Old Testament

Does Isaiah Predict the Virgin Birth?

Against the modern consensus, a close study of Isaiah 7:14 suggests the prophet directly predicted a virgin birth in the distant future.

When Christians celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating the miraculous birth of a child to a young woman who was a virgin—according to the New Testament (Matthew 1:18–25, Luke 1:26–38). The Gospel of Matthew specifically connects this birth with a prophecy given by Isaiah (7:14) that “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matt. 1:23).

But debates have raged for centuries over the details in Isaiah 7, especially around the translation of the key term “virgin.” This translation debate goes back at least to the second century with the Christian apologist Justin Martyr (Dialogue 68.7; 84.3) and remains with us today. It was a flashpoint when the RSV came out in 1952 because it printed “young woman” in the main text and relegated “virgin” to a footnote. Conservatives at the time panned the translation for this and other issues, accusing it of liberalism. But, by the twenty-first century, whether conservative or liberal, a consensus had formed in agreement with the RSV translators that the Hebrew word ʿalmâ in v. 14 does, in fact, mean “young woman” and does not necessarily indicate a virgin.

By the twenty-first century, whether conservative or liberal, a consensus had formed in agreement with the RSV translators.

The firm position of modern scholarship raises real questions. If the consensus is correct, then why did the Greek translator in the second century BC employ a Greek word that clearly means virgin (parthenos) in Hellenistic Greek? And was Matthew misled in thinking that this text predicted the virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth?

The spectrum of views

For a commentator such as Hans Wildberger—at one end of the spectrum—a contradiction between the Old and New Testaments is no problem:

the traditional interpretation of the church, based upon Matt. 1:23, takes the עָלְמָה/ παρθένος [ʿalmâ/parthenos] to be Mary and Immanuel to be Jesus. In some quarters, it is still considered correct today, even if there are certain reservations and an awareness that Isaiah would have not been able to anticipate the specific way in which the predictions would be fulfilled.¹

For an interpreter such as James M. Hamilton, Jr.—a conservative at the other end of the spectrum from Wildberger—one must find a satisfactory way to hold to the unity of the Old and New Testaments. He correlates Immanuel with the son born in Isaiah 8:1–4 and believes that the text of Matthew can be explained satisfactorily as a typological fulfillment.²

The consensus, however, has been challenged recently by the linguist Christophe Rico who has applied modern semantic theory to the study of ʿalmâ.³ Exhaustive analysis from modern linguistic methodology reveals that the word can only mean “young virgin.” But, before exploring that, we first need to appreciate the context of Isaiah’s prophecy.

Isaiah’s context

The brief conversation recorded between King Ahaz of Judah and Isaiah is a pivotal point in the narrative plot-structure of the Old Testament that causes the tree of the Davidic dynasty to be cut down. In the Old Testament, kings and kingdoms are portrayed as stately trees.⁴ The Assyrians are pictured as lofty trees in Isaiah 10:33–34 and in Isaiah 11:1, we come to the first reference of the stump of Jesse.⁵ This text employs an identical metaphor to show that the kingdom of the House of David is a tree cut down; all that remains is a stump.

Characteristic of Hebrew literature is to treat topics recursively. An opening section may go around a topic followed by a second section on the same topic, from a different angle or perspective or point of view. Although the sections are presented sequentially, they function like the left and right speakers of a stereo system, giving full Dolby Surround Sound, so to speak. Thus, “the whole truth” is presented in a full-orbed and three-dimensional way.

The prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 comes from the third repetitive section of Isaiah where he promises judgement for covenant breaking (idolatry and social injustice) and looks beyond the judgement of exile to a coming king who would restore a righteous Zion. There are three panels that portray the coming king: (1) Immanuel Section (Isa. 7:1–8:18); (2) Mighty God Section (Isa. 8:19–10:19); and (3) Shoot from Stump of Jesse Section (Isa. 10:20–11:16). In these three sections prediction of a coming king in the distant future is contrasted with imminent destruction and exile brought by the Assyrians as the Lord’s instrument of judgement. In Isaiah 10:5 Yahweh calls Assyria the rod of his anger that is employed against Judah.

“The Prophecy of Isaiah” (1778 –1779) by Francisco Bayeu. Museo Nacional del Prado

The background of the Immanuel Section is the awakening of the Assyrian giant and the beginning of Neo-Assyrian domination in the ancient Near East (744–612 BC). Syria with its capital in Damascus joined forces with the Northern Kingdom of Israel with its capital in Samaria to create an anti-Assyrian coalition. They wanted Ahaz, King of Judah to join them, but he refused. The plan was to eliminate him and put a puppet in his place. It looked like the end of the Davidic Dynasty! The paragraph in Isaiah 7:10–16 comes as Isaiah meets Ahaz while he is out inspecting his city’s source of water and preparing for a siege. Isaiah promises him deliverance if he will rely on Yahweh alone and ask for a sign: anything at all in the universe.

The answer given by Ahaz appears pious, but is insincere and completely lacking in covenant loyalty to Yahweh. He declares that he will not put the Lord to the test (Isa. 7:12). It may seem that Ahaz is acting very piously by refusing to put God to the test, but in reality, he is demonstrating that he is a willfully unbelieving man. He has already decided what he will do. He is going to hold out against a siege from Syria and Israel and become a vassal of the King of Assyria in order to get the alliance of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Syria (Syro-Ephraimite Coalition) off his back.

In view of Ahaz’s refusal to trust the Lord, Isaiah announces in vv. 17–25 that Judah will soon be overrun and devastated by that very Assyria which Ahaz has foolishly decided to turn to for help. Set in between the Threat to the Davidic House in vv. 1–9 and the Announcement of Desolation by Attacking Armies in vv. 17–25 is the paragraph in vv. 10–16 where Isaiah presents the Immanuel Sign.

The Immanuel sign

We come now to Isaiah 7:13–16 which speak of the Immanuel Sign. These verses are the heart of the section. Verses 1–12 lead up to them and vv. 17–25 which follow indicate the results of Ahaz’s decision. From the New Testament, we know that this prophecy finds fulfillment ultimately in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:21–23), but what is the meaning of the prophecy according to the Book of Isaiah and in the time of Ahaz?

When Matthew and the other writers of the New Testament say that a particular prophecy in the Old Testament is fulfilled, they do not discuss how to interpret the text in the Old Testament. Some prophecies are what we might call direct prediction, and some involve typological prediction, which means that events or people in the Old Testament serve as a model or pattern for what will happen in a greater event or person at a later time and so are said to foreshadow or predict the later event or person.⁶ When an Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled, the authors in the New Testament do not pause to say explicitly whether it is a direct prediction or a typological prediction.

Various explanations of Isaiah 7:14

It is impossible in a brief space to describe and assess all explanations given in the history of interpretation for Isaiah 7:14, but some of the most common ones are as follows:

Immanuel is Hezekiah and it is simply a wife of Ahaz who will bear a son.
Immanuel is Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz mentioned in Isaiah 8:1 and so it is a wife of Isaiah who will bear a son.
Immanuel is a son born to an unknown woman who was a contemporary of Isaiah.
Immanuel is the Messiah born to a virgin in the (distant) future.
A birth contemporary with Isaiah is a model or type of the future birth of the Messiah.

Each interpretation depends heavily on how certain issues are handled. The first three options can be firmly rejected and the reader is referred to the excellent critique of Gary Smith in his Isaiah commentary.⁷ Furthermore, careful analysis shows many differences between Immanuel and 8:1–4. These differences mean that the child born to Isaiah’s wife is best considered a harbinger of the future miraculous birth announced in 7:14.

Six questions for Isaiah 7:10–16

1. Who’s the audience?

It is not always possible from a modern English translation to track the pronominal references in Hebrew throughout the brief segment of vv. 10–16. Verse 10 begins, “And Yahweh continued to speak to Ahaz saying…” This introduction clearly marks the beginning of a new segment of conversation or discourse. The conversation partners are clearly identified as Yahweh and King Ahaz. From the context, the mediator of the message is Isaiah the prophet; he is the one through whom these words are presented to Ahaz.

Verse 11 continues, “Ask for yourself a sign from Yahweh your God. Make it deep to Sheol or make it high above / upwards.” These three clauses contain imperative verbs—all second person masculine singular in form, as well as two pronouns, also both second masculine singular. Clearly, these commands are issued directly and specifically to Ahaz. It is Ahaz who is to ask for a sign.

Verse 12 contains the brief response of King Ahaz: And Ahaz said, “I will not ask nor will I test Yahweh.” The verbs are first person common singular in form and Yahweh is referred to in the third person since the medium between him and God is the prophet.

Verse 13 continues the conversation by the simple verb “And he said.” This is obviously Yahweh / Isaiah speaking and giving a response to the answer given by Ahaz. The quoted speech begins as follows: “Hear, O House of David, Is it too trivial for you to weary humans that you must also weary my God?” The two verbs, “hear” (שִׁמְעוּ) and “you must weary” (תַּלְאוּ) are second person plural in form. The one pronoun employed with the infinitive “to weary” is also second person plural. Yahweh/Isaiah is no longer addressing Ahaz directly or specifically; he is addressing the entire dynasty of David: past, present, and future—the whole family line or House of David.

“King Ahaz sacrifices his son to Moloch” by Rombout van Troyen. Image source

The pronoun in verse 14 is also second masculine plural in form. The sign in verse 11 was offered specifically to Ahaz. Ahaz declined. In spite of Ahaz’s response, Yahweh gave a sign. The sign he gave was for the entire family line of David and is therefore not at all tied to the time of Ahaz.

Verses 15–16a go on to speak about the promised child. Then remarkably, verse 16b switches back to second masculine singular in form. The translation of this sentence is problematic, but it clearly is addressed specifically to Ahaz.

This analysis of the pronouns resolves one very important issue: the sign given in vv. 14–15 is not necessarily for Isaiah’s contemporaries or time. It is a sign that spans the entire history of the remaining Davidic family tree, an issue to be clarified in the prophecy in Isaiah 11:1.

2. What verbs belong in verse 14?

Having addressed who Isaiah’s audience is, we must consider the difficulties in the second half of v. 14. The first five words form a verbless clause: “Look! A virgin will conceive and bear a son.” The verbs “conceive” and “bear” are in fact participles. The helping verb “to be” required by English has to be supplied from the context. One could translate the clause with present progressive tenses in English: “A virgin is conceiving and bearing a son.” Or one could construe the participles as describing a future, as is normal syntax in Hebrew: “A virgin will conceive and bear a son.” Both options are grammatically possible.⁸ It is the nature of Hebrew prophecy, however, for a prophet to describe what he has seen in his vision using a past or a present, even though the vision applies to the future. Here since the following finite verb is future, a future tense is probable. And it is a young virgin who conceives.

The next verb is wəqara’t (“and you will call”). First this is a waw-consecutive Perfect and must be translated as a future tense. Thus, construing the preceding participles as future is also highly probable. Second, the verb could be second person feminine singular or third person feminine singular: “You shall call,” addressing the virgin, or “She will call,” where the referent is the virgin. The former seems contextually out of place and the latter is contrary to practice in a patriarchal society. There is, moreover, a problem in the transmission of the text which we must discuss.⁹

The Masoretic Text, best witnessed by the Aleppo and Cairo Codices, is supported by the Jewish Revisers Aquila and Symmachus and the Aramaic Targum.

The opening of Numbers in the Yonah Pentateuch (14th c.), showing its ornate micrography. BL Add MS 21160. Public domain
The Extraordinary Hebrew Text behind Your English Bible
The Masoretic Text is the fruit of the genius of Jewish textual scholars who codified the pronunciation of the Hebrew text.
Kim Phillips

Yet the Great Isaiah Scroll from about 100 BC attests wqr’ (וקרא). This is a third masculine singular verb either Qal or Pual. If the former, it is an indefinite subject verb functioning as a passive; if the latter, it is automatically passive. Variation plagues the witness of the Septuagint and Old Latin. The critical edition by Ziegler gives second person singular but the manuscript support is largely hexaplaric which suggests influence from Aquila and Symmachus. Some Greek manuscripts have kalesetai (καλέσεται “he/she will call”) which could be a translation of a text exactly like the Isaiah Scroll. There are also manuscripts which have a second person plural, but this might be a spelling variant. Finally, some manuscripts have a third person plural, but may be influenced by the New Testament.

The reading that best explains how the others arose is the third person singular passive. Similarly in the Old Latin, the oldest strand of text has the third person singular passive but some later manuscripts attest second person singular or plural as in manuscripts of the LXX. Jerome’s Vulgate is plagued by the same variants. The Syriac Peshitta clearly supports the Great Isaiah Scroll. There is, therefore, very early witness for a text with an indefinite subject like the translation in Matthew and this is supported by the Isaiah Scroll and Syriac and possibly Septuagint (and Old Latin).

The reading in the Masoretic Text could be an error of adding a tau from the previous verb and could have occurred equally in the Paleo-Hebrew script or the later Aramaic Square script. In any case, as noted, a second person singular or third person singular is not contextually suitable. The reading best attested is that of the Dead Sea Scroll supported by the LXX (and Old Latin), Syriac Peshitta and Matthew’s Gospel, while the reading of Aquila, Symmachus (= Jerome), Masoretic Text, and Targum is most likely secondary.

3. Does ʿalmâ mean just ‘young girl’?

There is a consensus among scholars today (regardless of whether one is conservative or liberal) that the word ʿalmâ (עַלְמָה) means only “young girl” or perhaps “young woman” and does not necessarily entail virginity. Four arguments are normally used to support this view: (1) an argument based on etymology; (2) an argument that there already exists in Hebrew a word for virgin in the word bĕtûlâ (בְּתוּלָה); (3) an argument that assumes the word ʿalmâ in Proverbs 30:19 refers to a girl who is not a virgin; and (4) an argument from Jewish tradition—both ancient and reliable—that does not permit an equation between ʿalmâ and parthenos, the Greek word for virgin.

But, as mentioned, the consensus has recently been challenged by Christophe Rico. His work represents the first comprehensive and exhaustive research done on the basis of modern linguistic semantic principles.

The consensus has recently been challenged.

The first argument that has been used to support that ʿalmâ does not imply virginity is based on the etymological background of this word. Rico’s analysis, particularly of Ugaritic, shows that the argument of the consensus is faulty in etymology. At any rate, arguments from etymology are at best secondary and do not necessarily determine meaning. (The English word “nice” comes from Latin nescius and means “ignorant.” This is no indication of its meaning today.)

The second argument that has been given as an inadequate reason for thinking that ʿalmâ cannot also mean virgin relates to the Hebrew word bĕtûlâ. The fact that there is already a word in Hebrew for virgin is an inadequate reason for thinking that ʿalmâ cannot also mean virgin. Study of usage shows that the word bĕtûlâ indicates a virgin regardless of age, whereas the word ʿalmâ denotes specifically a young virgin.¹⁰ The following evidence from Rico shows that it is common to have both words in many languages and that it is possible also in Semitic languages.¹¹

	“Young girl”	“Young virgin”	“Virgin”
Russian	devuška	devica	devstevenica
Classical English	girl	maid	virgin
Classical French	jeune fille	pucelle	vierge
Classical Spanish	muchacha	doncella	virgen
Catalan	noia	poncella	verge
Classical Italian	giovinetta	pulzèlla	vergine
Japanese	shōjo	otome	shŏjo
Arabic	fatâ’ah	bikr	‘adra’

Languages like Hebrew that lexically distinguish “young girl,” “young virgin,” and “virgin”

The third argument that scholars have regularly used against the view that ʿalmâ means “virgin” rests on the interpretation of Proverbs 30:19. This is the only instance of the word where “young woman” and not virgin is either the necessary or best suitable meaning. Yet it is unwise to rely on this verse since it contains a problem in the history of the transmission of the text.¹² The textual evidence is summarized as follows.¹³

30,19 cor בעלמיו [C] G Syh Th Aq Syriac Vulg T // err-graph: Sym M בעלמה

This can be simplified into the following table:

“in a maid” (בעלמה)	Symmachus, Masoretic Text
“in his youth” (בעלמיו)	Greek, Theodotion, Aquila, Syriac, Origen’s Hexapla, Latin Vulgate

What this means is that the following manuscripts support the reading “in his youth” (בעלמיו): the Septuagint (G), the Jewish revisions of the Septuagint by Theodotion (Th) and Aquila (A) made before 120 AD, the Syro-Hexapla, the Syriac translation (S) coming from the Second Century, the Latin Vulgate (Vulg), based on a Hebrew Text from the Fourth Century AD, and even the Aramaic Targum. Alternately, only two witnesses support the reading “in an ʿalmâ” (בעלמה): the Masoretic Text attested from about 900 AD and Symmachus (S), a Jewish revisor from perhaps 200 AD. The difference between the readings is a hē for ʿalmâ at the end of the word while a combination of waw and yodh ends the word reading “in his youth.”

Anyone familiar with the Herodian script of the Dead Sea Scrolls would know how easy it is to confuse these two paleographically. The reading that has the earliest support widespread among six witnesses and also best explains how the less meaningful reading in Masoretic Text arose is “in his youth.” In any case, it is unwise to claim a text that is uncertain in textual transmission as a strong argument against ʿalmâ as “young virgin.”

The following image shows how easily hē (ח) and a combination of waw (ו) and yodh (י) could be confused in the Herodian script.

From column 1, line 18 of “The Community Rule” (Serekh Hayahad, 1QS). Image source

There are other problems with the Masoretic Text. The preposition bə (בְּ) meaning “in” is not normal with the word derek (דֶּ֫רֶךְ “way”).¹⁴ Moreover, the clause in Proverbs 30:19d in the Masoretic Text breaks the obvious poetic pattern as pointed out by Rico:¹⁵

Eagle               Aerial Pathway
Snake             Terrestrial Pathway
Ship                 Aquatic Pathway
Youth             Developmental Pathway
Adulteress      Ethical Pathway

The “way of a man in a young woman” as in Masoretic Text does not fit this sequence.

The fourth argument that scholars have often used to argue against interpreting ʿalmâ as “virgin” has been based on Rabbinic tradition. Rico shows, however, that because the phonological difference between the consonants ʿayin and ġayin was lost in Hebrew already in the Second Century BC, analysis of the word ʿalmâ in both Rabbinic and Christian circles is frequently based on a popular etymology (the hidden young girl) and is erroneous. Before the coming of Jesus of Nazareth whom the Jewish tradition rejects as fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, the Septuagint got the translation of Isaiah right. Nonetheless, roughly one-third of medieval rabbis, including Rashi and Ben Gershon, do ascribe the meaning virgin to the word ʿalmâ.¹⁶

4. What do the verbs in verses 6 and 16 mean?

Two verbs are crucial to our understanding of the entire passage from 7:1–25. They are in 7:6 and 7:16. Most lexica derive these forms from the root qwṣ (קוץ) meaning “to be disgusted, feel loathing.”¹⁷ The form in v. 6 is usually analysed as a Hiphil Imperfect and the form in v. 16 as a Qal Participle. The lexica argue that “be in dread” (Qal) or “frighten, terrify” (Hiphil) is an appropriate secondary sense for these two texts. The ESV is a good example of translations that illustrate this:

6. Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,”
16. … the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.

An exhaustive analysis shows a better solution: the root is probably qyṣ as in Old South Arabic and not qwṣ.¹⁸ Therefore, both the form in v. 6 and the form in v. 16 are Qal and mean “cut” or better “break, split,” hence “tear apart, demolish, destroy.” (This resolves the problem of a form in the Hiphil that is apparently not causative.) As some lexicographers have already realised, this meaning fits better in v. 6. It also fits better in v. 16, as Zorell recognised,¹⁹ depending on how we render the relative sentence. The meaning is to break or destroy in both passages. This proposal is supported in antiquity because for Isaiah 7:6 Symmachus uses klaō (κλάω “break”) and Theodotion has koptō (κόπτω “cut down” » “destroy”). Thus, the meaning of break » destroy for qyṣ was known in antiquity. We will see next how a better meaning for this verb affects interpretation of Isaiah 7:16.

5. How should we translate the last sentence in 7:16?

The last half of Isaiah 7:16 is translated in the NRSV as

For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted (תֵּעָזֵ֤ב הָאֲדָמָה֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר אַתָּ֣ה קָ֔ץ מִפְּנֵ֖י שְׁנֵ֥י מְלָכֶֽיהָ)

Instead, we propose, along with Murray Adamthwaite,²⁰ “the land which you (Ahaz) are tearing apart (by your unbelieving policies) will be ridden of the presence of her two kings.”

The pronoun “her” on the suffixed noun, “her kings” must refer to “land” since the pronoun is feminine singular. So, the two kings are the king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the king of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The two kings cannot be the King of Israel and the King of Aram, the two kings in the Syro-Ephraimite coalition, because they are not the kings of one country. This could only be said of the territory known as Israel after the time of Solomon. Thus, the interpretation of the NRSV is highly unlikely because it contradicts the grammar of the text.

6. What does it mean to “eat curds and honey” in verses 15–16?

Insufficient thought has been given by interpreters to the statement that the child born to the virgin will “eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.” First, refusing evil and choosing good is connected to the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2:9, 16. It refers to making moral choices on one’s own and hence refers to the age of accountability.²¹ In biblical culture, this is around 13 years old, the time of a boy’s Bar Mitzvah in later Judaism.

Nogah Hareuveni has best explained “eating curds and honey.”²² Curds are a product of pastoralists, those who herd flocks of goats or sheep and cattle. Honey comes from bees and refers to the forests as opposed to cultivated land because honey bees flourished in the wild. In the land of Canaan there was always a struggle over the use of land. Pastoralists, those who grazed animals, would look for uncultivated areas for pasturage. Farmers, on the other hand, were terracing the hillsides and turning areas that grew wild into cultivated fields and vineyards. What Isaiah is saying is that the region will be so devastated by the Assyrians that there will be few farmers and the cultivated fields will return to regions left to grow wild. This would allow bees and pastoralists more territory.

So, eating curds and honey is not a statement of blessing, but rather a sign of devastation and judgement in the land. The fact that the child will eat curds and honey means that the land will be dominated by pastoralists and not farmers. This is an indication of the devastation and destruction resulting in exile and the conquest by the Assyrians and Babylonians. Therefore, a person reduced to eating curds and honey is a person in exile, not a person enjoying the good life. In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, this is fulfilled in the fact that the country was dominated by foreign overlords and in exile before the boy reached the age of accountability.²³

In the case of Jesus, this is fulfilled in the fact that the country was dominated by foreign overlords and in exile before the boy reached the age of accountability.

The larger literary structure

The interpretation proposed fits the larger literary structure better since Isaiah 7:14 is construed as a prediction of the distant future.²⁴ First, it is the normal pattern of the author to place predictions of events to be fulfilled in the far future side by side with predictions of events to be fulfilled in the near future. There are three panels or sections announcing the coming king: (1) the birth of Immanuel in 7:10–17, (2) the gift of the son El-Gibbor (Mighty God) in 9:1–7, and (3) the future reign of a shoot from the stump of Jesse in 11:1–9.²⁵ In each case, these predictions of the far future are placed side by side with predictions relating to the near future, such as the invasion of the Assyrians in 8:5–8. Note that in Isaiah 8:8, the country of Judah is designated as Immanuel’s land. Such a designation would be appropriate for a king or even Yahweh himself—El Gibbor! Also note that the third section on the coming king predicts a shoot from the stump of Jesse. The shoot comes from the stump of Jesse because what is needed is not another David, but a new David!

Conclusion

Textual analysis has shown the original text of Isaiah 7:14 may be even closer to the citation of Matthew than what we have in the Masoretic Text. Moreover, Proverbs 30:19 does not support the view that ʿalmâ is only a young woman and not necessarily a virgin. Semantic analysis of all instances demonstrates the meaning “young virgin.” In the larger structure of Isaiah, we see a switching back and forth between promises for the distant future and promises for the near future. The exegesis points to an interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 as a direct prediction for the distant future.

The coming king predicted in Isaiah 7–12 is associated with the end of exile. In Isaiah, this end of exile is also clearly correlated with the forgiveness of sins, the renewing of the covenant, the rebuilding of the temple, and the return of Yahweh to Zion to dwell in the midst of his people. This is a great harbinger of the birth of the child that first Christmas.

Notes

1
Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12: A Commentary, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 308 (italics his).
2
James M. Hamilton, Jr., “ ‘The Virgin Will Conceive’: Typological Fulfillment in Matthew 1:18–23,” in Built Upon the Rock: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew edited by Daniel M. Gurtner and John Nolland (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 228–247.
3
Christophe Rico, La mère de l’Enfant-Roi Isaïe 7,14: « ‛Almâ » et « Parthenos » dans l’universe biblique: un point de vue linguistique (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2013). English Translation and Updated Version: Christophe Rico and Peter J. Gentry, The Mother of the Infant King, Isaiah 7:14 ʿalmâ and Parthenos in the World of the Bible: A Linguistic Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020)
4
See William R. Osborne, “Trees and Kings: A Comparative Analysis of Tree Imagery in Israel’s Prophetic Tradition and the Ancient Near East,” Ph.D. diss. Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015.
5
Isaiah 6:13 is difficult to interpret but may contain an earlier reference to the cutting down of the tree of the Davidic dynasty/kingdom.
6
See discussion in Peter J. Gentry, How to Read and Understand the Biblical Prophets (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017).
7
Gary V. Smith, Isaiah 1–39 (NAC; Nashville: B&H, 2007), 201–211.
8
See P. Joüon, Grammaire de l’hébreu biblique (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1923), § 121e and Christo H. J. van der Merwe, Jackie A. Naudé and Jan H. Kroeze, A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar (Second Edition; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 187–88.
9
For an exhaustive examination of all evidence, see Christophe Rico and Peter J. Gentry, The Mother of the Infant King, Isaiah 7:14 ‘almâ and Parthenos in the World of the Bible: A Linguistic Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020), 189–196.
10
For the evidence, and analysis of that evidence, see Christophe Rico and Peter J. Gentry, The Mother of the Infant King, Isaiah 7:14.
11
The charts are adapted from Christophe Rico, La mère de l’Enfant-Roi Isaïe 7,14, 45–46.
12
This problem is not treated in Dominique Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament. Tome 5: Job, Proverbes, Qohélet et Cantique des Cantiques. Rapport final du Comité pour l’analyse textuelle de l’Ancien Testament hébreu institué par l’Alliance Biblique Universelle, établi en cooperation avec Alexander R. Hulst, Norbert Lohfink, William D. McHardy, Hans Peter Rüger et James A. Sanders. Edited by Clemens Locher, Stephen D. Ryan and Adrian Schenker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht / Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2015).
13
This codification and nomenclature is derived from Dominique Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de L’ancien Testament. 1. Josué, Juges, Ruth, Samuel, Rois, Chroniques, Esdras, Néhémie, Esther. Rapport final du Comité pour l’analyse textuelle de l’Ancien Testament hébreu institué par l’Alliance Biblique Universelle, établi en coopération avec Alexander R. Hulst, Norbert Lohfink, William D. McHardy, H. Peter Rüger, coéditeur, James A. Sanders, coéditeur (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 50/1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982).
14
Jenni, in his magisterial research on the prepositions, classifies Proverbs 30:19 as a locative use of beth. Nonetheless, he finds only one other occurrence similar to Proverbs 30:19 and it is not a precise parallel. See E. Jenni, Die hebräischen Präpositionen, Band 1: Die Präposition Beth (Stuttgart: Kolhammer, 1992), 52–69, 171–174, 195–197, # 2315.
15
Christophe Rico, La mère de l’Enfant-Roi Isaïe 7,14, 57.
16
Christophe Rico, La mère de l’Enfant-Roi Isaïe 7,14, 66–82.
17
So BDB, KB3, DCH, Ges18. BDB = Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1907); KB3 = L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, and J. J. Stamm, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament, 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1967–1997); DCH = Clines, David J. A., ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, 9 vols. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993–2016); Ges18 = R. Meyer, H. Donner, and J. Renz, Wilhelm Gesenius Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18^th Edition (Heidelberg: Springer, 2013).
18
For an exhaustive examination of all evidence, see Christophe Rico and Peter J. Gentry, The Mother of the Infant King, Isaiah 7:14 ʿalmâ and Parthenos in the World of the Bible: A Linguistic Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020), 209–212.
19
F. Zorell, ed., Lexicon Hebraicum Veteris Testamenti (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1989).
20
Murray R. Adamthwaite, “Isaiah 7:16 – Key to the Immanuel Prophecy,” The Reformed Theological Review 59.2 (2000), 65–83.
21
W. M. Clark, “A Legal Background to the Yahwist’s Use of ‘Good and Evil’ in Genesis 2–3,” Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (1969): 266–278. See also H. Blocher, In the Beginning (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 126–133.
22
Nogah Hareuveni, Nature in Our Biblical Heritage (Kiryat Ono, Israel: Neot Kedumim, 1980), 11–22.
23
In the New Testament, when Jesus reached the age of accountability, he informed his parents, Joseph and Mary, “Do you not know that I must be concerned with the affairs of my Father?” (Luke 2:49). Three panels or sections in Isaiah 7–12 focus on the coming king. If Isaiah 7:14 is a prediction of the distant future and the birth of a future king, then the age of accountability is fitting and relevant in this prophecy.
24
See Peter J. Gentry, “The Literary Macrostructures of the Book of Isaiah and Authorial Intent,” in Bind up the Testimony: Explorations in the Genesis of the Book of Isaiah, edited by Daniel I. Block and Richard L. Schultz (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2015), 227–254.
25
See Christophe Rico, La mère de l’Enfant-Roi Isaïe 7,14, 136–156.

Paul and the Septuagint Canon

What do the apostle’s quotations of the Septuagint tell us about his view of the Old Testament canon?

Edmon L. Gallagher

The apostle Paul quoted Scripture more than a hundred times in his thirteen canonical letters, but he never identified the version of Scripture that he used. Why bother?—you may think—everyone knows he used the Septuagint (LXX). He was obviously not quoting Scripture in the original language, because he was writing in Greek, not Hebrew, so he had to quote a translation. The LXX was the obvious choice.

There are problems with the simple statement that Paul quoted the LXX, however, and this essay focuses on one: did Paul know he was quoting the LXX?

The expanding definition of ‘Septuagint’

Whether Paul knew that he was quoting the Septuagint depends on what we mean by that term, Septuagint. Certainly, Paul knew that he was quoting Scripture in Greek and, if that’s all we mean by the term Septuagint, then Paul certainly did know. But “Septuagint” is also an ancient term associated with a particular origin story, and so we might ask whether Paul was familiar with the story and what he thought about it.

Illustration by Peter Gurry. Images from iStock
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Used by the Apostles and the early church, the Greek translations of the Old Testament may be the most important ever made.
William A. Ross

Here is the story: King Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the early third century BC commissioned seventy—or, actually, seventy-two—Jewish scholars (six from each of the twelve tribes) to translate Jewish Scripture into Greek. The translation came to be called “the translation of the Seventy,” or “the translation of the Hebdomēkonta” (in Greek, ἑβδομήκοντα), or, in Latin, “the translation of the Septuaginta.” That explains the common abbreviation LXX, a Roman numeral.

Ancient sources for the term

We can be more specific: our ancient Jewish sources for the story all specify that the portion of Jewish Scripture translated for Ptolemy was the Pentateuch. These Jewish sources include:

The Letter of Aristeas second century BC
Aristobulus (frg. 3, preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 13.12), second century BC
Philo (Life of Moses 2.25–44), first century AD
Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 12.11–118)
Talmud, specifically b. Megillah 9a §11. The traditions of the Talmud are hard to date, but this type of tradition called a baraita has been dated as early as the first century AD.

Not all of these sources mention the number of translators; Philo does not. But each of them mentions Ptolemy and that the translation project involved the Torah alone. Modern scholars rightly discount this entire story as a later propagandistic fabrication designed to magnify the authority of the early Greek translation of the Torah, but that is not our concern here; we are interested in how ancient people thought about the LXX.

‘Septuagint’ before Christianity

Other portions of Jewish Scripture were also translated into Greek, but they were not incorporated into the story of the translation for Ptolemy. We do not have, for instance, a story about the translation of Isaiah or Samuel or Proverbs or the Psalter, but we do know that these works were translated into Greek at some point in the third through first centuries BC because we have the Greek texts and many of the books of Jewish Scripture were quoted by Greek authors.

The New Testament quotes most of these books, so the translations must have been largely complete by the lifetime of Jesus. Most scholars would say that many of the books were translated already in the second century BC, in part because the translator of the apocryphal book of Sirach in the late second century BC mentions in a general way the Greek forms of the law, the prophets, and other books. (This is in the prologue to Greek Sirach.)

These other works (Greek Isaiah, Greek Proverbs, etc.) were not considered a part of the LXX—at least, not by the ancient Jewish sources that mention the LXX. For instance, Philo did not consider Greek Isaiah to be a part of the translation for Ptolemy. He knew about the existence of the Greek translation of Isaiah, and he even quoted it on occasion. One example is at On Dreams 2.172, where he introduced a quotation of Isaiah 5:7 with the words, “I have the witness of one of the ancient prophets who under inspiration said…” But when Philo told the story of the translation for Ptolemy, he left Isaiah out of the account and made the story all about the books of Moses. Notice that the title of the work in which Philo told the story is Life of Moses.

What was true for Philo was true for Josephus, who also used the Greek translation of most books of Jewish Scripture but considered the LXX to be the Greek Pentateuch and nothing else. To repeat: all of our ancient Jewish sources limited the scope of the LXX to the Torah.

‘Septuagint’ in early Christianity

So, how did the “Septuagint” or LXX come to refer to more than just the Torah in Greek? It was Christians who expanded the scope of the translation to include all of Jewish Scripture in Greek. According to the first Christian to mention the translation—Justin Martyr in the mid-second century AD—the translators assembled by Ptolemy produced a Greek version of all of Jewish prophecies, not just the Torah. Justin told the story of translation in his First Apology (ch. 31).

Dr. Gallagher’s book explores the Septuagint’s reception in greater detail.

This expansion of the scope of translation aided Justin’s apologetics by allowing him to argue against the validity of Greek renderings that he found problematic. For instance, with regard to the “virgin birth” (Isaiah 7:14), Justin was aware of some Greek translations that failed to render the verse with the crucial word “virgin” (parthenos, παρθένος) but instead had “young woman” (neanis, νεᾶνις), against the testimony of “the translation of the Seventy” (Dialogue with Trypho 70–73). Justin argued that the newer version must be wrong because it departed from the authoritative translation produced by the Seventy sages for King Ptolemy.

Once the step had been taken, later Christians rarely found it problematic to attribute the translation of all the books of Jewish Scripture to Ptolemy’s court. Again, this aspect of Christian thought about the LXX served as a foundational element in defenses of the text of the traditional Greek Bible as opposed to newer Greek versions associated with the Jewish translators named Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.

How could a Christian believer know that the traditional translation of Jeremiah (or whatever book) was preferable to the version of Jeremiah in one of these later translations? Because the Seventy sages at Ptolemy’s court produced the traditional translation. And why do we trust the Seventy sages? Already Irenaeus of Lyon in the late second century developed several arguments favoring the authority of the Seventy (see Against Heresies 3.21.1–3), of which one of the most important was that the Seventy were inspired by God.

The Inspiration of the Septuagint

Irenaeus did not completely invent the idea that the Seventy translators were inspired, but he did contribute to the evolving story. More than a century earlier, Philo had already insisted that the translators for Ptolemy did the impossible: they produced a perfect translation that matched the Hebrew both word-for-word and thought-for-thought. They were able to achieve such an amazing translation because God inspired them (Life of Moses 2.38). According to Philo, one who read the Greek Pentateuch alongside the Hebrew Torah (something Philo could not do) would see that they were identical (2.40). Before Philo, the Letter of Aristeas (§307) merely hinted at the involvement of God in the process of translation.

Irenaeus inherited from Philo the notion that the translators were inspired, and he attested a story that provided more color to this claim. According to Irenaeus, King Ptolemy decided to test the integrity of the translators by separating them into separate rooms, ordering each of the 72 translators to produce a Greek rendering of Scripture. When the 72 separate translations of Jewish Scripture were compared, it was discovered that all 72 translators had chosen the exact same wording all the way through—a sure sign of not only their accuracy but of their inspiration. This embellished origin story (of which there is a hint in Philo, Life of Moses 2.37) became the standard account of the translation among Christians, who were confident both that the translators were inspired and that they produced the traditional Greek version of all of Jewish Scripture.

Not everyone was convinced. Jerome, for one, at the turn of the fifth century, challenged the traditional story of LXX origins. While he was producing his own Latin translations of the books of the Hebrew Bible that would become the core of the Latin Vulgate, he pointed out flaws in Christian thinking about the LXX. The Jewish sources—Jerome named The Letter of Aristeas and Josephus—limited the translation to the Pentateuch (Commentary on Ezekiel 5:12) and said nothing about the translators working in separate rooms (Preface to the Pentateuch). But Jerome was fighting a losing battle; the translation, in the minds of most Christians, continued to include all of Jewish Scripture. This leads us back to the Apostle Paul.

Paul’s Septuagint

The fact that Paul used the Septuagint is well-known, not only among New Testament scholars, but also among more educated general Bible readers (the type who read articles from the Text & Canon Institute). But this well-known fact about Paul raises several questions in terms of the identity of the Septuagint, questions of both text and canon. To briefly gesture toward the problem of text: not all of the apostle’s quotations align well with the traditional text of the LXX. Paul apparently sometimes used Greek revisions (something like the Theodotion text), sometimes quoted from memory, and sometimes paraphrased, sometimes adjusted the quotation to fit the point he wanted to make. The simple statement that “Paul quoted the LXX” disguises the complexity of his Scriptural texts.

Painting of St. Paul, ca. 1627–1729 by Jan Lievens. Image source

Even when he was quoting the LXX, did he know that he was quoting the LXX? Paul never mentioned the translation, nor the story of the translation, so we cannot really know if the apostle had ever heard about the translators gathered by Ptolemy. Maybe Paul simply used the Greek text available to him without knowing or caring about its precise origins.

If Paul did know about the translation for Ptolemy, what would he have thought about it? What books were included? As we have seen, all of our Jewish sources limit the scope of the translation for Ptolemy to the Pentateuch, even though some of these same sources also knew and used Greek translations of other books of Jewish Scripture. For Philo and Josephus, the Greek Isaiah did not count as LXX. Did it count as LXX for Paul?

As far as we know, the first person who treated a book outside the Torah as the LXX was Justin Martyr—a century after Paul. It is possible that the expansion of the scope of the LXX beyond the Torah as attested first by Justin had already happened in the days of Paul, but I cannot think of any evidence to suggest that it had. If Paul learned about the story of the translation—say, at the “feet of Gamaliel” (cf. Acts 22:3)—it would probably have been a story about the Pentateuch, not about other books of Scripture, books that were available in Greek but considered a part of a different translation project not made for Ptolemy.

The first person who treated a book outside the Torah as the LXX was Justin Martyr.

Paul and the Septuagint’s inspiration

Philo thought that the translators at Ptolemy’s court were inspired, that the translation itself was inspired in Greek. Later Christians, starting with Irenaeus, express the same belief. Did Paul share this conviction? If the apostle did consider the LXX inspired, presumably that belief would have applied only to the Greek Pentateuch—as it did for Philo. We should remember that Philo said that perfect translation is impossible without divine inspiration, and that such a thing had happened for the Greek Pentateuch. Philo said nothing about God’s involvement with the translation of Isaiah or Proverbs or Samuel (etc.), so evidently he would not have considered the translations of these books to be perfect.

We cannot say whether Paul shared Philo’s ideas on the inspiration of the LXX, but at least we can say that someone contemporary with Paul did express those ideas. The notion that all of Jewish Scripture was inspired in Greek, expressed first by Irenaeus, long post-dates Paul’s death, so there is less reason to think that Paul may have held it. But Philo’s views were not the only views on the LXX “in the air” in the first century; Josephus said nothing about the inspiration of the translators of the Greek Pentateuch.

Paul and the Septuagint canon

If this is what Paul might have thought about the LXX as a translation, what about the hitherto unmentioned “elephants in the room,” namely, the apocrypha, or the deuterocanonical books? It is often claimed by scholars that these books came to be accepted as Scripture among Christians because the LXX included them. Is it possible that the LXX already included these books in the first century? Since Paul quoted the LXX, did he also regard the apocrypha as not only a part of the LXX but a part of his Bible?

The biblical scholar R. Timothy McLay pursues this line of argument.

The fact that the OG/LXX text was cited in the NT, in contrast to the Hebrew Scriptures, demonstrates that the Greek Jewish Scriptures as witnessed to by the LXX were deemed to be Scripture for the Early Church…. The external evidence of our Greek codices, which contain the apocryphal/deutero-canonical writings, is a simple testimony to the authority of the Greek Scriptures exercised in the life of the Early Church.¹

I think McLay’s argument boils down to this: if the New Testament authors quoted the LXX, then they accepted as Scripture the collection of books in the LXX manuscripts of the fourth century. Do the quotations of the LXX in Paul’s letters mean that the apostle accepted the canonicity of the apocrypha?

The short answer is “no”—or, with a little more nuance, the available evidence suggests otherwise. The apocryphal books (e.g., Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, etc.) were available in Greek by the first century, and Paul had probably read some of these books. But what evidence suggests that anyone in the first century considered these books a part of the LXX, the translation made for Ptolemy? I know I am repeating myself, but … all of our sources before Justin Martyr considered the LXX to be the Greek Pentateuch.

Paintings of Jerome and Augustine. Illustration by Peter Gurry and Josh Koch.
Why Are Protestant and Catholic Bibles Different?
Knowledge of the Bible’s history clears away the caricatures and misinformation swirling around this common question.
John D. Meade

The apocrypha are included within the LXX today—whether we are talking about the Greek Orthodox biblical canon (which is not definitively settled) or the standard hand-edition of the Septuaginta that sits on the shelves of most biblical scholars. But what is true today was not necessarily true in the first century. It was Justin who first labeled as LXX a book outside the Pentateuch. Did Justin think that the Seventy translators also produced the Greek versions of the apocryphal books? He did not say. It was Epiphanius in the fourth century who first said something about the Seventy translators working on books outside the Jewish Bible (On Weights and Measures 5).

Yes, the full biblical manuscripts from the fourth century include some of the apocryphal books, but is the reason for this inclusion that the creators of these manuscripts thought that these books were translated by the Seventy? As far as I can tell, these early full-Bible manuscripts mention the Seventy only once, in the colophon to Genesis in Codex Vaticanus (Γένεσις κατὰ τοὺς ἑβδομήκοντα = “Genesis according to the Seventy”). Even if all of the books in the Old Testament portion of Vaticanus were considered LXX (which I doubt), we lack the evidence to back-date such a view three centuries. The use of the LXX by the New Testament authors has no bearing on what the apostles thought of the apocrypha.

The use of the LXX by the New Testament authors has no bearing on what the apostles thought of the apocrypha.

Conclusion

Did Paul know he was quoting the LXX? It’s impossible to say. He may have realized that (some of) his quotations of the Pentateuch would have been considered by some of his contemporaries (e.g., Philo, but not Josephus) as quotations of an inspired translation made for King Ptolemy. There is hardly any reason to think that Paul would have associated this view with the Greek Isaiah, and even less for the Greek Tobit. To the extent that the LXX was a concrete object in the first-century world of Paul, it was the Greek Pentateuch. The other books, including the apocrypha, were incorporated into the LXX only a century or more after the apostle’s death.

Notes

1
R. Timothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 144.

The First Parallel Bible

Origen’s six-columned Old Testament, produced in the second century, was a monumental achievement in the Bible’s history.

John D. Meade

Last month, the papers from the Text & Canon Institute’s first academic colloquium were published as The Forerunners and Heirs of Origen’s Hexapla. Thanks to our supporters, the book is available open access. This article is written to introduce Origen’s work and to celebrate this milestone.

Sound Bible study often requires careful comparison of different translations. After strewing different translations over a desk and reading each one individually, one wishes for a more organized tool to ease comparison.

Parallel Bibles like this one remain popular with serious Bible readers. Image source

One could consult a volume like the NIV, KJV, NASB, Amplified, Parallel Bible for such a purpose. With each version in its own column to be read from top to bottom and the verses arranged in parallel fashion, one can simply compare the different translations. The bible software user can create their own parallel bible by opening and arranging windows however preferred. With so many translations, a vast amount of knowledge must be collected and organized so that it works for the user.

The history of parallel bibles shows a human impulse for ordering textual knowledge. The late Renaissance Polyglots (multi-language Bibles) were products of this tendency. Biblical scholars produced monumental editions in international cooperation in Alcalá, Spain (Complutensian Polyglot; 1522); Antwerp, Belgium (The Antwerp Polyglot; 1572); Paris, France (The Paris Polyglot; 1645); and London, England (The London Polyglot; 1658). The culmination of these great Polyglots, Brian Walton’s London Polyglot, contained biblical texts in nine languages assembled in parallel: Hebrew, Samaritan, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, Syriac, Arabic, and Persian. But where did this idea to produce such Bibles come from?¹

There were Medieval precursors to these massive tomes, but even these appear to owe their inspiration to the work of a classically Greek trained catechetical instructor from Alexandria, Egypt named Origen.

Who is Origen?

Origen is best known today as a philosopher or theologian. But both his followers and detractors note that he was trained thoroughly in grammar or philology and devoted himself to this discipline. Origen did not just know his parts of speech. Rather, training in philology meant that he was a diorthōtēs (διορθωτής) or a corrector of copies of ancient books as well as an exegete of those same texts. Thus, he collected many copies of the scriptures and even evaluated whether they belonged to the accurate, old, or majority copies. Likewise, he collected the various translations of the Scriptures and evaluated their “expressiveness” and clarity or whether a version was enslaved to the Hebrew idiom.

As Origen studied the copies of the books of the Old Testament, he described his work in terms of classical Greek philology:

I found that the discord (between the copies) could be healed, if God grants, by using the rest of the editions as a criterion. For by making a judgment, based on the rest of the editions, concerning ambiguous texts in the Seventy [= the Septuagint] due to the discord between the copies, I kept the accord among them. I marked with an obelos some passages not in the Hebrew because I was not reckless to remove any of them. And I added some passages with asteriskoi in order that it might be clear that I added passages not in the Seventy from the rest of the editions agreeing with the Hebrew. (Origen, Commentary on Matthew 15.14)

Elsewhere, Origen says the Greeks called the critical signs asterisk (※) and obelus (—) referring to the tradition of the Alexandrian grammarians who had accomplished similar textual work on the copies of Homer’s Iliad (Origen, Epistle to Africanus 7). Thus, Origen as a philologist created scholarly editions of the biblical books. Furthermore, just as the Alexandrian grammarians produced commentaries on their texts, in various places in his sermons and commentaries Origen also recorded variants or differences between copies and translations and offered his readers solutions. Perhaps Origen, but more probably his followers, began to use the margins of manuscripts to record valuable comments known as scholia on the texts.

Codex Marchalianus, showing the scholia in left margin for Aquila, Theodotian, and Symmachus. Vat.gr.2125 f. 184

Thus, although Origen is most known for his theological and philosophical work, he was first and foremost a philologist and textual critic. He, therefore, left copies of his critical editions for his followers to consult and use in the library at Caesarea. Eusebius, the fourth-century Church historian, informs his readers that Origen left behind copies of his Hexapla (HECK-suh-pluh) “six-fold” or “six-column” Bible and another edition which was later called the Tetrapla (te-TRUH-pluh) or “four-fold” edition.

What was the Hexapla?

Since a few church fathers described the Hexapla in some detail (Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome, Rufinus), Origen must have compiled (not authored) such a magnificent and complex text requiring his followers to explain and interpret it. The six-column work in Hebrew and Greek probably had no exact precedent, even though other bilingual (Greek and Latin), literary, multi-column texts probably existed around Origen’s time.

Interestingly, Origen nowhere calls his massive textual construct “the Hexapla.” The term comes from Eusebius. In the first mention of this text, Eusebius says, “Having collected all of these (editions), he divided them into sections, and placed them opposite each other, with the Hebrew text itself. He thus left us the copies of the so-called Hexapla.” Other church fathers describe the work similarly, and there are a few fragmentary manuscript remains of the Hexapla, mostly Psalms, which do afford some evidence to aid the reconstruction of the columnar layout of the Hexapla: (1) Hebrew, (2) Hebrew in Greek transcription, (3) Aquila, (4) Symmachus, (5) Septuagint, (6) Theodotion.

A copy of Origen’s Hexapla in multiple columns in the undertext of a palimpsest in the Cairo Geniza. Cambridge Taylor-Schechter 12.182

This six-column text of the Old Testament would have granted Origen and his followers access to the Hebrew and to the most significant Greek translations of the day. A user of this text could read vertically any one version from top to bottom or all six versions from left to right across the entire spread of a folio in the codex.

The Hexapla was a textual tour de force giving its reader immediate access to the similarities and differences between the Greek and the Hebrew.

The Hexapla was a textual tour de force giving its reader immediate access to the similarities and differences between the Greek and the Hebrew. If one of those texts was shorter or longer (like in the case of the Book of Job), a reader of the Hexapla would be able to observe the additions and omissions plainly. Furthermore, at disputed places like Isaiah 7:14, the reader of the Hexapla would immediately grasp two different translations of the Hebrew: (1) the Septuagint’s “behold the virgin (parthenos)” and (2) the Jewish Revisers’ “behold the young woman (neanis),” a difference still reflected in Bible translations today.

Origen’s textual scholarship gave the church a real advance in knowledge of the biblical text in its several versions so that the reader of the Hexapla would know the similarities and differences between the church’s version and the Jewish versions used in the synagogue. But he probably had other reasons for producing this synopsis.

Illustration by Jordan Daniel Singer
The Legacy of the First Revised Bible Translations
The modern impulse to get the Bible right in translation has its roots in the Jews who revised the Septuagint.
John D. Meade

What was the Hexapla for?

Origen probably had many reasons for compiling the Hexapla. These include apologetics, textual criticism, exegesis, or perhaps even to learn the Hebrew language. A massive text like this cannot be reduced to any one purpose. But one significant reason for the Hexapla seems clear: it was a preliminary tool for a corrected text or diorthōsis. Origen used it to prepare a later, more accessible and economic critical text of the Old Testament with signs. This text was later called the Tetrapla, and it is probably the text that Origen described in his Matthew Commentary quoted above. This text contained only one column of text, but it would still give readers immediate access to the differences between the Hebrew and the Greek versions. A manuscript dated to soon after Origen’s death (P. Grenf. 1.5; 250–350 AD) containing a fragmentary text of Ezekiel 5:12–6:3 with asterisks furnishes the earliest material evidence for Origen’s second edition. This edition, or one based on it, must have circulated quite early, and it was still available to the Syriac Bishop, Paul of Tella, who translated it into Syriac in 616 AD (a text known as the “Syro-Hexapla”).

If Origen’s Septuagint version lacked text that was contained in the Hebrew, he would add Greek text from one of the Three Jewish revisers (normally Theodotion) to bring the Septuagint into alignment with the Hebrew. These additional words or lines were marked with an asterisk (※). The ending of Job 42:16–17 illustrates the point. The original Greek translation of Job did not contain the text about Job’s death (“and Job saw his sons … and Job died old and full of days.”) found in the Hebrew. As the later manuscript below shows, Origen added those three lines from the Greek revision of Theodotion and marked them with asterisks so the reader would know the Hebrew was longer and the Greek had been augmented.

Asterisks in the left margin of Tyrnavos 25 (Rahlfs 788). Author’s image

Similarly, if the Hebrew lacked a word or verse that the Septuagint contained, Origen would not remove the Greek text, but would mark it with an obelus or a lance (— or ÷) to make the Hebrew omission known to Christian readers. Thus, the quantitative differences that would have been visually obvious in the columnar Hexapla would now be observed in a text that contained the critical signs. In this way, no text from either language was lost for the careful reader.

Furthermore, this Tetrapla or “four-fold” version contained exegetically and textually significant readings or scholia from the three Jewish revisers: Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. This was important for the scholar who did not have access to these works independently, but now could access the more significant and interesting readings through the margins of Origen’s critical text. In this way, Origen and his followers could diffuse textual knowledge not only about the Hebrew text vis-à-vis the Greek but now also information about how contemporary Jews interpreted the Hebrew text in Greek, exegetical information that Christian interpreters also used and incorporated into their own commentaries.

The Hexapla, therefore, functioned as a necessary and preliminary tool for Origen’s later critical edition. Origen’s followers innovated and enhanced his critical edition, and they promulgated it in the early part of the fourth century.

The continuing importance of the Hexapla

Origen’s philological work remains a reminder that early Christians adopted and innovated scholarly methods of their day for serious study of the biblical text. Part of the early Christian DNA, so to speak, was serious study of the manuscript copies of the Scriptures. This fact in itself justifies researching Origen’s textual work today and is a reminder that Christians should continue in this tradition of serious study of the biblical text.

Origen’s Hexapla and later Tetrapla are important witnesses to the text of the Old Testament.

The papers from the TCI’s first colloquium were published in July and are available open access.

Besides this, Origen’s Hexapla and later Tetrapla are important witnesses to the text of the Old Testament, giving us valuable knowledge of the state of the Hebrew text in Caesarea in the second and third centuries AD. There are precious few remains of Hebrew manuscripts from this period, but the remains of Origen’s textual work, even in Greek dress, provide us access to what form the Hebrew text had from this period. The Hexapla’s value on this point cannot be overstated.

Finally, the independent versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion are entirely lost to history. Almost all access to these works depends on the marginal readings that come from the Tetrapla or similar texts that were ultimately excerpted and quoted from the Hexapla. As such, retrieving and reconstructing Origen’s textual work gives us access to Jewish Greek exegesis of the Hebrew text from the 1st–2nd centuries AD. The readings of the Three give us significant textual information for reconstructing the text histories of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Greek translations.

The first parallel Bible in history witnesses to our desire to order textual knowledge. Although the methods for such organization change over time, the desire to know the Scriptures through intense study of their copies continues. Origen and his followers stand at the headwaters of this stream in which Christians still work today. As then, the goal today is to heal the discord between copies.

Notes

1
For this history, see Alastair Hamilton, “In Search of the Most Perfect Text: The Early Modern Printed Polyglot Bibles from Alcalá (1510–1520) to Brian Walton (1654–1658),” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible: Volume 3: From 1450 to 1750, ed. Euan Cameron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 138–156.

How the Two Testaments Became One Bible

When production of two-testament Bibles began in the fourth century, the notion already had centuries of precedent.

Michael Dormandy

I love asking long-established couples how they first met. From Ruth and Boaz on, such stories often reveal the kindness and sovereignty of God in sweet and sometimes unpredictable ways, especially if the union appeared on paper unlikely, but has gone on to be happy and fruitful.

There is one couple, whose union at first seemed extremely unlikely, but which has gone on to be happy and fruitful for two thousand years: the union of the two testaments in the Christian Bible. But how did our two testaments come together? How did those books, which first-century Christians were writing about Jesus, come to be included with the Jewish Scriptures in what we call the Bible?

Uniting the Bible’s two testaments

It’s an important question, because the unity of our Bibles matters more than many Christians today realize and effects many controversial questions. The unity of Scripture means that one of the most important contexts for interpreting any biblical passage is the rest of the Bible. By approaching the Bible as one united collection of books, the early Christians were saying that the context of a biblical book within the Bible is as or more important than its original historical context in ancient Judaism or Greco-Roman culture.

The unity of the Bible is also the basis for connecting themes and symbols across the Bible. This assumes that the Bible has a grand, overarching story, rather than being an assorted collection of anecdotes, moral teachings, and theological ideas. This assumption is basic to Christian preaching, theology, and ethical interpretation of the Bible, but it only makes sense if the two testaments actually do belong together.

This was far from obvious in the first century AD. Imagine how you would feel if someone suggested that some new books, from our own time, deserved to be bound into your Bible. That’s what the early Christians started to do to the Jewish Scriptures, from very soon after the death of Jesus. From as far back in the history of the church as we can trace, it seems to have been uncontroversial among Christians that these new books, about Jesus, had the same authority as the Jewish Scriptures, which Jews had been reading, revering, and seeking to obey for centuries.

Reading the two testaments as one book

We see beginnings of the story in the New Testament. First Timothy 5:18 appears to quote Deuteronomy and then something very similar to Matthew’s Gospel, and calls them both “Scripture.” Second Peter 3:16 unambiguously calls Paul’s letters “Scripture.” The Greek word translated “Scripture” (graphē), means anything written. But in religious contexts, it almost always meant authoritative Scriptures. When New Testament authors call other New Testament books “Scripture,” they are saying that these early Christian books have the same status as the Old Testament Scripture.

Similarly, the early-second-century Christian writer Polycarp quotes Ephesians and calls it “Scripture” (Polycarp, Philippians 12.) Justin Martyr, also in the second century, records what a worship service looked like in his church (Justin, First Apology 67). It included readings both from the Old Testament Scriptures and the “memoirs of the apostles,” which probably means the Gospels or related texts.

In contrast, the second-century heretic Marcion believed that Christians should not read the Old Testament. Marcion is interesting, because by the time he was active, only about a century after the death of Jesus, it was uncontroversial that books like the Gospels and the letters of Paul were at least as authoritative and at least as deserving of Scriptural status as the Old Testament.

Portraits of the four evangelists from GA 773 (10th c.)
Why There Are Just Four Gospels in the Bible
Despite tales of conspiracy, there are good historical and theological reasons why the Church recognized four—and only four—Gospels.
C. E. Hill

Marcion controversially tried to cut the Old Testament (and many parts of the New Testament which quote it or appear to agree with it) out of the Bible—but this means that by his time, the basic shape of a Bible with two testaments must have been well-established. In the mid-first century, Jesus’ followers were controversially writing new books and adding them to the Jewish Scriptures. In the mid-second century, Marcion was taking the old books out of the Christian Scriptures, which was only possible because no-one doubted the scriptural status of the new books.

Also in the second century, Irenaeus of Lyon was constructing a theology that assumed the unity of both testaments. His book Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching summarizes the gospel by presenting the story of the whole Bible. His very approach assumes the unity of the Bible.

This evidence shows that from very early, Christians were treating the Bible as a single book.

Fitting the two testaments in one codex

But if the Bible was already being read as a single book, was it being physically produced as a single book? The technical name for a book containing the whole Bible is a “pandect.”

Pandects were rare in the ancient world, not least because books this size would have been difficult and expensive to produce.

Pandects were rare in the ancient world, not least because books this size would have been difficult and expensive to produce. We know of very few large books from the ancient world. There is Origen’s Hexapla, a copy of the Old Testament containing six different columns in multiple Greek translations. We also know of a manuscript containing all of the ancient Greek epic poem, the Odyssey (which runs to about four hundred pages in modern English editions).

When it comes to biblical manuscripts, there are four from prior to 600 AD that were probably originally pandects. They are Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Ephraemi rescriptus. In the first three, substantial portions of both testaments still survive, so it is very likely they originally contained all of both testaments. In Codex Ephraemi, we have only the New Testament and large parts of the Old Testament wisdom literature. However, the New Testament and the wisdom literature seems such an unusual combination (of which we have no other evidence) that it is likely this manuscript originally contained all the books of both testaments.

The view of Ephraemi rescriptus from the bottom. Photo credit

These manuscripts all contain the Old Testament in Greek translation (often called the Septuagint), since few early Christians could read Hebrew. They also contain the Old Testament Apocrypha and some contain a few early Christian texts in addition to the New Testament books (but these are placed after Revelation, which may suggest the scribes thought they were in a lesser category).

Further hints from our manuscript evidence

Of course, many of our early biblical manuscripts are small fragments and so it is impossible to know for certain what else they contained. One of our earliest manuscripts, known to biblical scholars as P52, is a tiny scrap of John’s Gospel. It is impossible to know what was in the original, complete version—all of John, all of the Gospels, all of the New Testament, all of the Christian Bible or some more unusual combination of texts?

However, some of these early, small fragments include page numbers and these generally suggest that they contained only a single biblical book. It is likely therefore that manuscripts of the whole Bible were rare and the four we know of are not only important but unusual.

Book technology at the time means that, even with these manuscripts, it’s unlikely all the books of the Bible were physically bound into a single volume. However the presentation, arrangement of words on the page and column layout is the same in each of these manuscripts all through the Bible, so it is very likely that they were intended to be used as single books, rather like a modern book produced in multiple volumes, but always sold together and with such similar font and layout that they are obviously intended to be read as one (such as N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God or some editions of The Lord of the Rings).

The origins of the pandects

What led to the production of these pandects? As we have seen, the theological belief in the unity of the testaments existed from the late first century, so it is natural that scribes should start creating manuscripts with both testaments, but it is possible there was a specific reason to produce pandects in the early fourth century.

The early Christian writer, Eusebius, records a letter he received from the Roman Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, requesting “fifty copies of the clearly sacred Scriptures” (Life of Constantine 4.36). Similarly, another early Christian writer, Athanasius, records that he made “copies of the divine Scriptures” for the Roman Emperor Constans (Defense before Constantius 4).

Are these ancient requests for pandects? Scholars disagree at this point. It is possible that “fifty copies of the clearly sacred Scriptures” means fifty copies of the Gospels, or even a combination like ten sets each containing five manuscripts, one of the Gospels, one of the Pentateuch, one of the Psalms, one the Prophets and one of the letters.

However, there is no indication in the context that this is what Constantine or Constans intended and the natural reading of the definite article in Eusebius’s account is that “the clearly sacred Scriptures” includes everything in the category of clearly sacred Scriptures (just as if one spouse says to another “I’ll collect the children from school” without further clarification, this means all their children and only their children). Fifty pandects would certainly be an exorbitant request, but Roman Emperors were hardly known for their modest tastes or restrained demands.

Were any of our four surviving pandects produced in response to these demands? It is impossible to be sure.

Were any of our four surviving pandects produced in response to these demands? It is impossible to be sure, but Sinaiticus and Vaticanus both probably come from about the right time and Sinaiticus, in particular, probably comes from about the right place. What is even more important than identifying individual manuscripts with Constantine’s or Constans’s order, is the simple fact that these Emperors were likely commissioning pandects at all. It seems that Constantine believed that a well-ordered and united Bible would help build a well-ordered and united church, which might even help create a well-ordered and united society.

Conclusion

The production of physically united Bibles began in the fourth century, quite possibly because this was the first time there were Christian emperors who could support the production of such large books. But even more important is the fact that, when these emperors requested such Bibles, the idea made sense—because Christians had been trusting and treasuring a unified Bible for centuries.

The Bible in the Language of Jesus

The Syriac Peshitta is an early Bible translation that is key to textual criticism and offers insights into the teaching of Jesus.

Philip M. Forness

It may not be as obvious to modern readers, but the earliest Christian communities attached significance to the actual words spoken by Jesus in the Aramaic dialect of first-century Palestine. The Gospels do this several times, drawing attention to the original language used by Jesus and his disciples.

Here we can think of Jesus’s quotation of Psalm 22:1 on the cross “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?,” translated as “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; cf. Mark 15:34). Mark also records Jesus’ Aramaic words while he raises a girl from the dead: “Talitha cumi” (Mark 5:41), and John specifies that Jesus gave Simon the name Cephas “which,” he notes, “means Peter” (John 1:42). All these show interest on the part of the evangelists in the actual Aramaic words of Jesus. But what is Aramaic and what is the history of the Bible in Aramaic?

Syriac translations of the Bible

The Aramaic language has been in use for over 3,000 years and remains a living language today. Many varieties or dialects of Aramaic existed in Jesus’ day, and Christian communities used Bible translations in two different Aramaic dialects in antiquity: Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Syriac. The Aramaic dialect known as Syriac developed in the region around the city of Edessa which is located in modern-day southeastern Turkey.

The Bible was translated several times into Syriac. News about the Old Syriac Gospels translation circulated widely in popular media in early 2023, reporting on fragments of a fourth manuscript containing this version that are identified in two articles from 2022 and 2023. But the most commonly used Syriac Bible translation is known as the Peshitta, meaning the “simple” or “straightforward” version. A new English translation of the Peshitta is nearly complete, and another English translation project is just getting underway. This Bible translation remains in use today in Christian communities of the Syriac heritage.

The opening of Matthew in the Old Syriac. BL Add MS 14451, f. 1v (5th c.)

Produced in the second century AD, the Peshitta Old Testament forms one of the earliest monuments of Syriac literature. Since it was translated directly from the Hebrew and exhibits knowledge of some Jewish interpretive traditions, scholars used to make the argument that the translation was produced by a community of Jewish converts to Christianity from the city of Edessa. This argument has been called into question, and the current opinion is that the translation was produced by a Jewish community and subsequently used by Christians who also knew Syriac.¹

The Peshitta New Testament emerged around the year 400 and forms a revision of the Old Syriac Gospels. Interestingly, five of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are not included: 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude, and Revelation. Syriac translations of these books only appeared in the sixth or seventh centuries. The Peshitta also omits the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53–8:11, suggesting that the passage must have been absent in the Greek manuscripts available to the translators.

A translation in the language of Jesus

When reading the Peshitta, one is immediately struck by the fact that this work was written in a dialect of the language used by Jesus. So, what do they do when the Greek source presents Jesus’ Aramaic words noted above? Peshitta Matthew, for example, does not translate Jesus’ Aramaic words on the cross. Peshitta Mark includes the same words of Jesus found in Matthew and then offers a translation that corresponds to the Peshitta version of Psalm 22:1. Further, Mark 5:41 offers no explanation of Jesus’ Aramaic words to the girl in Mark 5:41, and Peter is simply known as Cephas (Kepha in Syriac) throughout the Gospels without any attempt to represent the Greek petros.

Even more fascinating are the instances where the Peshitta seems to give insight into the original Aramaic spoken by Jesus. Jeff Childers suggests that the Peshitta may reveal a pun in Jesus’ language in John 8:34. Jesus states in Childers’s translation: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” The Syriac words for “commits” (ʿabed) and “slave” (ʿabda) share the same three-letter root in Syriac. One can imagine how this phrase would have stuck in the ears of Jesus’s audience. Childers identifies another possible wordplay in Luke 12:7. Jesus says to the disciples in Childers’s translation: “But as for you, even the separate hairs of your head are all numbered.” In Syriac, “hairs” (mene) and “numbered” (manyan) share many of the same consonants, suggesting that the original phrase in Aramaic may well have featured alliteration.

Translation choices and interpretive traditions

Quite beyond the recovery of Jesus’ words in Aramaic, the Peshitta led to distinctive interpretive traditions. In Genesis 2:2, God is stated to have finished the work of creation not on the “seventh day” as in the Hebrew Bible, but on the “sixth day.” Craig Morrison points out that the translators of the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible—made the same decision. The reason for this translation choice seems to be its theological or practical significance. God was completely finished with the work of creation by the sixth day. There should be no confusion that the seventh day, the Sabbath, was entirely reserved for rest.

The Peshitta’s rendering of Genesis 2:2 had an effect on the Syriac tradition of biblical interpretation. Several early Christian authors wrote works on the six days of creation. The fourth-century Greek author Basil of Caesarea’s sermons on the six days became very popular and were translated into Syriac in the fifth century. The extensive homily on creation by the sixth-century Syriac poet and preacher Jacob of Serugh covers 151 pages in its modern edition. Jacob treats all seven days, dedicating over twenty pages to God’s rest on the seventh day. The focus on God’s rest does not feature so prominently in any other work on the six days of creation in antiquity. Here the Peshitta translation of this passage may have inspired Jacob.

The Peshitta also offers a window into how early Christians wrestled with theological terminology, as with Paul’s theology of justification. The Hebrew word ṣedeq, often translated into English “justice” or “righteousness,” was translated in the Septuagint as dikaiosune. Paul uses this term both to refer both to God’s own righteousness and to God’s act of making humanity righteous. As Daniel King and J. Edward Walters discuss, the Syriac text uses two words for the Greek term dikaiosune and related forms: zaddiquta with a semantic range from acquittal to righteousness, and kenuta meaning just or innocent. We can look to the Peshitta to see how ancient translators tried to translate important theological ideas into their language that still challenge modern translators today.

We can look to the Peshitta to see how ancient translators tried to translate important theological ideas that still challenge modern translators today.

Encountering the Bible through the Peshitta

In addition to the text of the Peshitta, its transmission in manuscripts show different ways that Christian communities encountered and read the Bible. The books of Ruth, Susannah, Esther, and Judith circulated in the first millennium as a collection called the “Book of Women.” In a sixth-century manuscript, the early Christian writing the Acts of Thecla which focuses on a female follower of the apostle Paul appears at the end of the collection. As Catherine Burris has discussed, this collection invites readers to hear the stories of virtuous women stretching from the time of the judges through the Jewish communities in Assyria, Babylon, and Persia to the earliest Christian communities.²

By the sixth and seventh centuries, Syriac Christianity had spread as far as China and India bringing the Peshitta with them. These Christian communities had a continuous presence in India down to the Portuguese colonial period. At a synod held in India in 1599, the Portuguese colonizers condemned the omission of five books from the New Testament used by the Syriac Christians of India. Interestingly, they also noted that the Bible used in India did not include a longer version of 1 John 5:7. This extended version reads as follows, with the additional words in italics: “For there are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.” In this way, the Peshitta Bible used by the Syriac Christian communities in India—rather than the Bible of the colonizers—was closer to what is now considered the earliest known version of the New Testament.

The East Syriac tradition developed a distinct way of organizing the Bible. In addition to the Psalter, they divided the Old and New Testaments into five volumes: (1) the Book of the Pentateuch, (2) the Book of Sessions, (3) the Book of the Prophets, (4) the Book of the Maccabees, and (5) the New Testament.³ The contents of the Pentateuch, Prophets, and New Testament are clear. But the Book of Sessions combines an interesting array of historical and poetic books: Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Song of Songs, Sirach, and Job. The Book of the Maccabees features a mixture of histories and wisdom literature: 1–3 Maccabees, 1–2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Wisdom, Judith, Esther, Susanna, Epistle of Jeremiah, Epistle of Baruch, and Baruch. How might this organization encourage different ways of encountering and reading the Bible?

Conclusion

The Peshitta represents a fascinating early translation of the Bible. It has proven important for textual criticism, as the Old Testament was based directly on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament translation was carried out at an early date. As a dialect of Aramaic, the Syriac may offer insight into wordplays used by Jesus. Finally, the Peshitta has served as the Bible for Christian communities for more than 1,500 years. This translation inspired different interpretation traditions, which we can glimpse in the rich literature of the Syriac Christian communities.

An earlier version of this article said the Syriac Bible used in India omitted the addition to the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:13, but it actually omitted the longer version of 1 John 5:7.

Notes

1
Simcha Gross, “A Long Overdue Farewell: The Purported Jewish Origins of Syriac Christianity,” in Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium, ed. Aaron Michael Butts and Simcha Gross, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 180 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 131–33.
2
Catherine Burris, “The Syriac Book of Women: Text and Metatext,” in The Early Christian Book, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, CUA Studies in Early Christianity (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 86–98.
3
Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500–1800), Eastern Christian Studies 21 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 228–29.

How Was the Divine Name Translated in the Reformation? Part 4

Translators have wrestled with the divine name for centuries. Some have used it only to reverse course later.

Andrew Case

The previous articles in this series considered God’s desire for us to use his name, how the pronunciation was lost, and how the New Testament writers handled the matter. It remains, finally, to consider how it has been handled by translators since the Reformation. In that time there have been various departures from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which rendered the divine name as Dominus (“Lord/Master”), while others have maintained the tradition, which goes back to the Septuagint.

The Reformers’ view

Luther and Calvin were not in agreement on this. Luther followed the tradition of the Septuagint and used the German title “Herr” (Lord) in all caps, while Calvin’s choice was to use “Jehovah” for his French translation of the Psalms. Calvin explained his decision as follows:

It would be tedious to recount the various opinions as to the name “Jehovah.” It is certainly a foul superstition of the Jews that they dare not speak, or write it, but substitute the name “adonai;” nor do I any more approve of their teaching, who say that it is ineffable, because it is not written according to grammatical rule … Nor do I agree with the grammarians, who will not have it pronounced, because its inflection is irregular; because its etymology, of which all confess that God is the author, is more to me than an hundred rules.¹

The Wycliffe version of the Bible in English used “the Lord,” as did Tyndale’s unfinished translation of the Old Testament, but in a few places, like Exodus 6:3, he rendered “Iehouah.” This set a precedent for all early Protestant bibles, except Coverdale’s translation (1535). The King James Bible printed “Lord” in all caps when it represented YHWH, except in four places (Exod. 6:3, Ps. 83:18, Isa. 12:2; 26:4) where the translators felt the need to render it as a proper name, and in these places the name “Iehouah” appeared in the first printing (spelled as “Jehova” in later editions).

Casiodoro de Reina, the first translator of the most famous Spanish version of the Bible (the Reina-Valera), took particular interest in avoiding the substitution of a title for the divine name. In the prologue to the 1569 publication of his work, he wrote the following:

We have retained the name (Iehovah), not without serious reasons. First of all, because wherever it will be found in our version, it is in the Hebrew text, and it seemed to us that we could not leave it, nor change it for another without infidelity and singular sacrilege against the law of God, in which it is commanded “Do not take away from it, or add to it” (Deut. 4:4 and Prov. 30:5) … It also seemed to us that this mutation cannot be made without contravening God’s advice, and in a certain way wanting to amend it, as if He had done wrong all the times that his Spirit in Scripture declared this name, and it was to be another. And it is true, that not without particular and very serious advice, God revealed it to the world, and wanted his servants to know and invoke him; it would be a reckless thing to abandon it, and reckless superstition to neglect it, on the pretext of reverence.

Someone could argue to us here that neither Christ nor the Apostles in their writings made amends for this error, etc. To this we answer, that they were never in charge of making versions, or correcting the facts, but attentive to a greater and more central matter, which was the announcement of the advent of the Messiah, and of his glorious Kingdom. They used the common version, which was then in use, which seems to have been that of the Seventy [the Septuagint], because they had plenty of it for their main purpose.

Casiodoro De Reina’s 1569 Spanish translation used “Iehoua” throughout as seen here in Exodus 3.

Modern translations

By the nineteenth century, German scholars began to point out that the name “Jehovah” was a mistaken pronunciation, but many scholarly works in England continued to use “Jehovah.” In spite of these trends, English Christians did not see the necessity to produce an altered version of the Bible.

By the nineteenth century, German scholars began to point out that the name “Jehovah” was a mistaken pronunciation.

It wasn’t until the 1880s that “Yahweh” became a more frequently used pronunciation among scholars and students. Then, in 1901, American scholars prepared their own edition of the Revised Version (a revision of the KJV) for publication in the USA, known as the American Standard Version (ASV). In this version they decided to use “Jehovah” consistently. Even though they were aware that Jehovah was not an accurate pronunciation, they decided it would be received better because it was still more well-known than Yahweh. They explained in their preface:

The American Revisers, after a careful consideration were brought to the unanimous conviction that a Jewish superstition, which regarded the Divine Name as too sacred to be uttered, ought no longer to dominate in the English or any other version of the Old Testament, as it fortunately does not in the numerous versions made by modern missionaries.²

Benjamin B. Warfield, who was influential at the time of the publication, expressed strong approval of this decision. But the public had a harder time accepting the change. As the Princeton Seminary Bulletin later remarked, “However correct this practice might be in scholarly theory—for the word in Hebrew is indeed a proper name, not a title—it was disastrous from the point of view of the liturgical, homiletical, and devotional use of the Bible, and was almost universally disliked.”³ Thus, when it came time to revise the ASV, the committee decided to revert to using “the Lord” instead of Jehovah. The resulting RSV was published in 1952.

This would not be the last time modern versions flipflopped on the divine name. The Catholic NJB version (1966) used “Yahweh,” but the revision switched to “the Lord” in 2019. The Holman Christian Standard Bible (2004) used “Yahweh” (albeit inconsistently), and then decided to reverse their decision only five years later with the Christian Standard Bible revision.

To date, only one mainstream English Bible is committed to translating God’s name as a name: the Legacy Standard Version (2021), which is a revision of the NASB. The revisers write: “The effect of revealing God’s name is His distinction from other gods and His expression of intimacy with the nation of Israel. Such a dynamic is a prevalent characteristic of the Scriptures.” That said, since 1960 there are other (not mainstream) bibles that have arisen specifically to restore the translation of God’s name (more about that here). It should also be mentioned that the World English Bible (public domain) uses “Yahweh” consistently.

Conclusion

History shows us how the winds of market forces, fickle human opinions, ignorance, and tradition can toss modern versions to and fro and blow them about, especially regarding the translation of God’s name.

Will translations like the LSB suddenly fall out of vogue and turn course as others have done? My hope is that the English Bible publishers rise to the task of taking a clear, systematic, robustly biblical stand on what they are going to do with the divine name and why. It is not an issue that can be resolved in a few paragraphs of a version’s preface or a few pages on a website. Rather, it calls for a decision based solidly on Scripture’s teaching that leaves no stone unturned, documented exhaustively, and open to the public.

Notes

1
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony by John Calvin, trans. Charles W. Bingham (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1843), 127.
2
Preface to the ASV, 1901, accessed January 16, 2021, https://biblia.com/books/asv/offset/389.
3
Robert C. Dentan, “The Story of the New Revised Standard Version,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin vol 11, no. 3 (Nov 1990): 212.

Topics

Levels

Old Testament

The spectrum of views

Isaiah’s context

The Immanuel sign

Various explanations of Isaiah 7:14

Six questions for Isaiah 7:10–16

1. Who’s the audience?

2. What verbs belong in verse 14?

Related

3. Does ʿalmâ mean just ‘young girl’?

4. What do the verbs in verses 6 and 16 mean?

5. How should we translate the last sentence in 7:16?

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6. What does it mean to “eat curds and honey” in verses 15–16?

The larger literary structure

Conclusion

Notes

The expanding definition of ‘Septuagint’

Related

Ancient sources for the term

‘Septuagint’ before Christianity

‘Septuagint’ in early Christianity

The Inspiration of the Septuagint

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Paul’s Septuagint

Paul and the Septuagint’s inspiration

Paul and the Septuagint canon

Related

Conclusion

Notes

Who is Origen?

What was the Hexapla?

Related

What was the Hexapla for?

The continuing importance of the Hexapla

Notes

Uniting the Bible’s two testaments

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Reading the two testaments as one book

Related

Fitting the two testaments in one codex

Further hints from our manuscript evidence

The origins of the pandects

Conclusion

Syriac translations of the Bible

A translation in the language of Jesus

Translation choices and interpretive traditions

Encountering the Bible through the Peshitta

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Conclusion

Notes

The Reformers’ view

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Modern translations

Conclusion

Notes

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