Chapter 11

The Septuagint in the Early Church Fathers — From Clement to Augustine

If the New Testament apostles used the Septuagint as their primary Scripture — and as we have demonstrated in Chapters 6 through 10, the evidence for this is overwhelming — then we would expect the generation that came after the apostles to do the same. And that is exactly what we find. From the very earliest post-apostolic writings all the way through the fifth century, the church fathers universally treated the Greek Septuagint as the authoritative Old Testament of the Christian church. This patristic consensus is not a minor detail. It is a powerful witness that the church — guided by apostolic tradition — never regarded the Hebrew text as the sole or primary authority for the Old Testament.

In this chapter, we will survey the major church fathers' views on the Septuagint, moving chronologically from the late first century to the early fifth century. We will listen to their voices — their arguments, their concerns, their convictions — and we will discover a remarkably consistent picture. The Greek Bible was the church's Bible. Period. The turn toward "Hebrew priority" was a later development, driven not by the church's own tradition but by the influence of one brilliant but controversial scholar — Jerome — and, much later, by the Protestant Reformers. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us begin at the beginning, with the generation that learned the faith directly from the apostles themselves.

The Apostolic Fathers: The Septuagint as the Unquestioned Bible

Clement of Rome (c. 96 AD)

Clement of Rome is one of the earliest Christian writers outside the New Testament. Tradition identifies him as the third or fourth bishop of Rome, and his letter to the Corinthians — known as 1 Clement — is typically dated to about 96 AD. That makes it roughly contemporary with the latest New Testament books. Clement's letter is significant for many reasons, but for our purposes, the key fact is this: when Clement quotes the Old Testament, he quotes the Septuagint.¹

This should not surprise us. Clement was writing in Greek to a Greek-speaking church. He had no reason to consult a Hebrew text, and there is no indication that he did. His Old Testament was the Greek Old Testament — the Septuagint — and he treated it as fully authoritative Scripture without the slightest hesitation or qualification. He quotes from Genesis, the Psalms, Isaiah, and other books freely, always using the Septuagint text. He also draws from deuterocanonical books, as we will discuss more fully in Chapter 26.

What matters here is the naturalness of it all. Clement does not defend his use of the Greek Bible. He does not explain why he is quoting a translation rather than the Hebrew original. He does not feel the need to justify himself. The Septuagint was simply what Scripture was for the early Roman church. It was the Bible they had received from the apostles, and that was that.

The Epistle of Barnabas (c. 70–130 AD)

The Epistle of Barnabas — a text probably dating to the late first or early second century — offers another early witness. The author depends entirely on the Septuagint for his Old Testament quotations and never shows any awareness that the text might differ from the Hebrew. In fact, as Gallagher notes, the author of Barnabas even builds theological arguments on features that are unique to the Greek text. For instance, Barnabas 9:7–8 interprets the 318 servants of Abraham (Genesis 14:14) by pointing out that in Greek numerals, the number 318 is written with the letters iota-eta-tau (ΙΗΤ) — the first two letters being the abbreviation for "Jesus" (ΙΗ) and the tau (Τ) resembling a cross.² This is an interpretation that only works in Greek. It reveals that the author not only used the Greek text but thought about Scripture in Greek. The Hebrew original never even entered his mind.

The Didache, Polycarp, and Ignatius

The same pattern holds across the apostolic fathers. The Didache (a late first-century church manual) draws on the Greek Old Testament. Polycarp of Smyrna (c. 69–155 AD), a disciple of the apostle John, quotes from the Septuagint in his letter to the Philippians. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–108 AD), in his seven authentic letters, reflects a thoroughly Greek-text environment.³ None of these writers shows any knowledge of or interest in a Hebrew text that differed from their Greek Bible. None of them suggests that the Greek translation was inferior to a Hebrew original. The Septuagint was Scripture, full stop.

Justin Martyr: The First Witness to Rabbinic Tampering (c. 150 AD)

Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 AD) is one of the most important early Christian writers for our purposes, and we need to spend some time with him. Justin was a Gentile philosopher who converted to Christianity around 130 AD — just a few years before the catastrophic Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 AD) that reshaped the relationship between Judaism and Christianity forever. As we discussed in Chapter 12, this was precisely the period when Rabbi Akiba and his circle were standardizing the Hebrew text and producing new Greek translations to replace the Septuagint.

Justin wrote two major works that survive: the First Apology (addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius) and the Dialogue with Trypho (a record of his encounter with a Jewish interlocutor named Trypho). It is the Dialogue that is most relevant here, because in it Justin does something extraordinary: he explicitly accuses the Jews of altering their Hebrew scriptures to remove passages that Christians used as proof texts for Jesus.

Let me be clear about what Justin claims. He does not merely say that the Jews interpret their Scriptures differently from Christians. He says they have removed passages — literally cut them out. And his accusations are remarkably specific.

In Dialogue 71, Justin tells Trypho:

"But I am far from putting reliance in your teachers, who refuse to admit that the interpretation made by the seventy elders who were with Ptolemy of the Egyptians is a correct one; and they attempt to frame another. And I wish you to observe, that they have altogether taken away many Scriptures from the translations effected by those seventy elders."⁴

Justin is making a bold accusation here. He says that the Jewish teachers (the rabbis) reject the Septuagint and are "attempting to frame another" translation — which is precisely what Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion were doing (as we discussed in Chapter 13). And he says they have "taken away many Scriptures" from the Septuagint text. This is not a vague complaint about differing interpretations. This is a charge of deliberate textual tampering.

Later in the Dialogue, Justin is challenged to produce some of the passages that were removed. He responds by quoting texts from Jeremiah and Ezra that he says have been cut out of the Jewish Scriptures:

"And since this passage from the sayings of Jeremiah is still written in some copies of the Scriptures in the synagogues of the Jews (for it is only a short time since they were cut out)."⁵

Notice the detail: "it is only a short time since they were cut out." Justin is saying that the removal of these passages was recent — something that happened within living memory. And he says some copies in some synagogues still had the older text, because the transition was not yet complete. This is exactly what we would expect if the rabbinic establishment was in the process of standardizing a revised Hebrew text and replacing older Septuagint scrolls with new Greek translations based on the revised Hebrew.

Justin also makes a shrewd tactical observation. He tells Trypho that he is willing to argue only from passages that the Jews still accept — not from the passages they have removed:

"I do not proceed to have a mere verbal controversy with you, as I have not attempted to establish proof about Christ from the passages of Scripture which are not admitted by you... but from those which are even now admitted by you, which had your teachers comprehended, be well assured they would have deleted them, as they did those about the death of Isaiah, whom you sawed asunder with a wooden saw."⁶

This is a stunning statement. Justin is saying: "I will only use the passages you still accept — because if your rabbis had understood how strongly these passages point to Jesus, they would have removed them too." He is painting a picture of a systematic, ongoing campaign to remove Christological passages from the Jewish Scriptures.

Now, we should be fair and note that some of Justin's specific claims are debatable. A few of the passages he says were "removed" are not found in any surviving Greek manuscript either, which raises questions about whether they were ever in the original text. But Justin's general accusation — that the rabbinic establishment was altering the text to combat Christian claims — is entirely consistent with the evidence we have examined in this book. The pattern of changes between the LXX and the MT consistently works in one direction: weakening or removing Messianic readings that Christians used to argue that Jesus was the promised Messiah (see Chapters 14–15 for the detailed evidence).

One more thing about Justin's use of the Septuagint is worth noting. Throughout the Dialogue, Justin quotes the Old Testament from the Septuagint — and he does so with complete confidence in its authority. He never suggests that the Greek Bible is a secondary or inferior text. For Justin, the Septuagint is the authoritative Scripture, and any divergence between it and the Jewish Hebrew text is evidence of Jewish tampering, not of Septuagint error.⁸

Irenaeus of Lyons: The Apostolic Defense of the LXX (c. 180 AD)

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–202 AD) was a student of Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of the apostle John. This gives Irenaeus an impressive pedigree — he stands only two generations removed from an apostle. Irenaeus is best known for his massive work Against Heresies (Adversus Haereses), in which he combated Gnostic theology. But for our purposes, what matters is his vigorous defense of the Septuagint — particularly in Book 3, chapter 21.

Irenaeus's defense of the Septuagint rests on several arguments, and they are worth examining carefully because they became the foundation for patristic thinking about the Greek Bible for centuries to come.

First, Irenaeus appeals to the antiquity of the Septuagint. The LXX was translated centuries before the newer Jewish translations (Aquila, Theodotion), so the older translation should be trusted over the newer ones.⁹ This is a commonsense argument: if a translation was made closer in time to the original, it is more likely to be accurate than one made centuries later from a possibly altered Hebrew text.

Second, Irenaeus argues from the miraculous origin of the Septuagint. By his time, the translation legend — based on the Letter of Aristeas but significantly embellished by later writers — had grown to include the claim that the seventy (or seventy-two) translators worked independently and yet produced identical translations. Irenaeus states that the translators were "inspired by the same one Spirit" and argues that this miracle confirms the divine origin of the translation.¹⁰ Now, we should note that the historical details of this legend are certainly embellished. But the underlying conviction — that God providentially guided the translation process — is a theological claim that many Christians, including the author of this book, find compelling.

Third, and most importantly, Irenaeus argues that the apostles agree with the Septuagint. He writes that the apostles "agree with the above-mentioned translation, and the translation agrees with the tradition of the apostles."¹¹ This is the argument from apostolic usage — the same argument we have been making throughout this book. The apostles quoted the LXX. The apostles built theological arguments on LXX readings. Therefore, the LXX is the apostolic Bible, and it carries apostolic authority.

Irenaeus applies his defense directly to the most contested verse of his day — Isaiah 7:14. He explicitly attacks the new Jewish translations (Aquila and Theodotion) for replacing the Septuagint's parthenos (παρθένος, "virgin") with neanis (νεᾶνις, "young woman"). The full exegetical case for the LXX reading of Isaiah 7:14 is presented in Chapter 7, but what matters here is Irenaeus's attitude: he treats the replacement translations as deliberate corruptions designed to undermine the Christian faith. The Septuagint reading, he insists, is the original and authoritative text.¹²

Irenaeus's three arguments — antiquity, divine inspiration of the translation, and apostolic agreement — formed the core of the church's defense of the Septuagint for centuries. We will see these same arguments repeated and developed by later fathers, particularly Augustine.

Tertullian and Cyprian: The Latin Fathers and the LXX Tradition

Before we turn to the great Alexandrian tradition, we should briefly note the Latin fathers of North Africa. Tertullian (c. 155–220 AD) and Cyprian (c. 200–258 AD) both used Old Latin translations (the Vetus Latina) for their Old Testament quotations. But here is the crucial point: those Old Latin translations were themselves translations of the Septuagint, not of the Hebrew text.¹³ So even though Tertullian and Cyprian quoted in Latin rather than Greek, their Old Testament was still ultimately the Septuagint tradition. The Hebrew text did not enter the Latin tradition in any significant way until Jerome's Vulgate translation in the late fourth century — and even that was controversial, as we shall see.

Tertullian, in his Apology, echoed the traditional account of the Septuagint's origins and treated it as fully authoritative.¹⁴ Cyprian quoted extensively from the Old Testament in his theological works — including the deuterocanonical books — and showed no awareness that the Greek Bible might differ from a Hebrew original. For these North African fathers, the Septuagint tradition was simply what the Old Testament was.

Clement of Alexandria: The Greek Bible in the Great Library City

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215 AD) served as head of the famous catechetical school in Alexandria — the very city where the Septuagint had been produced centuries earlier. Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the Jewish and Christian Greek-speaking world, and it is no surprise that Clement's theology was saturated with the Septuagint.

Clement used the Septuagint as his primary Scripture and treated it with the same authority that other writers treated the Hebrew original. He quoted from both the protocanonical and deuterocanonical books freely, often weaving them into his arguments without distinguishing between them. His Stromateis (Miscellanies) and Paidagogos (The Instructor) are filled with LXX quotations, reflecting a Christian intellectual tradition that was thoroughly formed by the Greek Bible.¹⁵

Clement also passed along the traditional account of the Septuagint's inspired origins, treating the translation as a work of divine providence. For Clement, the fact that God had arranged for the Hebrew Scriptures to be translated into Greek — the universal language of the Roman world — was itself a sign of God's intention to bring the Gentiles into the covenant. The Septuagint was not just a useful translation; it was part of God's plan for the redemption of the world.

Origen: The Scholar Who Loved the LXX but Wounded It (c. 185–254 AD)

Origen of Alexandria is one of the most fascinating — and most paradoxical — figures in the history of the Christian Bible. He was arguably the greatest biblical scholar of the early church. He was a brilliant exegete, a prolific writer, and a man of deep piety. He loved the Septuagint and used it as his primary Scripture throughout his life. And yet, through one of the great ironies of history, his most ambitious scholarly project actually contributed to the Septuagint's gradual displacement. We need to understand both sides of this story.

Origen's Defense of the LXX

Origen fiercely defended the church's right to use passages from the Greek Bible that were not found in the Jewish Hebrew text. His Letter to Africanus is the key document here. Julius Africanus had written to Origen questioning the authenticity of the story of Susanna (an addition to Daniel found in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew). Africanus argued that since the story was not in the Hebrew, it should not be trusted. Origen pushed back strongly. He argued that the church should not "remove the ancient landmarks which the fathers have set" — quoting Proverbs 22:28.¹⁶

This is an important argument. Origen is saying that the church received its Scriptures — including the Greek "additions" not found in the Hebrew — from the apostles and the early church. To remove them would be to tamper with the apostolic deposit. The "fathers" who set the "landmarks" were not merely the previous heads of the catechetical school in Alexandria. They were the apostles themselves and the earliest Christian communities who had received and transmitted these Scriptures.

Origen also pointed out that "every church of Christ" read the deuterocanonical books in their liturgical worship as Scripture.¹⁷ This is an argument from universal practice: if the entire church reads these books as Scripture, who are we to say they are not? This argument would later become central to Augustine's defense of the deuterocanon and the Septuagint (see below and Chapter 27).

Origen was also well aware that the Jews had made changes to their Hebrew text. In the same Letter to Africanus, he discussed differences between the Greek and Hebrew texts and showed that in several cases, the Greek preserved older and more reliable readings.¹⁸ He did not go as far as Justin Martyr in accusing the Jews of deliberate tampering, but he was clearly aware that the Hebrew text was not identical to what the Septuagint translators had translated.

The Hexapla: A Noble Project with Unintended Consequences

In the 230s, Origen launched the most ambitious textual project in the history of the ancient church: the Hexapla (meaning "sixfold"). This was a massive, multi-column comparison of the Old Testament in six parallel versions: (1) the Hebrew text in Hebrew script, (2) the Hebrew text transliterated into Greek characters, (3) Aquila's Greek translation, (4) Symmachus's Greek translation, (5) the Septuagint, and (6) Theodotion's Greek translation.¹⁹

The Hexapla was an extraordinary scholarly achievement. It probably filled around forty large volumes and represented years of painstaking labor. Origen was motivated by a desire to equip Christians for debates with Jews. By comparing all the available versions side by side, he could identify the differences and make informed arguments.²⁰

But here is where things went wrong. In the fifth column of the Hexapla — the Septuagint column — Origen used special critical marks to indicate where the Greek text differed from the Hebrew. He used the obelus (÷) to mark passages in the LXX that were not in the Hebrew, and the asteriskos (※) to mark passages from the Hebrew that he had added to the LXX from the other columns (usually from Theodotion's translation).²¹

Origen's intention was simply to note the differences — not to alter the Septuagint. But the unintended consequences were devastating. Over time, copyists who encountered these marks in manuscripts sometimes misunderstood their purpose. Passages marked with the obelus — LXX "plus" material not found in the Hebrew — were sometimes simply deleted by later scribes who thought the marks indicated spurious material. And passages marked with the asteriskos — additions from the Hebrew via Theodotion — were sometimes absorbed into the LXX text without the distinguishing marks, making it impossible to tell what was original LXX and what was a later addition.²²

We should be careful not to judge Origen too harshly. He was working with the best information available to him, and he genuinely believed that comparing the versions would strengthen the church's use of Scripture. He did not know — could not have known — the full extent of the rabbinic alterations. But the lesson is clear: once the Hebrew text was treated as the "standard" against which the Greek Bible should be corrected, the Septuagint was put on the defensive. And that defensive posture would eventually lead, through Jerome and the Reformers, to the Septuagint's near-total displacement in the Western church.

Eusebius of Caesarea: The LXX in the Age of Constantine (c. 260–340 AD)

Eusebius of Caesarea — the "father of church history" — played a crucial role in the transmission of the Septuagint. Eusebius had access to Origen's personal library (which had been preserved by Pamphilus, the custodian of the library at Caesarea), and he worked to develop and disseminate the Hexaplaric text of the Septuagint. When the Emperor Constantine ordered fifty copies of the Bible for use in churches throughout the empire, Eusebius was apparently tasked with producing them.²⁴ These copies were based on the Hexaplaric recension — Origen's version of the LXX with its critical marks and additions from the Hebrew. This effectively made the Hexaplaric text the "standard" LXX for a large portion of the Christian world.

Eusebius himself treated the Septuagint as authoritative Scripture. In his Church History (Historia Ecclesiastica), he transmitted Irenaeus's account of the Septuagint's miraculous origins and defended the LXX against its detractors.²⁵ At the same time, Eusebius was aware of the textual complexities. He had Origen's Hexapla in front of him and could see the differences between the Greek and Hebrew texts. In some cases — notably the chronological differences in Genesis 5 and 11, where the LXX gives much higher ages for the patriarchs than the Hebrew — Eusebius preferred the LXX numbers, recognizing that the Hebrew text appeared to have been altered.²⁶ This is significant because it shows that even in the fourth century, careful scholars could see that the Hebrew text was not always more reliable than the Greek.

Eusebius's role in the transmission of the Septuagint cannot be overstated. By producing and distributing copies of the LXX text for use in Constantine's empire, he ensured that the Greek Bible would remain the church's standard text for the Eastern church. The Western church, however, was about to experience a very different development — the arrival of Jerome and his revolutionary new Latin translation from the Hebrew.

Athanasius of Alexandria: The Complex Canon (c. 296–373 AD)

Athanasius, the great champion of Nicene orthodoxy against the Arian heresy, is best known for his tireless defense of the full deity of Christ. But he also left an important mark on the history of the biblical canon through his famous Festal Letter 39, written in 367 AD. This letter includes a list of the books that Athanasius regarded as canonical Scripture — and it is a fascinating document because it does not perfectly match either the Protestant or the Catholic canon.

Athanasius's Old Testament canon list includes some books that Protestants exclude (such as Baruch, which he groups with Jeremiah, and the Letter of Jeremiah) while excluding others that Catholics include (such as the books of Maccabees). He also creates a third category — books that are "not canonized" but are "appointed by the fathers to be read by those who are newly coming to us" — which includes Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther (interestingly), Judith, and Tobit.²⁷

What should we make of this? First, we should note that Athanasius's list was clearly influenced by Jewish informants about the Hebrew canon. His narrower canon list reflects an awareness of the books found in the Hebrew Bible — an awareness that may have come through Origen's Hexapla and the growing Christian interaction with Jewish scholarship. Second, we should note that even Athanasius did not exclude the deuterocanonical books from Christian use. He recommended them for reading and instruction, even if he placed them in a secondary category. And third — this is crucial — Athanasius's list was not universally accepted. Other church fathers and regional councils produced different lists. The fuller treatment of Athanasius's complex position is found in Chapter 26.

For our purposes in this chapter, the important point is that Athanasius used the Septuagint as his Old Testament. He did not consult the Hebrew text. He did not argue for Hebrew priority. When he debated the Arians about the deity of Christ, he used Septuagint readings — including deuterocanonical texts. Athanasius quoted from the Wisdom of Solomon in his theological works, applying its language about divine Wisdom to the eternal Son of God.²⁸ Whatever his theoretical position on the canon, his practice was to treat the Septuagint — including the deuterocanonical books — as authoritative Scripture.

The Cappadocian Fathers and Chrysostom: The LXX in the Greek-Speaking East

The three Cappadocian Fathers — Basil the Great (c. 330–379), Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329–390), and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394) — were among the most brilliant theologians of the fourth century. All three used the Septuagint as their Old Testament. All three quoted from it with full authority. And all three engaged in sophisticated theological exegesis that depended on the Greek text.

Basil, for example, grappled extensively with the Septuagint's reading of Proverbs 8:22 — "The Lord created me" (κύριος ἔκτισέν με) — a verse that the Arians used to argue that the Son was a created being. Basil and other pro-Nicene fathers recognized that the Greek word ktizo (κτίζω, "to create") could also mean "to acquire" or "to establish," and they compared the LXX reading with the later Jewish translations (especially Symmachus) to argue that the verse did not teach the creation of the Son.²⁹ This is a remarkable example of early Christians engaging with the textual diversity of the Greek Bible in order to resolve a pressing theological controversy. Note that Basil did not appeal to the Hebrew text to resolve the dispute. He resolved it within the Greek tradition.

Gregory of Nyssa deserves special mention. In his great theological treatise On the Making of Man, he builds his understanding of humanity's creation in the image of God on the Septuagint text of Genesis. When Gregory explores the nature of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and the ultimate transformation of creation, his exegetical foundation is the Greek Bible — not the Hebrew. This is not a minor point. Gregory's anthropology and eschatology — subjects of direct relevance to how we understand human nature and destiny — are shaped by the specific Greek words and phrasings of the Septuagint. Change the textual basis, and you change the theology.

John Chrysostom (c. 347–407 AD), the "golden-mouthed" preacher of Antioch and Constantinople, was perhaps the most prolific homiletical interpreter of the Bible in the early church. His sermons and commentaries are based entirely on the Septuagint. Chrysostom preached hundreds of homilies on the books of Genesis, the Psalms, Isaiah, and other Old Testament books — all from the Greek text. He did not know Hebrew, and he showed no interest in learning it. For him, the Greek Bible was the Bible — the Bible that had been handed down by the apostles and used by the church from the beginning.³⁰

Chrysostom's homilies are particularly valuable because they show us how the Septuagint functioned in the preaching of the ancient church — not just in the writing of scholars and theologians. When ordinary Christians in Antioch and Constantinople heard the Word of God proclaimed on Sunday morning, what they heard was the Septuagint. The Greek Bible was not an academic curiosity or a scholar's reference tool. It was the living Word of God read aloud in the liturgy, preached from the pulpit, and memorized by the faithful. It was the text that shaped the piety, worship, and daily life of millions of Christians for centuries.

The Greek-speaking Eastern church, in fact, never experienced the kind of "Hebrew turn" that would later reshape the Western church through Jerome and the Reformers. To this day, the Eastern Orthodox churches use the Septuagint — not the Masoretic Text — as their authoritative Old Testament. This is a living witness to the patristic consensus that we are tracing in this chapter. When we say the church's Bible was the Greek Bible, we are not speaking in the past tense for the Eastern churches. For them, it still is.

Rufinus of Aquileia: A Voice for the Tradition

Rufinus of Aquileia (c. 345–411 AD) was a contemporary of Jerome and, for much of their lives, his friend — though the friendship later collapsed into a bitter feud. Rufinus is important for our purposes because he articulated the majority position against Jerome's innovation regarding the canon.

When Jerome began to exclude the deuterocanonical books from his Vulgate translation (or at least to demote them with disclaimers in his prefaces), Rufinus pushed back strongly. In his Apology Against Jerome, Rufinus argued that Jerome was tampering with the "divine record handed down to the Churches by the Apostles and the deposit of the Holy Spirit." He specifically protested Jerome's treatment of Deutero-Daniel (the additions to Daniel, including the story of Susanna and the Song of the Three Young Men):

"In all this abundance of learned men, has there been one who has dared to make havoc of the divine record handed down to the Churches by the Apostles and the deposit of the Holy Spirit? For what can we call it but havoc, when some parts of it are transformed, and this is called the correction of an error?"⁴⁵

Rufinus's objection is powerful: he calls Jerome's revision "havoc" — a strong word that reveals how shocking Jerome's approach was to the mainstream church. For Rufinus, the church had received its Scriptures — including the deuterocanonical portions — from the apostles. To alter or remove any part of that received Scripture was to tamper with the apostolic deposit. Rufinus was not claiming personal infallibility. He was claiming that the church's universal practice of reading these books as Scripture carried more weight than one scholar's opinion, however brilliant that scholar might be.

Rufinus also produced his own canon list in his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (c. 404 AD), in which he distinguished between "canonical," "ecclesiastical," and "apocryphal" books. His "ecclesiastical" category — books that could be read in church but not used to establish doctrine — included Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, and the books of Maccabees. This is a more moderate position than Augustine's (who made no such distinction) but still far more favorable to the deuterocanonical books than modern Protestant practice, which excludes them entirely.⁴⁶

Epiphanius of Salamis: Defending the Seventy

Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 310–403 AD) was a tireless defender of orthodoxy who wrote extensively against heresies. In his work On Weights and Measures, he retold the story of the Septuagint's translation under Ptolemy and defended its authority. Epiphanius's account is complex and sometimes confusing — he tries to reconcile the Septuagint tradition with information about the Hebrew canon in ways that do not always work smoothly — but his basic conviction is clear: the Septuagint is the authoritative Old Testament of the church.³¹

What is particularly interesting about Epiphanius is his canon list. In one passage, he lists the twenty-two (or twenty-seven) books of the Hebrew canon, following Jewish practice. But in another passage, when he is arguing against the Arian heresy, he appeals to a broader set of "divine writings" that includes Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach alongside the protocanonical books and the New Testament.³² As Michuta observes, when Epiphanius is describing the Jewish canon for informational purposes, he lists the narrower set of books. But when he is doing theology — when he needs to appeal to authoritative Scripture to settle a doctrinal dispute — he draws on the broader Septuagint canon, including the deuterocanon. His practice, like that of so many fathers, was broader than his theoretical canon lists.

Augustine: The Great Champion of the Septuagint (354–430 AD)

We come now to the most important patristic defender of the Septuagint's authority — Augustine of Hippo. I have saved Augustine for last not because he came last chronologically (Jerome was his contemporary), but because his arguments represent the fullest and most sophisticated defense of the LXX in the patristic period. And — I will say it plainly — Augustine's position on the Septuagint is essentially the position I hold and am arguing for in this book.

Augustine's View of the Septuagint's Inspiration

In City of God, Book 18, chapters 42–44, Augustine presents his mature position on the Septuagint. And it is a remarkable position. Augustine does not merely say that the Septuagint is a good and useful translation. He says that it is an inspired translation — that the seventy translators were guided by the Holy Spirit in the same way that the original prophets were inspired when they wrote the Hebrew text. He writes:

"The same Spirit who was in the prophets when they spoke these things was also in the seventy men when they translated them."³³

This is a bold claim. Augustine is saying that the Septuagint translation was not merely an accurate human translation — it was a divinely guided act. The Holy Spirit who inspired Isaiah and Jeremiah and David to write the original Hebrew also guided the seventy translators to render that Hebrew into Greek. And because of this divine guidance, Augustine argues, where the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew, the LXX reading may actually contain a deeper or divinely intended meaning that the Hebrew alone does not convey.

Augustine illustrates this principle with a fascinating example. In Jonah 3:4, the Hebrew text says that Nineveh would be overthrown in "forty days" (Hebrew: arba'im yom), while the Septuagint says "three days" (Greek: treis hemerai). Most people would say one of these is simply wrong. But Augustine argues that both readings are inspired — the Hebrew prophetically points to the forty days between Christ's resurrection and ascension (Acts 1:3), while the Greek prophetically points to the three days between Christ's death and resurrection. Both readings, Augustine says, were intended by the Holy Spirit, speaking through both the prophet and the translators.³⁴

Now, I want to be honest with you: not everyone will find Augustine's specific exegetical example here convincing. The Jonah example might seem like a stretch. But the principle behind it is enormously important. Augustine is saying that the Septuagint is not merely a derivative, secondary text that must always be "corrected" against the Hebrew. It is a text that carries its own divine authority — authority that it received from the same Holy Spirit who inspired the original.

Augustine on the Church's Canon

Augustine's defense of the Septuagint extended to the deuterocanonical books. In On Christian Doctrine, Book 2, chapter 12, Augustine laid down his principle for determining which books belong in the canon: the authority of the books "has come down to us from the apostles through the successions of bishops and the extension of the Church." He specifically recommended that Christians accept those books that are received by "the greater number and the more weighty" of the churches — particularly those churches that had apostolic origins and had received letters from apostles.³⁵

By this criterion, the deuterocanonical books clearly qualified. They were read as Scripture in the vast majority of Christian churches. They were used in the liturgy. They were quoted by the church fathers as authoritative Scripture for centuries. Augustine cited the deuterocanonical books extensively in his own theological works — using Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Tobit, and 2 Maccabees to establish doctrine on topics ranging from the nature of the Trinity to the care of the dead.³⁶ He did not treat them as secondary or merely edifying. He treated them as Scripture — full stop.

Augustine's canonical principle — that the church's longstanding, universal use of a book is the best guide to its canonical status — stands in direct contrast to Jerome's principle of Hebraica veritas (Hebrew truth), which held that only books found in the Hebrew canon should be considered fully canonical. We will examine this debate in full in Chapter 27. But here is the important point: Augustine's principle was the majority position. Jerome's was the novelty. The overwhelming consensus of the church — from Clement of Rome through the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419) — agreed with Augustine, not Jerome.

Augustine's Practical Use of the Septuagint

It is one thing to state a theoretical position about the Septuagint's authority. It is another thing to put that position into practice. And Augustine's practice was entirely consistent with his theory. Throughout his massive body of work — the City of God, On the Trinity, On Christian Doctrine, The Enchiridion, his sermons, his letters, and his polemical writings — Augustine quotes the Old Testament from the Septuagint (via the Old Latin translation). He quotes from the deuterocanonical books as "Scripture," "Holy Scripture," and "divine authority" without qualification.³⁷

The sheer volume of Augustine's citations from the deuterocanonical books is staggering. Michuta documents well over a hundred instances in which Augustine quotes Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Tobit, 2 Maccabees, and other deuterocanonical books as fully authoritative Scripture — using them to establish doctrine on the Trinity, the nature of the soul, the resurrection, the care of the dead, the practice of prayer, the nature of wisdom, and dozens of other topics.³⁸ For Augustine, the deuterocanonical books were not optional extras or pious reading material. They were integral parts of the church's Bible, and they carried the full weight of divine authority.

A few specific examples will illustrate the point. In On the Trinity, one of the most important theological treatises in the history of the church, Augustine quotes Wisdom 7:25–27 and 9:10 as "Scripture" to establish the consubstantiality and co-eternity of the Son with the Father — the central doctrine defended at the Council of Nicaea. He also quotes Wisdom 8:1 to prove that the Holy Spirit is omnipresent, and Wisdom 12:18 as "Holy Scripture" to demonstrate God's sovereign power. In City of God, his monumental work of Christian philosophy, Augustine quotes Sirach as "Scripture" on multiple occasions, using it to address topics including the punishment of the wicked, the care of the dead, and the effects of original sin. In On Christian Doctrine, his handbook for biblical interpretation, he quotes Wisdom 13:9 as a "rebuke by Holy Writ" and uses Tobit 8:5 as "proof from the Old Testament Scripture."³⁷

What is striking about these citations is not just their quantity but their purpose. Augustine does not cite the deuterocanonical books for decoration or as secondary illustrations. He cites them to establish doctrine — to prove points about the Trinity, about Christology, about the nature of creation, and about eschatology. These are not peripheral matters. They are the central doctrines of the Christian faith. And Augustine appeals to the deuterocanonical books with the same confidence and the same authority that he appeals to Genesis, Isaiah, the Psalms, or the letters of Paul. For him, there was no difference in status between the protocanonical and deuterocanonical books. They were all Scripture.

Jerome: The Brilliant Dissenter (347–420 AD)

We cannot close this survey without mentioning Jerome — even though his full story belongs to Chapter 27. Jerome was the most brilliant biblical scholar of his generation and perhaps the greatest linguist the church has ever produced. He learned Hebrew from Jewish teachers and produced the Vulgate, the Latin translation that would become the standard Bible of the Western church for over a thousand years.

Jerome's position on the Septuagint and the canon was the minority position in his day, but it would become enormously influential in later centuries. He argued for what he called Hebraica veritas — "Hebrew truth" — the principle that the authoritative text of the Old Testament is the Hebrew text, not the Greek, and that only books found in the Hebrew canon should be considered fully canonical.³⁹

Several things need to be said about Jerome's position. First, it was a novelty in the Western church. Before Jerome, no Western father had made the distinction between "canonical" and "ecclesiastical" books based on the Hebrew canon. Jerome was introducing a Jewish criterion into Christian theology — a criterion that the church had never previously recognized. Second, Jerome's Jewish informants were rabbinic Jews — the very tradition that, as this book argues, had deliberately narrowed the canon and altered the text. Jerome was unwittingly allowing the post-Christian rabbinic tradition to define the Christian canon. Third — and this is often overlooked — Jerome's practice contradicted his theory. Despite his theoretical preference for the Hebrew canon, Jerome quoted the deuterocanonical books as Scripture in his own theological writings. He included them in his Vulgate translation. And his Vulgate, with the deuterocanonical books, became the Bible of the Western church for a millennium.⁴⁰

The correspondence between Augustine and Jerome on this topic is one of the most fascinating exchanges in the history of theology. Augustine wrote to Jerome expressing his concern that translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew rather than the Greek would create confusion in the churches — people who had memorized the Old Latin (translated from the Septuagint) would be confronted with a new translation that sometimes said different things. Augustine even told Jerome the story of a bishop in the North African town of Oea who, reading from Jerome's new translation of Jonah, provoked a near-riot in his congregation because the word he used for Jonah's plant was different from the traditional rendering.⁴⁷ This may seem like a trivial dispute — gourd versus ivy? — but it reveals something deeper. The people of God had received their Scriptures in a particular form. They had memorized them, worshiped with them, and built their faith on them. To change that text — even for scholarly reasons — was not a neutral act. It had consequences for the unity and faith of the church.

Augustine also worried that Jerome's translation would drive a wedge between the Latin-speaking Western church and the Greek-speaking Eastern church, which continued to use the Septuagint. If the West adopted a translation from the Hebrew while the East kept the Greek, the two halves of Christendom would be reading different Bibles. Augustine's concern was prophetic: the divergence between the Hebrew-based Western text and the Septuagint-based Eastern text did indeed become a source of tension between the churches.⁴⁸

We will examine the Jerome-Augustine debate in full in Chapter 27. For now, the key point is this: Jerome was a dissenting voice, not the mainstream. The patristic consensus — from Clement of Rome through Augustine, from the apostolic fathers through the great councils of Hippo and Carthage — was that the Septuagint was the church's authoritative Old Testament, and the deuterocanonical books were part of that Scripture.

Why the Patristic Consensus Matters

Some readers may wonder: why should we care what the church fathers thought? Aren't we Protestants? Don't we believe in sola Scriptura — Scripture alone as the final authority?

Yes, we do. But here is the thing: sola Scriptura does not mean that we ignore the wisdom of the church through the ages. It means that Scripture is the final authority — not that it is the only source of wisdom. And when we are trying to determine which books belong in Scripture, and which text of Scripture is most reliable, the testimony of the early church is enormously important. After all, the early church is the community that received the Scriptures from the apostles. If we want to know what the apostolic Bible looked like, the early church is our best witness.

And the witness of the early church is clear: the apostolic Bible was the Septuagint. It included the deuterocanonical books. And the Hebrew text was not considered the sole or even the primary authority for the Old Testament. This patristic consensus does not override Scripture. But it should make us pause before we dismiss the Septuagint and the deuterocanon — because in doing so, we may be dismissing the very Bible that the apostles used and the early church received.

The Argument from Providence

There is one more argument that runs through the patristic literature and deserves our attention. It is what scholars have called the "argument from providence." The basic idea is this: God, in His sovereign providence, arranged for the Hebrew Scriptures to be translated into Greek before the coming of Christ. This was not an accident. It was part of God's plan to prepare the way for the Gospel to go to all nations. The Septuagint — the Greek Bible — was the vehicle God used to bring His Word to the Gentile world.

Origen hinted at this argument in his Letter to Africanus. Irenaeus appealed to it when he defended the LXX's inspired origins. Augustine made it most explicitly when he argued that the Holy Spirit guided the translators. And the underlying logic is compelling: if God providentially arranged for the Scriptures to be translated into Greek, and if the apostles used that Greek translation as their authoritative Bible, and if the church received it as Scripture for four centuries without serious dispute — then perhaps we should think twice before treating it as merely a fallible human translation to be corrected against the Hebrew.⁴¹

As Lanier and Ross observe, the patristic approach to the authority of the LXX was shaped by multiple factors: the traditional account of its miraculous origins, the apostolic precedent for using it, and a broad conviction that divine providence had guided both the translation and the transmission of the text. While modern scholars may disagree about the details of the translation legend, the theological conviction behind the patristic consensus remains powerful. God used the Septuagint to bring His Word to the world. The church received it as Scripture. And for four centuries, no one seriously questioned its authority.⁴²

Addressing Objections

Before we close, we should address a few objections that are sometimes raised against the argument from patristic consensus.

Objection 1: "The church fathers weren't infallible."

True. The church fathers were not infallible, and they disagreed with each other on many points. But the argument here is not from the infallibility of any individual father. It is from the consensus of the church over four centuries. When we see the same conviction held by writers from Rome, North Africa, Alexandria, Antioch, Asia Minor, and Palestine — when we see it affirmed by apostolic fathers, apologists, theologians, bishops, and church councils — we are looking at something more than individual opinion. We are looking at the living tradition of the church, shaped by apostolic precedent. Dismissing this consensus requires a very strong argument, and I do not believe that argument has been made.

Objection 2: "The fathers used the LXX because they didn't know Hebrew."

This is partly true — most church fathers did not know Hebrew. But it misses the point. The church fathers used the LXX because it was the Bible they received from the apostles. The apostles themselves used the LXX — and some of them (Paul, for instance) clearly knew Hebrew. The apostolic choice to use the Greek Bible was not born of ignorance but of conviction: the LXX was the Scripture of the church.⁴³

Objection 3: "Jerome was right — the Hebrew is more original."

This objection assumes what it needs to prove. As we have argued throughout this book (and especially in Chapters 12–17), the Hebrew text that Jerome used was not the "original" Hebrew. It was the rabbinic Hebrew text — a text that had been deliberately revised in the second century AD. The Septuagint was translated from a much older Hebrew text (the Vorlage) that, in many cases, was closer to the original than the proto-Masoretic text that survived. The Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed this: scroll after scroll preserves readings that agree with the LXX against the MT, proving that the LXX translators were working from genuine Hebrew manuscripts, not inventing readings (see Chapter 4).⁴⁴

Jerome's appeal to Hebraica veritas was understandable in his time — he genuinely believed the Hebrew text was more reliable. But he was working without the benefit of the Dead Sea Scrolls, without the full picture of rabbinic textual activity, and under the direct influence of rabbinic informants whose tradition had a vested interest in promoting the Hebrew text over the Greek. With the evidence now available to us, we can see that Jerome was mistaken — not in his love for the Hebrew language (which was admirable), but in his assumption that the rabbinic Hebrew text was more authoritative than the much older Septuagint tradition.

Conclusion: The Church's Bible Was the Greek Bible

Let us step back and survey what we have found. From the very earliest post-apostolic writings — Clement of Rome, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, Polycarp, Ignatius — through the great fathers of the second, third, fourth, and fifth centuries — Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Augustine — the Septuagint was the church's Bible. It was quoted, defended, exegeted, and proclaimed as the authoritative Word of God. The church never regarded the Hebrew text as the sole or primary authority. The turn toward Hebrew priority was a later development — driven by Jerome's individual genius and the influence of his rabbinic informants — and even Jerome could not fully carry it through.

This patristic consensus is not an argument from tradition against Scripture. It is an argument about Scripture — about what Scripture is, and which form of the text the church received from the apostles. And the answer is clear. The apostolic church received the Septuagint. The fathers defended it. The councils affirmed it. And any church that takes seriously the apostolic tradition — any church that wants to read the Old Testament the way Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John read it — must take the Septuagint seriously.

In the next chapter, we will turn from the church fathers who defended the LXX to the rabbinic figures who attacked it — and we will examine the evidence that the Masoretic Text was deliberately altered to undermine Christian claims about Jesus as the Messiah.