The Bible That Built the Church

The Case for the Septuagint and the Deuterocanonical Books

A Thirty-Six Chapter Scholarly Monograph on the Greek Bible of the Apostles, the Second-Century Alteration of the Hebrew Text, and the Books the Reformers Left Behind

By Matthew Friend, Th.D.

For most Protestant Christians, the Old Testament is a settled question. We open our Bibles, we read thirty-nine books, and we assume that this is the Old Testament the apostles read, the Old Testament Jesus quoted, and the Old Testament the early church received. This book argues — with a great deal of historical and textual evidence — that none of those assumptions is quite right. The Bible that built the church was significantly larger than the Protestant Old Testament. It was written in Greek, not Hebrew. It included books our Bibles no longer print. And the version of the Hebrew Old Testament most Protestants now treat as the original — the Masoretic Text — was finalized nearly a thousand years after Christ, after deliberate second-century changes that pulled Messianic prophecies away from their plainest Christian reading.

The book has two central theses. The first is that the Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament begun in the third century BC in Alexandria — deserves a much higher place in Protestant theology than it currently holds. The overwhelming majority of Old Testament citations in the New Testament follow the Septuagint, not the proto-Masoretic Hebrew text. The Letter of Aristeas, Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, the patristic record, and now the Dead Sea Scrolls all converge to show that the Septuagint was not a loose paraphrase but a careful translation made from Hebrew source texts older than the ones the Masoretes eventually canonized. In a number of significant passages — including Isaiah 7:14, Deuteronomy 32:8, Psalm 40:6, the Genesis 5 chronology, and the Genesis 11 chronology — the Septuagint preserves the earlier and more reliable reading.

The second thesis is that the deuterocanonical books — Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the Greek additions to Daniel and Esther — were part of the Bible the apostles used, were received by the early church with near unanimity, and were removed from Protestant Bibles for reasons that, weighed honestly, do not bear the weight that has been placed on them. The councils of Hippo and Carthage settled the question in the fourth century. Augustine defended the deuterocanon against Jerome. The whole church, East and West, read these books as Scripture for over a thousand years. The Reformers' decision to remove them deserves a fair hearing — but the cumulative evidence, historical and theological, favors the older consensus.

This is a scholarly book, but it is also written for ordinary readers. There are no assumed prior courses in Greek or Hebrew, no required knowledge of textual criticism, and no theological jargon that is not explained on the page where it appears. The book follows Turabian footnote style throughout. It engages contemporary evangelical scholarship (Lanier and Ross, Timothy Michael Law, Karen Jobes, Edmon Gallagher) as well as the Catholic case (Gary Michuta) and the work of S. Douglas Woodward, whose research into the second-century alterations of the Hebrew text is foundational to several of the central arguments. Where serious scholars disagree — and they do — the disagreements are named rather than hidden.

The intended readers are pastors who have wondered why the New Testament quotes the Old Testament in forms that do not always match modern English translations; seminarians and graduate students working on the canon, textual criticism, or patristic theology; Protestants curious about why Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include books theirs do not; and Catholic and Orthodox readers wanting an evangelical engagement with their canon that takes their tradition seriously rather than dismissing it. The author writes as a conservative evangelical Christian who affirms the early ecumenical creeds, the inspiration and authority of Scripture, and the deity and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ — but who is increasingly persuaded that the Old Testament the Reformation handed down is shorter, and the Hebrew text underneath it later, than the Bible the apostles, the martyrs, and the church fathers actually held in their hands.

The book is laid out below in seven parts and thirty-six chapters, followed by five reference appendices. Each chapter is a self-contained HTML file with full Turabian footnotes and a chapter bibliography. Click any chapter title to read it. Use the chapter-navigation links at the top and bottom of each chapter to move through the book, or return here at any time.

Part I — Foundations

The framing questions, the basic vocabulary, and the manuscript evidence on which the rest of the book depends.

1. Ch. 1 Introduction — Why Your Old Testament May Be Incomplete How the Protestant Old Testament — historically newer and shorter than the Bible the apostles used — quietly closed off most of the church's first millennium of Scripture, and why that loss deserves a fresh hearing.
2. Ch. 2 What Is the Septuagint? — Origins, History, and the Letter of Aristeas The origins of the Greek translation that became the church's Bible — the Letter of Aristeas, the third-century-BC Alexandrian Jewish setting, the textual streams the LXX gave rise to, and what "Septuagint" actually names.
3. Ch. 3 What Are the Deuterocanonical Books? — A Survey of the Books Protestants Left Behind A book-by-book introduction to Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the Greek additions to Daniel and Esther — what they say, when they were written, and what Protestants have been missing.
4. Ch. 4 The Dead Sea Scrolls — An Independent Witness to the Septuagint How the manuscripts found at Qumran predate both the standardized Masoretic Text and the later LXX recensions, and how they repeatedly align with the Septuagint against the MT — independent ancient corroboration the Reformers never had.
5. Ch. 5 Key Terms and Concepts — A Roadmap for the Journey A working vocabulary for the rest of the book — Vorlage, recension, proto-MT, Hebraica veritas, deuterocanon versus apocrypha, and the technical terms readers will meet across the chapters ahead.

Part II — The Septuagint as the Church's Bible

The exegetical case that the apostles' Old Testament was overwhelmingly the Greek Septuagint, worked out citation by citation from the Gospels through Revelation, and confirmed by the patristic record.

1. Ch. 6 The New Testament's Old Testament — How the Apostles Quoted the Septuagint The statistical and exegetical case that the apostles' Bible was overwhelmingly the Greek Septuagint — when Paul writes "all Scripture is God-breathed," the Scriptures in view are primarily the LXX.
2. Ch. 7 Isaiah 7:14 — Virgin or Young Woman? The Most Contested Verse in the Old Testament The single most disputed verse in the Old Testament — parthenos in the LXX, almah in the MT — and why Matthew 1:23 follows the Greek rather than the later Hebrew when it cites Isaiah's virgin-birth prophecy.
3. Ch. 8 Key NT Citations Following the LXX Against the MT (Part 1) — The Gospels and the Torah A close exegetical reading of New Testament citations from the Gospels and the Torah that match the Septuagint against the Masoretic Text — Deuteronomy 32:43, Deuteronomy 32:8, Isaiah 61:1, and more.
4. Ch. 9 Key NT Citations Following the LXX Against the MT (Part 2) — Acts and Paul Acts and the Pauline corpus on the LXX — Peter's Pentecost citation of Psalm 16, James at the Jerusalem Council on Amos 9, and Paul's Romans 3 catena drawn from a Septuagint that includes a "plus" the MT has lost.
5. Ch. 10 Key NT Citations Following the LXX Against the MT (Part 3) — Hebrews, the General Epistles, and Revelation Hebrews, the General Epistles, and Revelation on the LXX — "a body you have prepared for me" in Hebrews 10:5, "death is swallowed up in victory" in 1 Corinthians 15:54, and other LXX-dependent New Testament texts.
6. Ch. 11 The Septuagint in the Early Church Fathers — From Clement to Augustine How the patristic church received the Septuagint as Scripture — Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, and the unbroken church-wide testimony to the LXX as the church's Old Testament.

Part III — The Corruption of the Masoretic Text

The historical and textual case that second-century rabbinic Judaism, in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt, deliberately altered the Hebrew Bible to weaken Christian Messianic readings and discredit the Septuagint.

1. Ch. 12 Rabbi Akiba, the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and the War Against the Septuagint Rabbi Akiba, the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–135 AD, the rise of rabbinic authority in its aftermath, and the converging evidence that the Hebrew text was deliberately altered in the second century to weaken Christian Messianic readings and discredit the Septuagint.
2. Ch. 13 The Replacement Translations — Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion The three Greek replacement translations produced in the second century to displace the LXX in synagogue use, and what their patterns of revision reveal about the rabbinic project of textual standardization.
3. Ch. 14 Messianic Prophecies Altered in the Masoretic Text (Part 1) — The Torah and the Prophets A close comparative reading of altered Messianic prophecies in the Torah and the Prophets — places where the LXX preserves the older, Christologically transparent reading and the MT has tightened, narrowed, or removed it.
4. Ch. 15 Messianic Prophecies Altered in the Masoretic Text (Part 2) — The Psalms and the Writings The same comparative work in the Psalms and the Writings — the Psalter, Job, Daniel, and Proverbs — where altered words and phrases recurrently soften or obscure Messianic and resurrection texts.
5. Ch. 16 The Chronology of Genesis 5 — The Antediluvian Patriarchs and the Corrupted Timeline The Genesis 5 chronology in full — how the LXX gives the antediluvian patriarchs nearly fifteen hundred years more biblical history than the MT, what motivated Akiba's circle through the Seder Olam to compress the timeline, and what the original chronology likely was.
6. Ch. 17 The Chronology of Genesis 11 — The Postdiluvian Patriarchs and the Missing Centuries The Genesis 11 chronology — the postdiluvian patriarchs, the missing centuries between the Flood and Abraham in the Masoretic version, and the cumulative force of LXX, Samaritan, and Josephan witnesses for the longer chronology.
7. Ch. 18 The Late Standardization of the Masoretic Text — A Thousand Years of Instability The codex evidence — Aleppo (c. 930 AD), Leningrad (1008 AD) — the centuries-long process of Masoretic standardization, and why a thousand-year gap between the Septuagint and the earliest complete MT manuscripts changes how Protestants ought to weigh the two traditions.

Part IV — The Case for the Deuterocanonical Books

A book-by-book theological reading of the deuterocanon, the New Testament's substantial use of these books, and the early church's near-unanimous reception of them as Scripture.

1. Ch. 19 The Deuterocanon in Second Temple Judaism — What Did Jews Actually Read? What Jews of the Second Temple period actually read — Qumran, Alexandria, the diaspora synagogues — and the evidence that the deuterocanonical books circulated as Scripture alongside the proto-Masoretic canon long before the rabbis closed the Hebrew canon.
2. Ch. 20 New Testament Use of the Deuterocanonical Books — Allusions, Echoes, and Theological Dependence The substantial body of New Testament allusions, echoes, and theological dependencies on the deuterocanon — Hebrews 11:35 on the Maccabean martyrs, James on Sirach, Hebrews 1:3 on Wisdom of Solomon, and the texture of New Testament theology that presupposes these books.
3. Ch. 21 The Wisdom of Solomon — The Immortal Soul, the Suffering Righteous One, and Messianic Prophecy Wisdom of Solomon read at length — the immortality of the soul (3:1–9), the prophecy of the suffering righteous one (2:12–20), and the personification of Wisdom that the New Testament writers carry over into their Christology.
4. Ch. 22 Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) — Wisdom, the Law, and the Shape of Israel's Story Sirach's wisdom theology, its identification of Wisdom with Torah, the long encomium of the fathers in chapters 44–50, and its formative influence on the language and ethics of the Epistle of James.
5. Ch. 23 Tobit, Judith, and Baruch — Narrative Theology, Prophetic Witness, and God Among the Exiles Three under-read books — Tobit's angelology and providence, Judith's deliverance theology, and Baruch's stunning Christological line "afterward he appeared on earth and lived among men" (Baruch 3:36–38).
6. Ch. 24 1 and 2 Maccabees — Martyrdom, Resurrection, and Prayers for the Dead The martyrology of 2 Maccabees 7, the explicit resurrection theology, the prayers for the dead in 12:38–46, and how to read these passages historically without sliding into the medieval doctrine of purgatory.
7. Ch. 25 The Additions to Daniel and Esther — Expanding the Canon or Restoring What Was Lost? The Greek additions to Daniel (Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three) and to Esther — earlier than once thought, attested at Qumran in significant ways, and likely original to texts the MT has shortened rather than late inventions.
8. Ch. 26 The Early Church and the Deuterocanon — From the Apostolic Fathers to the North African Councils The reception of the deuterocanon in the early church — the Apostolic Fathers, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Athanasius's Festal Letter 39, the North African councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419), and the near-unanimous patristic witness for inclusion.
9. Ch. 27 Jerome vs. Augustine — The Great Canon Debate and the Hebraica Veritas The decisive late-fourth-century disagreement — Jerome's preference for the Hebraica veritas against Augustine's defense of the broader Septuagint canon — and the reasons Augustine's position carried the church for over a thousand years.

Part V — The Removal and Its Consequences

The conciliar history, the Reformation removal of the deuterocanon, the long path from Westminster to the Bible Societies, and a theological inventory of what Protestants have lost in the process.

1. Ch. 28 The Councils and the Canon — Hippo, Carthage, Florence, and Trent The conciliar history — Hippo (393), Carthage (397 and 419), Florence (1442), and Trent (1546) — what these councils actually decided about the deuterocanon, who they were responding to, and how their decrees have been read since.
2. Ch. 29 Luther, Calvin, and the Reformation Removal — Why Protestants Took Out the Books Luther's 1534 relegation of the deuterocanon to an appendix between the Testaments, Calvin's full rejection, and the Reformation reasoning — partly textual, partly historical, partly polemical (especially against 2 Maccabees 12 and purgatory) — laid out and weighed honestly.
3. Ch. 30 From Westminster to the Bible Societies — How the Deuterocanon Disappeared from Protestant Bibles The Westminster Confession, the Anglican Articles, the British and Foreign Bible Society's 1826 decision to print Protestant Bibles without the Apocrypha, and the long process by which a tradition that had read these books for fifteen hundred years stopped printing them.
4. Ch. 31 What We Lose Without the Deuterocanon — Theological Gaps in the Protestant Old Testament A theological inventory of what Protestants forfeit without the deuterocanon — texts on the intermediate state, resurrection theology, martyrdom under tyranny, the interlude between the Testaments, and Christological foreshadowings the New Testament writers clearly knew.

Part VI — Additional Witnesses

Texts beyond the Catholic deuterocanon — 1 Enoch and Jubilees, the broader Eastern Orthodox canon — and a chapter-length synthesis of the case for general Septuagint priority.

1. Ch. 32 1 Enoch — The Book That Shaped the New Testament 1 Enoch's profound shaping of New Testament angelology, demonology, eschatology, and Son-of-Man Christology — including Jude's direct citation in verses 14–15 — and what to make of an early Christian book quoted as prophecy yet absent from the Catholic canon.
2. Ch. 33 Jubilees, the Eastern Orthodox Canon, and Other Disputed Books The Book of Jubilees, the wider Eastern Orthodox canon (3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151), and the Ethiopic books that demonstrate the canon question is broader than the Catholic-Protestant debate.
3. Ch. 34 The Septuagint Priority Argument — Which Text Better Preserves the Original? The cumulative argument that the Septuagint, not the Masoretic Text, generally preserves the older and more reliable Old Testament reading — with the necessary qualifications, the cases that go the other way, and a chapter-length appraisal of where the evidence lands.

Part VII — Synthesis and Conclusion

A final argument from prophetic and Messianic texts in the deuterocanon, and a constructive proposal for recovering the Bible that built the church.

1. Ch. 35 Prophetic and Messianic Texts in the Deuterocanon — Evidence of Divine Inspiration A closing argument for the inspiration of the deuterocanonical books from prophetic and Messianic texts — Wisdom 2 on the suffering righteous one, Baruch 3:36–38, the Maccabean resurrection theology, and the converging evidence of divine inspiration.
2. Ch. 36 Conclusion — Recovering the Bible That Built the Church A summary of the case across all thirty-six chapters and a constructive proposal — what it would look like for Protestants to recover the Bible that built the church without abandoning the Reformation's core insights.

Appendices

Reference materials supporting the work of the main chapters — a glossary, a comparative Messianic-passage table, a New Testament citation table, a canon timeline, and an annotated bibliography.

1. App. A Glossary of Key Terms An alphabetical glossary defining every Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and technical text-critical term used in the book — for readers without prior training in biblical languages or textual criticism.
2. App. B Messianic Passages Altered in the Masoretic Text — A Comparative Reference A comparative reference of approximately forty Messianic passages where the Masoretic Text differs from the Septuagint — with the LXX reading, the MT reading, the Dead Sea Scrolls evidence where available, and a short note on each.
3. App. C New Testament Citations of the LXX — A Reference Table A reference table of every significant New Testament citation of the Old Testament, marking which follow the Septuagint, which follow the Masoretic, and which agree with neither — with chapter cross-references.
4. App. D Timeline of the Biblical Canon — From the Septuagint to the Modern Era A chronological timeline running from the third-century-BC translation of the Pentateuch in Alexandria to the modern era, listing the major textual, conciliar, and ecclesial events that shaped the biblical canon.
5. App. E Annotated Bibliography A category-organized annotated bibliography of the major scholarly works on the Septuagint, the deuterocanonical books, the Masoretic Text, textual criticism, and the history of the canon.