How We Got Our Scriptures Part 2: The Early Versions of the Tanakh

In part 1, we examined the history of how the Tanakh, commonly called the "Old Testament" came down to us. In that article, we focused solely on the Hebrew Tanakh, because it is, after all, the original language of it. In this article, we will examine the early translations of the Tanakh. In particular, we will focus on three primary version: The Greek Septuagint, the Syriac Peshitta, and the Latin Vulgate (with a brief discussion of the Old Latin). Throughout this article series I hope that you, the reader, will gain a better understanding of how the Bible in your hands came down to you through the ages. To begin, we'll look at the Septuagint. Now, if you've spent any great deal of time listening to teachings about the Tanakh (OT), you've probably heard the word Septuagint before. If you don't know what it is, then this article should be quite useful for you. The word Septuagint comes not from Greek, but from the Latin word septuaginta, meaning "seventy (70)." The Greek title for the Septuagint is given as which means "The Translation of the Seventy." This is usually abbreviated to LXX, the Roman numerals for 70. The LXX was completed in stages, and was not the work of any single person or even group. The Torah was completed first, and given an approximate date of the 3rd century BCE. It gets its name from a legend. The legend states that Ptolemy II Philadelphus (the Greek-installed king of Egypt), somewhere around 260 B.C.E., commissioned a Greek translation of the Tanakh to be placed into the Library of Alexandria. The Letter of Aristeas, supposedly written shortly thereafter, gives the origin story of this legend, and Alexandrian Jew Philo the Historian repeats it with some minor variants, as do Josephus and Augustine. One version of this legend is found in the Babylonian Talmud, which reads, "King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one's room and said, 'Write for me the Torah of Mosheh, your teacher.' Elohim put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did."Philo stated that 6 scholars were chosen from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, thus giving the number of 72 elders. This, however, has been disputed, given the wide dispersion of the tribes of the Northern Kingdom by this time. Regardless of its name, however, the LXX has been utilized extensively in the process of textual criticism of the OT. There were, in antiquity, other Greek versions of the OT, though few have survived, and those that have are quite fragmentary. The most famous of these are the translations by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. Most known readings from these versions are preserved in the few fragmentary pieces of Origen's Hexapla, which will be discussed further below.In general, the most well-preserved versions in Greek are those of the LXX. In fact, some of the greatest, most important Greek manuscripts that we possess contain all or most of the Septuagint. Codex Sinaiticus, for instance, originally contained the entire OT, though portions of it were lost or destroyed over time. It also contains almost all of the NT, and is dated as the one of the earliest complete manuscripts, at about 350 C.E.Among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, numerous fragments of the LXX were found. Some are also fragments of a Greek translation of the OT that predates the LXX. Some of these contain the Name of YHWH () written in Paleo-Hebrew characters, rather than the substituted Greek word . The LXX was used extensively in the first few centuries, when the Word began spreading throughout the communities of early believers. This continued until Jerome's Latin Vulgate (discussed below), which then took precedence over the Greek.The LXX has been very useful, as mentioned before, in the process of textual criticism. It preserves some readings that we know predate the Hebrew Masoretic Text. After the discovery of the Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls, we found that some of the variations where the LXX disagrees with the Masoretic, the LXX actually preserves the original reading. Thus the LXX and the Dead Sea Scrolls, may very well have shared (in part, at least) a common ancestor. This is called a Vorlage, a manuscript which multiple versions and copies were made from. However, some scholars believe that the scribes that translated the LXX also purposely altered the text in places, to keep the Greeks form ever possessing the entire Word. This is debated, though there is no doubt that some readings are completely different. In some cases the order of a book is also disrupted, such as Jeremiah, whose chapters appear in a completely different order in the LXX.Many copies of the LXX also contain the apocryphal books, to a greater or lesser extent. These include Tobit, Judith, additions to Esther and Daniel, 1 4 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, and 1 Baruch. Lastly, we'll examine Origen's Hexapla for a moment. Hexapla means "six-fold" and referred to six different columns and versions. Think of a parallel Bible such as we have today, where one column is English and the other is Hebrew. Or, think of a parallel English Bible, which may have four columns: one for the KJV, one for the NIV, one for the NASB, and one for the NLT (for instance). This is essentially what the Hexapla of Origen was. The columns of this work were:1. Hebrew2. Secunda (that is, Hebrew words transliterated with Greek characters. This was mostly used for learning pronunciation. Similar to writing "Shalom" or "Yom Teruah" in English.)3. Aquila's Greek OT4. Symmachus' Greek OT5. A recension of the LXX6. Theodotion's Greek OTThis book is said to have contained 6,000 pages and covered 15 volumes. Sadly, most of the work was destroyed around 640 C.E. during a Muslim invasion.

The Syriac Peshitta.As much as the LXX was (and in many cases, still is) beloved by Greek-speaking peoples, the Syriac Peshitta was the same way for the Syriac-speaking peoples. This version was beloved by many Jews and Arameans, and Syriac became a very common liturgical language. After the split of Eastern Christianity from Western (Roman) Christianity, the Eastern Churches shifted away from using the Greek and Latin, and rely on the Syriac. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, being a Semitic language, though not without being influenced by Greek and, in some cases, Latin. Though the exact date of the birth of the Peshitta is not known, it is generally believed that the OT was originally translated from Hebrew in the 2nd Century C.E. The word "Peshitta" () means "simple" or "common" in Syriac. This designation was given to mean that the "simple" man, or the commoner could understand the text. Not much else is known about the Peshitta's translation history, nor who completed or commissioned the work.We do know that it, like the LXX, represents a Hebrew Vorlage in some places, where it agrees with the LXX and Dead Sea Scrolls, yet diverges from the Hebrew Masoretic. Thus it is also useful in establishing a critical text. Also like the LXX, many Peshitta texts also contain all or part of the apocrypha, including 5 additional Psalms. While Psalm 151 is found in Greek and Syriac, 152 155 are found only in the Peshitta. While the LXX continued to spread over many years, the Peshitta was confined mostly to its Mid-Eastern home, centered around Antioch in Syria.

The Latin Vulgate, and the Old Latin.While the Latin Vulgate is by far the most well-known Latin version of the Bible, it is not the oldest. Indeed, very earlier on we find translations from Greek into Latin, especially of the NT. While the LXX had mostly been standardized, the Latin texts were far from that. The earliest forms of the Latin are usually referred to as Vetus Latina, or "Old Latin." These texts appear to be mostly individual translations, as there was very little standardization of them. These texts were used from the late 2nd Century C.E. until the end of the 4th Century C.E., when Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to create a standardized version.In 382 C.E., Pope Damasus I commissioned Jerome, a priest and historian, to revise and standardize the Vetus Latina texts to be used by the Catholic Church. Though it was met with opposition early on, it was eventually universally accepted, due mostly to the Church's force. The word Vulgate, or "Vulgata" in Latin, means "common" just as does Peshitta in Syriac. When Damasus originally commissioned Jerome to create the Vulgate, he initially only wanted a revision of the four gospels, and he wanted them brought closer in line with the best Greek copies available. Two years later, at the time of Damasus' death, Jerome had not only completed the gospels, but had also finished a Latin revision of the Psalms for use in liturgy.Prior to Jerome, most Latin translations of the OT were translations of the LXX. This carried its own problems, as it always does when dealing with a translation of a translation. Jerome, however, created the first known translation of the Tanakh straight from Hebrew into the Vulgate. He even moved to Jerusalem during this time in order to strengthen his knowledge of Hebrew. This is why, in some places, the Vulgate is like the LXX and the Peshitta: it preserves the reading of the original, even when the Hebrew Masoretic does not. Jerome translated nearly his entire OT directly from Hebrew, save for the Psalms, which he revised from existing Latin and Greek versions. Some of the apocryphal books he translated from Greek, and others were revised from the Old Latin. For some, however, he had to rely on an Aramaic version (such as Tobit and Judith) which was then worked back into Hebrew.The Vulgate, while praised as a great literary work and early translation, is still in many cases paraphrased. This was a problem that plagued the Old Latin, as well, as the Romans had a tendency to reword texts. After it was completed, the Vulgate became the standard Bible of the Western (Roman) church for more than 1,000 years, and in 1545-63, during the Council of Trent, it was officially recognized as THE Bible of the Church. This, of course, led to further problems and the eventually Protest, though those are beyond the scope of this article.This should pretty much cover the three most important early translations of the Tanakh. In the next article, we'll look at the Targumim.Be Berean. Shalom.