The Septuagint: A Critical Analysis - Christian Mission Connection

The Authenticity of the LXX Chapter 3
The painfully obvious conclusion before us is that, by not grasping the import of the story before him
– that is, the true explanation of the 66, 70, and 75, the translator of the Septuagint tried to "correct"
what he perceived as a "scribal error" in the Hebrew text. In so doing, he created o n e .
THREE "PROBLEM" TEXTS IN THE BOOK OF HEBREWS 1
The Epistle to the Hebrews includes three Old Testament quotations which h a v e c a u s e d m u c h
disagreement. The first of these is Hebrews 1:6:
And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels
of God worship him.
The underlined portion of the verse is the section about which the "problem" revolves. This clause is
found in the uncial MS Vaticanus B (which all scholars label as an LXX MS) as an addition to
Deuteronomy 32:43. On this sole basis, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has repeatedly been
accused of citing as Scripture a segment of a verse not found in the Hebrew Bible. The text of the
Septuagint, however, is neither definite nor incontrovertible with regard to this verse. Manuscript
Alexandrinus A, another so - called Septuagint uncial (see p. 10), reads: "... And let all the angels of
God give them (Him) strength ."
This latter reading was adopted by Alfred Rahlfs (1935), one of the most recent editors of the LXX.
Rahlfs' is widely considered to be among the best critical 2 editions of the Septuagint – a standard. As
th e late conservative Christian text critic Edward F. Hills (d. 1981) has correctly perceived, if the
text of Codex A is correct as Rahlfs believes, then the content of B must have been altered to agree
with Hebrews 1:6, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews could not be quoting it. That is, the
scribe who wrote B would obviously, in that instance, have had the Epistle to the Hebrews before
him at a time after the Hebrew Epistle was written!
Moreover, the author of Heb. 1:6 was not citing Deu. 32:43 in the first place! The passage to which
he was actually alluding was either Psalm 97:7, 103:20, 148:2, or Nehemiah 9:6c (or all four). Thus,
it becomes painfully evident that the scribe who was writing Vaticanus B – l o n g a f t e r t h e H e b r e w
epistle was written – s i m p l y c o u l d n o t f i n d a n y o f t h e s e c r o s s r e f e r e n c e s a n d a d d e d a p o r t i o n o f H e b .
1:6 to Deu. 32:43 in order to provide the needed citation. Actually, as Vaticanus B is merely a copy of
Origen's 5th column, it is Origen (or possibly Eusebius) who fail e d t o f i n d t h e p r o p e r c r o s s
reference(s) and stands guilty of this modification.
Sadly, to this day nearly all versions of the Bible erroneously state in the margin that Heb. 1:6 is a
reference to Deu. 32:43 and that it has been taken from the LXX. In so doing, they assert that the
H e b r e w t e x t i s w r o n g – that it is not the infallible Word of God but rather, it only "contains" the
W o r d o f G o d . S h a m e !
The second O.T. quotation causing difficulty is Hebrews 10:5:
Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a
body hast thou prepared me:
1 Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th ed., (Des Moines, IO: The Christian Research Press, 1984), pp. 84-
85. Credit for this insight rightly belongs to Dr. Hills; nevertheless, he should not be "blamed" for the current author's
(FNJ) embellishments.
2 P r i c e , Ancestry of Our English Bible, op. cit., pp. 69-70. By a "critical" text is meant that instead of presenting the
evidence and leaving the individual to come to his own conclusion as to the correct reading, the scholars producing the
work evaluate the data and render what they deem to be the correct text. In so doing, they produce (invent) a contrived
text that does not exist in any known manuscript.
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