether or not that specific claim is correct, the broader point stands: the LXX's vocabulary shaped the NT's theological categories.

Doxa (δόξα, "glory") — the LXX's rendering of kavod (כָּבוֹד). When John says "we have seen his glory" (John 1:14), the word doxa carries the weight of its LXX usage — the visible splendor of God's presence. In classical Greek, doxa primarily meant "opinion" or "reputation." It was the LXX translators who gave it the richer theological meaning of divine radiance and splendor. Every time we read "glory" in the NT, we are reading a word that the Septuagint transformed.

Hilastērion (ἱλαστήριον, "mercy seat" or "propitiation") — used in the LXX for the kapporet (כַּפֹּרֶת), the gold cover of the Ark of the Covenant where God's presence dwelt and where atonement was made. When Paul says in Romans 3:25 that God put forward Christ Jesus as a hilastērion, he is drawing directly on LXX vocabulary. Christ is the true mercy seat — the place where God's wrath is turned away and reconciliation is achieved. Without the LXX background, this profound theological statement loses much of its depth.

Pneuma (πνεῦμα, "spirit" or "Spirit") — the LXX's rendering of ruah (רוּחַ). The NT's entire pneumatology — its doctrine of the Holy Spirit — is expressed through LXX vocabulary. The Spirit who "hovered over the waters" in Genesis 1:2 (LXX: pneuma theou, πνεῦμα θεοῦ) is the same Spirit who fills believers in Acts 2.

As Adolf Deissmann famously said, a single hour lovingly devoted to the text of the Septuagint will further our understanding of the Pauline epistles more than a whole day spent over a commentary.²⁷ The LXX was not just a source of quotations for the NT authors — it was the linguistic world in which they thought, preached, and wrote.

Addressing Common Objections

Now, I want to be fair. Not everyone agrees with the conclusions I'm drawing here. Some scholars and Bible teachers have raised objections to the idea that the LXX was the apostles' primary Bible — or at least to the idea that this fact has the implications I'm suggesting. Let me address the most important objections honestly.

Objection 1: "But Jesus Spoke Aramaic and Read Hebrew, So He Used the Hebrew Bible"

This is probably the most common objection, and at first glance it seems reasonable. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, spoke Aramaic as His daily language, and presumably read from Hebrew scrolls in the synagogue (see Luke 4:16–21, where Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah). So doesn't that mean the Hebrew text, not the Greek, was Jesus' Bible?

There are several problems with this objection.

First, Jesus lived in Galilee — a region the prophet Isaiah called "Galilee of the Gentiles" (Isa 9:1, quoted in Matt 4:15). Galilee was a thoroughly multilingual area. Archaeological evidence from Sepphoris and other Galilean cities shows extensive use of Greek alongside Aramaic and Hebrew. Jesus almost certainly knew Greek. He conversed with the Roman centurion (Matt 8:5–13), with Pontius Pilate (John 18:33–38), and with the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:26) — all of whom would have spoken Greek. While we can't know for certain, it's entirely plausible that Jesus could read Greek as well as Hebrew and Aramaic.

Second, even if Jesus sometimes quoted from Hebrew scrolls in the synagogue, the Gospel writers — writing in Greek for Greek-speaking audiences — consistently rendered His OT quotations in the form of the Septuagint. This means that the church received Jesus' Scripture quotations in their LXX form. The NT as we have it is a Greek document, and its OT quotations follow the Greek OT. Whatever language Jesus may have used in a particular synagogue service, the written record of His teaching that God preserved for the church is in Greek — and it follows the LXX.

Third, and most importantly: even if Jesus personally read Hebrew, that doesn't change the fact that the NT authors — the men God inspired to write the documents that would become the church's authoritative Scriptures — used the LXX. The church's canon is the Greek NT, and the OT that stands behind the NT is the Greek OT.

Objection 2: "The NT Authors Were Just Using the Translation Their Audience Would Recognize — It Doesn't Mean They Regarded It as Superior"

This objection suggests that the apostles used the LXX purely for practical reasons — it was the translation their congregations knew — without making any statement about its reliability or authority. It's the ancient equivalent of a pastor using the NIV because that's what's in the pews, without endorsing the NIV as the best translation.

There's a kernel of truth here. The apostles were writing for Greek-speaking audiences, and it makes sense that they would quote the Greek OT. But this objection falls apart when we look at Category B — the passages where the NT author's entire theological argument depends on a reading found in the LXX but not in the Hebrew.

Consider Hebrews 10:5 again. The author's argument about Christ's incarnation and sacrificial offering depends entirely on the words "a body you have prepared for me." That's the LXX reading. The Hebrew says "ears you have dug for me" — which doesn't support the argument at all. If the author of Hebrews was merely using the LXX for convenience but knew the Hebrew was "really" what the psalm said, then his argument in Hebrews 10:5–10 is built on a translation error. Is that what we want to say about an inspired apostle?

Or consider James at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). His argument for welcoming the Gentiles hinges on the LXX of Amos 9:12: "that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord." The Hebrew says "that they may possess the remnant of Edom." If James was merely using a convenient translation but the Hebrew was "the real text," then the Jerusalem Council — one of the most important events in church history — made its decision based on a translation error. That seems like an extraordinary thing to attribute to the apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The convenience explanation simply cannot account for the theological weight the apostles placed on LXX-specific readings. When inspired NT authors build divine truth on the specific wording of the Greek OT, they are implicitly affirming that wording as theologically authoritative.

Objection 3: "Quoting a Text Doesn't Make It Canonical or Inspired"

This is a more sophisticated objection, and there's an important truth in it that we need to acknowledge. As Lanier pointed out in The Authority of the Septuagint, the mere act of quoting a source does not automatically confer canonical or inspired status on that source. Paul quoted the Greek poet Aratus (Acts 17:28), and Jude apparently quoted 1 Enoch (Jude 14–15), but that doesn't make Aratus or 1 Enoch inspired Scripture.²⁸

Fair enough. But there's a crucial difference between quoting a pagan poet once for an illustrative point and systematically building one's theological arguments on a specific textual tradition across hundreds of quotations. The apostles didn't quote the LXX as an occasional illustration; they used it as their authoritative Scripture — introducing it with "it is written," attributing it to the Holy Spirit, and building foundational Christian doctrines on its specific wording. That is a categorically different kind of usage than citing Aratus.

Lanier is right that we need to be careful about what quotation patterns can and cannot prove. A single quotation doesn't prove canonicity. But the cumulative pattern — hundreds of quotations, consistently following the LXX, introduced with the highest attribution formulas, with key theological arguments depending on LXX-specific readings — goes far beyond what can be dismissed as mere convenience. It tells us something profound about how the apostles regarded this text.

What About Textual Plurality?

Before we draw our final conclusions, I want to acknowledge one more important nuance. As Lanier rightly observed in The Authority of the Septuagint, the first-century textual landscape was more complex than a simple "LXX versus MT" binary.²⁹ The Dead Sea Scrolls have shown us that multiple Hebrew textual traditions circulated side by side in the Second Temple period — some closer to what would become the MT, some closer to the Hebrew text behind the LXX, and some independent of both. There was no single, standardized "Hebrew Bible" in the first century.

Similarly, the Septuagint itself was not a monolithic text. Different books had different translators, and the Greek text itself circulated in multiple forms. The NT authors sometimes appear to cite a form of the Greek text that differs from our standard LXX manuscripts — suggesting they may have had access to variant Greek textual traditions.

This complexity is real, and I don't want to oversimplify it. But it actually strengthens rather than weakens the main argument. If the textual landscape was diverse, and if the NT authors could have quoted from multiple Hebrew and Greek traditions, the fact that they chose the Greek so consistently is all the more significant. They were not forced to use the LXX by ignorance of the Hebrew — Paul, at least, was thoroughly trained in Hebrew Scripture. They chose the LXX because they regarded it as a faithful and authoritative witness to God's Word.

And here's the even more significant point: in the cases where the Dead Sea Scrolls provide evidence, they frequently support the LXX reading against the MT. As we explored in Chapter 4, the Scrolls have vindicated the LXX's textual tradition time and again. The LXX was not a loose paraphrase of the Hebrew; it was translated from Hebrew manuscripts that were different from — and in many cases earlier than — the Hebrew manuscripts that eventually became the Masoretic Text.

The Implications: Taking the Septuagint Seriously

So where does all this leave us? Let me draw together the threads of this chapter's argument.

The conclusion is hard to resist: if we want to read the Old Testament the way the apostles read it, we need to take the Septuagint far more seriously than Protestants have traditionally done.

This doesn't mean we should throw away the Hebrew text. The Masoretic Text is an important witness to the Old Testament, and in many passages it preserves excellent readings. But it means we can no longer treat the MT as the only authoritative witness — and certainly not as automatically superior to the LXX. When the NT authors consistently preferred the LXX, and when they built inspired theological arguments on its specific wording, they were telling us something about this text that we ignore at our peril.

Let me put this as plainly as I can. If the apostle Paul — a trained Pharisee, fluent in Hebrew, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit — consistently chose to quote the Greek Old Testament, and if he built central doctrines of the Christian faith on LXX-specific readings, then we cannot dismiss the Septuagint as "just a translation." Something more is going on. At the very least, the LXX preserves readings that are theologically true and divinely intended for the church — even in places where it differs from the Hebrew text that later became standard.

A Note on the Deuterocanon Connection

Before we close this chapter, I want to briefly note one more implication of the apostles' use of the LXX — an implication that connects directly to the second half of this book. The Septuagint that the apostles used did not contain only the books of the Protestant Old Testament. It also contained the deuterocanonical books — Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, among others.

Now, this doesn't automatically prove that the apostles regarded the deuterocanonical books as Scripture. As Lanier has rightly noted, the question of canon is more complex than "whatever was in the LXX is canonical."³² We'll examine this question in much greater detail in Chapters 19–27. But it does mean something important: the apostles' Bible included the deuterocanonical books. When the early Christians received the Scriptures from the apostles, they received a collection that contained these books alongside the protocanonical ones. And when the NT authors show clear verbal parallels with the deuterocanonical books — as we'll demonstrate in Chapter 20 — they are drawing from a Greek scriptural tradition that treated these books as part of the sacred library.

As Gary Michuta argued in his study of the deuterocanon, the New Testament's consistent preference for the Septuagint as its Old Testament text carries implications that extend to the Septuagint's contents. Because the Septuagint of the apostles' day included the deuterocanonical books, the NT's approval of the Septuagint extends, at least implicitly, to the deuterocanon as well.³³ This is not a knockdown argument — but it is a piece of the puzzle that we cannot ignore.

Conclusion: Recovering the Apostles' Bible

Let me close with a personal reflection. When I first began studying the relationship between the Septuagint and the New Testament, I was frankly stunned by the evidence. I had grown up in a Protestant tradition that barely mentioned the LXX — and when it did, it was usually to explain it away or minimize its significance. "It's just a translation," I was told. "The Hebrew is what matters." But the more I studied, the more I realized that this dismissive attitude toward the Septuagint is historically unsustainable. The apostles didn't treat the LXX as "just a translation." They treated it as the Word of God.

I want to be very clear about what I'm not saying. I'm not saying the Hebrew text is unreliable. I'm not saying every LXX reading is superior to every MT reading — that would be just as simplistic as the opposite claim. And I'm not saying Protestants need to abandon their Bibles and replace them with Greek ones. What I am saying is that the Septuagint deserves a dramatically higher place in the life and study of the church than it has been given in the Protestant tradition. The evidence demands it.

Think of it this way. If you were trying to understand the theology of a particular author — say, C. S. Lewis — wouldn't you want to read the books that Lewis read? Wouldn't you want to know which translation of the Bible he used, what commentaries he consulted, and what shaped his thinking? Of course you would. Well, the same principle applies to the apostles. If we want to understand Paul's theology, we need to read the Bible Paul read. If we want to understand the author of Hebrews, we need to understand the text that shaped his thinking. And that text was the Septuagint.

As Woodward put it in his assessment of the Septuagint's significance: the LXX supplied the Old Testament cherished by the first Christians and was quoted almost exclusively by the New Testament authors. Evangelicals have allowed this treasure to be neglected for far too long. It is time we recover it.³⁰

In the chapters that follow, we'll dive deep into the most important specific cases — the passages where the LXX and the MT diverge, where the NT follows the LXX, and where the theological stakes are highest. Chapter 7 will examine the most contested verse in the Old Testament: Isaiah 7:14 and the question of "virgin" versus "young woman." Chapters 8–10 will walk through the key NT citations that follow the LXX against the MT, organized by NT book. Each of these chapters will give us a closer look at specific passages that demonstrate the pattern we've established here.

But I hope that even before we get to those detailed studies, the force of this chapter's argument is clear. The apostles had a Bible. It was in Greek. It was the Septuagint. And they treated it as the authoritative Word of God. If we take the apostles seriously — and I believe every Christian should — then we must take their Bible seriously too.

Let's turn the page and see where the evidence leads.