Quite often, New Testament writers quote the Old Testament. When we turn to those Old Testament passages, we may see some differences between what is found there and what we find in the New Testament.
Sometimes that is because the New Testament author is paraphrasing the Old Testament passage but more often it is because they are quoting from the Greek Septuagint.
What is the Septuagint? It was the most popular of the Greek translations of the Old Testament. It was translated by the Jews and legend says by seventy scholars. This explains the name Septuagint and the short form, LXX.
While the Septuagint was originally a Jewish translation, the Jews eventually abandoned it as it had been widely embraced by Christians.
The New Testament and other early writings quote from the Old Testament because they were writing in Greek and so it made sense to use a Greek translation.
But this doesn’t explain why there are differences between what the Old Testament says and how the New Testament quotes it. Here is an example.
In Luke 4, Jesus reads a passage from Isaiah 61:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
But when we turn to Isaiah 61, we read:
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Isaiah 61:1-2)
Notice that one speaks of those who are blind and the other of those in darkness. While related concepts, they are not exact equivalents. Here is the LXX:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to declare the acceptable year of the Lord. (Isaiah 61:1-2)
The Septuagint is a translation but it is not a modern translation. And with any translation, there is a certain amount of interpretation.
The bottom line is that understanding something of the Septuagint is helpful in understanding the New Testament.
