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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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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.
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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.

Resources for Reading Greek Manuscripts

If you want to read Greek manuscripts, use these tools to demystify what looks like an alphabet soup.

Clark R. Bates

I have been a transcriber of Greek manuscripts for many years now, both paid and volunteer, and a question I often get as a result is how to interpret the vast number of letter combinations or “ligatures” that one finds in these texts. Over the years, I have read many books that cover this material, but have also collected various online resources that I can offer to new transcribers or those just interested in learning about these paleographic features.

Incidentally, learning these forms can also help with reading early printed Greek New Testament’s since the typeface used in those editions was modelled after written Greek and includes ligatures. In this article, I will offer my best suggestions for learning how to read Greek abbreviations and ligatures as seen in biblical manuscripts.

Terminology

First, let’s talk terminology. While the definitions often involve some level of overlap, there are differences in whether something is a ligature, a contraction, or an abbreviation.

Abbreviation — the intentional shortening of a word by removing its last few letters.
Contraction — the intentional shortening of word by removing letters between the first and last letters of the word.
Ligature — the joining of several letters together to create a shortened form of a word, or the replacement of that word with a symbol.

An example of a καί ligature and a nu at the end of a line in Codex Sinaiticus at Mark 15:27. Image source

Examples of abbreviations one might encounter in Greek manuscripts are numbers that have been replaced with their letter equivalent. Rather than spelling out the infamous mark of the beast in Revelation 13:18, for example, scribes often wrote its equivalent in letters (χξϛ). Another example would be the replacement of a final nu with an overhead line.

The most obvious examples of compactions or contractions that you will find in Greek manuscripts are nomina sacra which abbreviate certain common Greek nouns. Ligatures are more difficult to provide examples for since they generally employ symbols rather than letter shapes. However, two of the ligatures most often seen in manuscripts are the combination of omicron and upsilon and the καί (kai) ligature in its various forms.

History

Abbreviations and contractions can be found in Greek manuscripts during the centuries in which majuscule script was used exclusively. And, while ligatures generally do not appear widely in literary work prior to the transition to minuscule script, the presence of an early καί (kai) ligature can be found already in Codex Sinaiticus (4th c. AD) as shown above.

Greek and Arabic numerals. Illustration by Peter Gurry.
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Between the fifth and seventh centuries, as cursive majuscule became more prolific in documentary texts, ligature use increased as scribes desired a more rapid or tachygraphic mode of writing. By the ninth century, the conversion from majuscule to a literary minuscule began and the following centuries brought with them an increased production of ligatures for more words.

Generally, ligatures are used to represent words of three to four letters or less, but in some creative instances, the ligature for a word like κατά (kata) can be found in place of its use as a prefix on a word like καταβαίνω (katabainō). By the fourteenth century, manuscripts produced in a more scholastic style could be comprised of almost exclusively abbreviations, compactions, and ligatures, making the text almost indecipherable to anyone unfamiliar with this form of writing.

An example of lots of ligatures from GA 1969, f. 125r. The text reads: τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον· οὐχ ὡς πρόσωπον τοῦ θεοῦ ἔχοντος·¹ Image source

For present-day transcribers and students of Greek manuscripts the presence of these shapes and symbols can create an impenetrable barrier to proficiency, especially if they lack any resources to guide them through the maze. In order to help others become familiar with the forms they will regularly encounter in Greek manuscripts, I have compiled a list of resources, mostly available online for free, that can be used to help students along the way:

Print resources

The best print resources for reading and understanding ligatures are in several languages and are not available online are the following.

English: Pat Easterling and Carol Handley, eds. Greek Scripts: An Illustrated Introduction. London: Society for the Promotion of Hellenistic Studies, 2001.
Italian: Elpidio Mioni. Introduzione alla paleografia greca. Universita Di Padova Studi Bizantini E Neogreci 5 Padova: Liviana Editrice, 1973.
French: Alain Blanchard. Sigles et abréviations dans les papyrus documentaires grecs: recherches de paléographie. Bulletin Supp. No. 30. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1974.

Four Greek biblical manuscripts (Rahlfs 962, GA 2374, GA 01, and GA 1). Illustration by Peter Gurry.
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Online resources

Fortunately, living in a digital age means that many of the earlier, and still very helpful, works on paleography are now available online. The most important of which in English is T. W. Allen’s Notes on Abbreviations in Greek Manuscripts (1967). It has a full description of common ligatures and a discussion on tachygraphy making it a unique and extremely valuable resource.

Next to that would be the work of the famous paleographer, Edmond Maunde Thompson whose work Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography (1893) is a bit dated, but still contains a very helpful chapter on abbreviations.

Moving to resources that are produced exclusively online, the Vatican library website has an excellent page containing an introduction to Greek paleography. One of the links on the page is to a discussion on abbreviations with helpful diagrams of several ligatures.

Additionally, an online PDF of the introduction to William Wallace’s (no, not that one) An Index to Greek Ligatures and Contractions has been made available, which contains his diagrams of numerous ligatures.

An online website dubbed the “Textual Critic’s Corner” also has a section devoted to ligatures, with images, along with very clear scans of ligatures used in printed Greek New Testaments and other Incunabula.

The best resource of all

I intentionally left this last online resource for the end because, if you saw it first, you would have ignored all the others! It’s called the CRBMI Searchable Ligature Tool and is the brainchild of Dr. W. Andrew Smith and the Center for Research of Biblical Manuscripts and Inscriptions (crbmi.org).

Enterprising transcribers there have developed a searchable ligature/abbreviation tool that allows someone to simply type a letter combination into a search bar and it will return images for all known ligatures of that combination. It is the most thorough database that I am aware of, and it should be a tab on everyone’s computer.

Lastly, I would be remiss to not also put on every reader’s radar what will be the largest compendium of all Greek ligatures ever produced. It is slated for publication in 2026, coming from the University of London.

Julian Chrysostomides, et al., eds. A Lexicon of Abbreviations & Ligatures in Greek Minuscule Hands: ca. 8th century to ca. 1600. Porphyrogenitus.

I would encourage all who are interested to save the information and keep an eye out for its eventual release.

Conclusion

Knowledge of abbreviations, contractions, and ligatures in Greek manuscripts is of vital importance for anyone in manuscript studies, be they paleographers or text critics. They represent an important era of manuscript production and cannot be ignored if one intends to read or transcribe manuscripts after the eighth century. By providing these resources here, I hope that it will encourage more readers to work with late-antique manuscripts of the Greek Bible and give them the ability to teach others to do the same.

Notes

1
My immense thanks to Dr. Amy Myshrall who was more than willing to share these examples of ligatures when she heard of this article.

The Bible of the Woman at the Well

The Samaritan Pentateuch offers a fascinating chapter in the Bible’s history and sheds light on Jesus’ ministry.

Bradley J. Marsh Jr.

John 4 relates the now-famous story in which Jesus has an involved conversation with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well just outside of the Samarian town of Sychar. In the ensuing discussion, both Jesus and the unnamed woman describe several theological beliefs which he and his fellow Jews, and she and her fellow Samaritans, do not share. As John explains in a narrative aside: “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” Among other matters, they discussed the correct location for worship (vv. 20–24) and Jesus’ status as a (or, “the”) prophet (John 4:19, 25–26).

Lurking beneath the surface of this exchange, however, is one major difference which they do not discuss: Samaritans and Jews at the time differed—and still do—on the number of books accepted in their biblical canon. Moreover, even the very text contained often reads very differently.

So, who are the Samaritans and why does their Bible differ from that of the Jews?

The Samaritan’s and their canon

The group known today as the “Samaritans” amounts to approximately 850 people, most of whom live in the modern cities of Nablus (ancient Shechem) and Ḥolon (a city south of Tel Aviv). This group, who call themselves “Observant Ones,” formerly a much larger group, holds only the first five books of the Bible or Torah as Scripture. As such, they differ greatly from wider Judaism in a number of beliefs. Most especially, they maintain that the proper location for worship (see John 4:20), including any associated temple or sacred precinct, should be on Mount Gerizim near biblical Shechem not on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Early Church Fathers (e.g., Origen, Epiphanius of Salamis) would occasionally point out some of these disagreements, especially the Samaritans’ putative rejection of the resurrection of the dead (akin to the Sadducees); although this is a doctrine that they would eventually accept (documented from the 14th c. onwards).

Dr. Marsh’s new book on the Samaritan Pentateuch

Perhaps most pointedly, the Samaritans’ rejection of the remainder of the Hebrew canon (or Old Testament) meant that Moses alone is their foremost prophetic figure. Indeed, Samaritan theology holds that post-Mosaic “prophecy” cannot really exist as such. Nevertheless, since the Pentateuch records Moses predicting that the Lord would raise up a prophet for Israel like himself (Deut. 18:18), the Samaritans also believe in a prophet subsequent to Moses, one whom they call the Taheb (Aramaic for “Returning One”). This prophet is an eschatological figure, akin to but not identical with the Jewish or Christian concept(s) of the Messiah, who will restore all things, uniting the tribes of Israel and reestablishing proper worship on Mount Gerizim. It is in this broader context that the Samaritan woman’s words with Jesus in John 4:25 should be read.

In summary, the differences in the Samaritan Bible are substantive. But how was this distinct Bible recovered by Western scholars?

The study of the Samaritan Pentateuch

From the 17th c. until 1947

The Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) was first “discovered” by westerners in 1616 when an Italian traveler named Pietro della Valle (1586–1652) acquired a manuscript of the Samaritan Hebrew Pentateuch when traveling in Damascus. This manuscript made its way to Europe in 1623 and would eventually be published in the famed Paris and London polyglots, the latter of which gained a very wide circulation. Scholars immediately noticed the many textual variations which the Samaritan Pentateuch bore when compared with the traditional Jewish Hebrew or Masoretic Text.

The London Polyglot (1657) included the Samaritan Pentateuch (right page, second column from left). Source

Since the flames of the Protestant Reformation were still roaring when the Samaritan Pentateuch arrived, naturally the previously unknown text was deployed in debate by both sides of the Catholic–Protestant divide. Initially, some Roman Catholics defended the Samaritan Pentateuch as a means to prop up the Septuagint (with which the Samaritan Pentateuch bears many shared readings against the Masoretic Text) so as to bolster ecclesiastical authority; Protestants, on the other hand, severely depreciated the Samaritan Pentateuch for the sake of fortifying the Masoretic Text in service to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Eventually, however, the Samaritan Pentateuch would gain admirers and detractors on both sides.

Nevertheless, after less-than-purely-scientific disputation, H. F. Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842) published a short, seminal study in 1815 which seemingly ended the debate. Gesenius argued much more forensically that the Samaritan Pentateuch indeed formed a different recension of the Hebrew Pentateuch and agreed it bore much resemblance to the Septuagint (LXX).

Illustration by Peter Gurry. Images from iStock
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However, according to his analysis, this SP-LXX recension was secondary to the Masoretic Text in every conceivable way, especially textually, as many of these variations appeared to remove textual or grammatical difficulties or were literarily harmonistic in nature. Furthermore, he claimed that the textual branch represented by the Samaritan Pentateuch had been further corrupted by “half-learned scribes” who added long sections from parallel passages and other more nefarious changes, such as reading “Gerizim” rather than “Ebal” in Deuteronomy 27:4, 12 as a means of promoting their sacral temple mount over and against Jerusalem. Gesenius’s arguments won the day, and, with very few exceptions, scholars subsequent to him more or less followed suit.

Research since 1947

Then in 1947 the textual landscape of the Hebrew Bible completely changed with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The caves of Qumran revealed ancient Hebrew scrolls that were not Samaritan but still agreed textually with the Samaritan Pentateuch against the later Masoretic Text. These included a scroll with the expanded Plague Narrative in Exodus, such as 4QpaleoExodus^m (4Q22), and others evincing passages from Deuteronomy inserted into the parallel accounts in Numbers, as in 4QNumbers^b (4Q27).

As a result, Gesenius’s thesis had to be reconsidered. Although the last 30 years have seen much debate amongst specialists as to precise nature of these scrolls and their exact textual relationship to the Samaritan Pentateuch, since these manuscripts (and others like them) were Jewish, they are now, as a group, generally described as “pre-Samaritan” (some prefer “proto-”) since they are not sectarian in nature. Apparently, the Samaritans adopted a recension of the Pentateuch, which had a much wider circulation in the Judaism of the Second Temple period, and only added a “thin layer” of sectarian readings favoring Gerizim as the proper location of worship.

However, many questions remain involving the proper descriptor of this recension (was it a “popular” or “academic” version?); the nature of the Samaritans’ adoption of it (was it intentional or incidental?); and the number of readings belonging to the “thin layer” (they differ from scholar to scholar). Most pointedly, based on the trends of the last few years, scholars may dispense with even this “thin layer” in the near future.

A somewhat inelegant English translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch was published in 2013 by Benyamim Tsedaka, himself a native Samaritan, entitled The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version. The differences from the Masoretic Text, against which it is set in parallel columns, are printed in bold.

At present, a new critical edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch is being issued under the editorial leadership of Prof. Dr. Stefan Schorch. The volumes for Leviticus (2018) and Genesis (2021) have been published so far. The volume for Exodus is due to be published next.

Yet while the Dead Sea Scrolls greatly add to our knowledge of the Samaritan Pentateuch, the primary witnesses to it remain those from the Middle Ages.

The text of the Samaritan Pentateuch

Today, the Samaritan Pentateuch exists in codices from the 12th century. Written in a distinctive form of ancient Hebrew script, its text has a number of features which are no longer deemed unique or sectarian. Many shared readings with LXX do exist, although scholars now believe the agreement with the Greek and disagreement with the Masoretic Text is far less so than was previously described. We can list just a few of the more noteworthy features.

Expansions and harmonizations

As noted above, throughout the Plague Narrative (Exod. 7–12) the narrative is “expanded” by means of repetition, in order to explicitly describe Moses’ execution of each of God’s commands. Thus, at Exodus 7:18, the Samaritan Pentateuch has seven additional verses that detail Moses actually going to Pharaoh and relating God’s exact words. Insertions of parallel materials are also prevalent. For instance, at Numbers 27:23, the Samaritan Pentateuch supplies the dialogue with which Moses commissions Joshua as recorded in Deuteronomy 3:21–22, seemingly shaping the former as the source for the latter. The result is a kind of harmony of the two passages. Altogether, there are approximately 40 such passages from the Samaritan Pentateuch that either seem to expand or harmonize the text.

Altogether, there are approximately 40 passages from the Samaritan Pentateuch that either seem to expand or harmonize the text.

Yet, Qumran manuscripts also record most of these same passages (or can be reconstructed as containing them), and indeed some textual evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls show expansions or harmonizations beyond those found in the Samaritan Pentateuch.

Scholarly explanations for these sorts of passages known from the “pre-Samaritan” recension differ. Some contend that they are merely formalistic editorial devices, while others argue they are meant to increase the credibility of prophetic speech and/or action. It has even been suggested that these passages form a “Moses layer” (this is Magnar Kartveit’s terminology) which reinforces Moses’ position as the prophet par excellence over and against the later prophetic corpus. Since the Samaritans reject post-Mosaic prophecy, this could explain why they would adopt the pre-Samaritan recension as their preferred Bible text.

The Samaritan tenth commandment

One of the “expansions” or “harmonizations” found in SP Exodus 20 merits special consideration, the so-called Samaritan Tenth Commandment. Immediately after the Commandment against coveting, the Samaritan Pentateuch contains a passage comprised of Deuteronomy 11:29, 27:2–7, and 11:30. Together, it states that, after entering the Holy Land, the Israelites are to write the Law (= the Decalogue) on stones, set them up, build an altar on Mount Gerizim, and celebrate before the Lord. The rendition also specifically locates Gerizim as “opposite Shechem” reading with SP Deuteronomy 11:30 (all other versions lack this specific locative).

This passage, also recorded in SP Deuteronomy 5, is traditionally understood by the Samaritan community to be the Tenth Commandment, and indeed it is marked as such in some, though not all, Samaritan codices. (The earlier Commandments are differently numbered to achieve this effect; it is not an Eleventh Commandment as it is sometimes called.)

The so-called Samaritan Tenth Commandment in a Samaritan manuscript from AD 1215–1216 (Schorch J1/Jerusalem National Library Sam. 2° 6, ff. 106–107). Photo from The National Library of Israel

Initially, the modern editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls insisted that any reconstruction of 4Q22, which is fragmentary at this point, could not possibly be reconstructed as containing the passage. After all, based on the traditional Samaritan exegesis, the passage was then presumed to be the chief part of the “thin layer” which the Samaritans added to the pre-Samaritan recension, specifically meant to justify their worship on Gerizim. Such has been the consensus in the majority of recent scholarship.

However, most recently scholars have begun to question this, and a recent article by Hila Dayfani argues, based on a digital reconstruction of 4Q22, that the scroll did originally contain the passage.¹ If her ground-breaking, new study persuades other scholars, then it may very well be that there is really nothing Samaritan about the Samaritan Pentateuch after all.

The Samaritan Pentateuch and Christian Bibles

Today, the majority of Christian English translations stick rather closely to the Masoretic Text. Nevertheless, these translations utilize the Samaritan Pentateuch to varying degrees to emend the Masoretic Text, most often in conjunction with other witnesses (e.g., LXX, Dead Sea Scrolls). For example, the NRSV reads at Genesis 4:8: “Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let us go out to the field.’” The footnote explains that this translation comes from the Samaritan Pentateuch, LXX, Syriac Peshitta, and Latin Vulgate while the Masoretic Text lacks the phrase Let us go out to the field. This means that the Samaritan Pentateuch is cited as the only direct Hebrew evidence for the reading, even though it is reflected by other versions.

The ESV, however, treats this verse in the opposite manner, omitting Cain’s words to Abel but supplying them in a footnote: “Samaritan, Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate add Let us go out to the field.” (The NET Bible follows NRSV with a more comprehensive textual explanation in the footnote.) Altogether the footnotes of the first edition of the ESV cite the Samaritan Pentateuch thirteen times. The Samaritan Pentateuch’s reading is preferred in eight of these cases,² again mostly in conjunction with other evidence. By contrast, the NRSV cites the Samaritan Pentateuch 25 times (five times in Deut. 32 alone), preferring it over the Masoretic Text each time, again largely in conjunction with other witnesses.

Conclusion

Whether Christians may or should adopt Samaritan Pentateuch readings for their Bibles is an interesting question, and a number of theological considerations must be taken into account, especially if a given ecclesial community explicitly vests authority in one text or another. However, in light of recent research, the Samaritan Pentateuch certainly merits consideration when weighing textual variants. In any case, the Samaritan Pentateuch represents a fascinating chapter in the history of the Bible and one that sheds light on key biblical episodes like Jesus’ encounter with a woman in need of living water.

Notes

1
See her, ‘4QpaleoExod^m and the Gerizim Composition’, Journal of Biblical Literature 141.4 (2022): 673–698.
2
Gen. 47:21; Exod. 1:22; 13:19; 14:25; 20:18; Num. 21:30; Deut. 11:14; 33:17

The Most Objective Textual Critic You’ll Ever Meet

The evidence from stone and papyrus promises a better way to determine difficult elements of the Bible’s original text.

Benjamin Kantor

For many of us, spelling was not our favorite subject in grade school. Getting up in front of class for the annual “spelling bee” filled us with dread. And yet, not all cultures and languages have “spelling bees” like English does. For many languages, in which the alphabet or script is essentially phonetic, a “spelling bee” would be quite boring. The reason it works in English is because the history of sound changes in the language has made correct spelling such a difficult thing to learn. In many ways, we can attribute the idea of “correct” spelling—at least as we moderns see it—to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1436.

Before this monumental invention, and certainly in ancient times, spelling was much less standardized. While certain schools might teach spelling a certain way and general trends might develop, there was no standard or universal spelling for written documents across a region. Different scribes and authors often spelled the exact same words differently.

The value of spelling

In fact, the way that ancient scribes spelled words can provide a valuable window into the nature and quality of their work. I encountered this again and again as I worked through inscriptions and papyri while writing a book on the historical pronunciation and spelling of Judeo-Palestinian Greek coming out later this year.

For the book, I analyzed and documented the spelling of every single word in roughly 4,500 inscriptions and papyri from the time of the New Testament, the centuries leading up to its composition, and the centuries following its completion. The research has yielded thousands upon thousands of various spelling interchanges in the ancient material.

Why are variant spellings important? Aren’t they just mistakes? In some cases, a variant spelling can reflect something about how an ancient scribe was pronouncing a word, just like someone learning to write English might spell the word tough as t-u-f-f. Even though the spelling t-u-f-f is a kind of mistake, it also provides us helpful information about pronunciation. In other cases, certain spelling conventions can tell us something about the time or location of a scribe’s training the same way that the spelling colour points to an author who learned to write in British schools but color to an author who learned to write in the U.S.

Indeed, in addition to providing us with a fairly clear idea of how Koine Greek was pronounced at the time of the New Testament, this research has also yielded a wealth of statistics regarding how different ancient scribes spelled words. In the roughly 4,500 inscriptions and papyri, every “correct” (i.e., standard) and “incorrect” (i.e., variant) spelling is documented and tabulated according to text, date, region, genre, and demographic of author. By looking at all these data together, we can draw conclusions about the pronunciation and spelling practices associated with scribes of particular times, regions, and genres.

The most objective textual critic

While all these data points are important, perhaps the most significant of them all for textual criticism concerns the date and chronology of certain spelling patterns attested in inscriptions written on stone, etc. (epigraphy) and in texts written on papyrus (papyri). After all, none of the extant fragments or manuscripts of the New Testament are from the first century AD. Nevertheless, we would expect the original readings of the New Testament to match scribal practices current in the first century AD.

What we do have in abundance from the first century AD are Greek inscriptions and papyri unrelated to the New Testament. If New Testament textual criticism is ultimately about establishing the original text at the time of its composition, then it would be of great help to know what sort of spelling conventions were current among scribes writing inscriptions and papyri at the same time the New Testament was written.

With all this information at our fingertips, we can eradicate some subjectivity from the work of textual criticism. Instead of making our best judgments regarding the “more difficult reading” (lectio difficilior), trying to determine which wording in a particular passage might be theologically motivated, or merely counting witnesses, we can use epigraphic and papyrological spelling as a sort of measuring stick to determine which witnesses best reflect the scribal conventions of the first century.

Spelling conventions don’t get distorted through a modern lens. Spelling conventions aren’t (typically) motivated by theological or exegetical harmonization. In fact, the evidence shows that when copying biblical manuscripts, scribes tend to regularly update spelling conventions to match contemporary practice, even if it differs from that of the manuscript they are copying.

This is why, with the right data at hand, epigraphic/papyrological spelling can become what I like to call the most objective textual critic you’ll ever meet.

In the remainder of this article, we will look at a couple of examples where a comparison with ancient spelling conventions attested in contemporary epigraphy and papyri can help clarify some text-critical issues.

The name “John” in P45 (3rd c.). CBL BP I, fol. 16r.

Spelling John’s name

In critical editions of the New Testament, you will find the name “John” spelled with two nus (i.e., νν) as ἰωάννης. This is probably because most early witnesses have the name spelled with two nus. There is, however, considerable variation in the witnesses. Here are just some examples:

	ἰωάννης	ἰωάνης
P66 (2nd/3rd c. AD)	ϊωαννης (John 1:6) ϊω[α]ννης (John 10:41)
P4 (3rd c. AD)	ϊωαννης (Luke 3:16)	ιωανου (Luke 3:15) [ιω]ανου (Luke 5:33) ϊωανην (Luke 6:14)
P45 (3rd c. AD)	[ιω]αννην (Luke 9:28) ιωαννης (Luke 9:49) ϊωαννης (John 10:40)
P75 (3rd c. AD)		ϊωανει (Luke 7:18) ϊωανης (Luke 7:20) ϊωανης (John 1:6)
P106 (3rd c. AD)	ιωαννου (John 1:42)
Codex Vaticanus (4th c. AD)	ϊωαννης (Luke 1:60) ϊωαννης (Acts 4:6)	ϊωανης (Matt. 3:4) ϊωανης (Mark 1:4) ϊωανης (Luke 3:16) ϊωανης (John 1:15) ϊωανης (Acts 1:5)
Codex Sinaiticus (4th c. AD)	ϊωαννης (Matt. 3:4) ϊωαννης (Mark 1:4) ϊωαννης (Luke 3:16) ϊωαννης (John 1:15) ϊωαννης (Acts 1:5)
Codex Washingtonianus (4th/5th c. AD)	ϊωαννης (Matt. 3:1) ϊωαννης (Luke 1:60) ϊωαννης (John 1:6)

Spelling of the name “John” in 2nd–5th c. manuscripts

It should also be added that the form ιωαννης is much more common in witnesses of a later date, which are not included here. It would seem, then, that most critical editions opt for the form with two nus (ιωαννης) based on the frequency of its attestation and distribution across early witnesses. Nevertheless, there is seemingly enough evidence for one to make an argument for either of the forms. The manuscripts aren’t sufficient to decide with confidence.

If we take a look at the attestations of this name in the ancient epigraphic and papyrological record, however, the picture becomes much clearer. As can be seen from the chart below, spellings with a single ν are far more common in the first and second centuries, whereas spellings with a double νν are far more common from the third century AD and later:

	1st c. BC/AD	2nd c. AD	3rd c. AD or later
ιωανης	7 (100%)	20 (95%)	23 (13%)
ιωαννης	0 (0%)	1 (5%)	149 (87%)

Spelling of “John” in the epigraphical and papyrological record

These statistics by themselves may be sufficient to give preference to the spelling ιωανης for the original text of the New Testament, at least in some of its occurrences. The reason why we have two different forms, however, requires further explanation. Although there isn’t space to deal with the topic in depth here,¹ we may outline the basic conclusions.

The name ιωανης with a single nu probably goes back to the Hebrew name יוחנן yōḥānān, whereas the name ιωαννης with a double nu may reflect something more closely related to the Aramaic name יוחנה yōḥannā. It would make sense, then, that the more “Hebrew” name is reflected in earlier texts, when Hebrew was still a spoken language, and the more “Aramaic” name is reflected in later texts, when Aramaic had completely displaced Hebrew as the vernacular.

However we explain the different forms, this example shows just how helpful the spelling conventions of contemporary inscriptions and papyri can be in sorting through text-critical issues in the New Testament. And this is not the only place where these datasets can help us.

The quest for “Roman” scribes

In my work on historical Koine Greek pronunciation and spelling, I found myself encountering the same chronological trend over and over. When the ruling, political administration in a region changes, the spelling practices of the scribes working in that region also change. To give a far-fetched illustration, imagine if Britain took over the U.S. tomorrow and we all started altering our spelling of words like realize to realise, color to colour, etc. This is the sort of thing that happened in the ancient world with Greek scribes. Because of this phenomenon, there are a number of spelling conventions that are particularly characteristic of scribes under Roman rule (roughly 1st–3rd c. AD) as opposed to Byzantine rule (roughly 4th—7th c. AD). In addition to the ιωανης vs. ιωαννης distinction noted above, I list two other characteristically “Roman” vs. “Byzantine” features below:

Spelling	Roman	Byzantine
Name “John”	written with ν: ιωανης (Ioanes)	written with νν: ιωαννης (Ioannes)
Long ῑ vowels	written with ει: κρεινω “I judge”	written with ι: κρινω “I judge”
συν- + words starting with π	written without assimilation: συνπαθεῖν “to sympathize”	written with assimilation: συμπαθεῖν “to sympathize”

Because it was composed during the Roman period, we would expect the original spelling of the New Testament to reflect more characteristically “Roman” scribal conventions as opposed to “Byzantine” scribal conventions. Even though scribes tend to update spelling conventions in accordance with contemporary practices (see this article), some scribes may have reproduced the spelling of the manuscript they were copying more precisely.

As such, the overall prevalence of “Roman” (as opposed to “Byzantine”) scribal conventions in a New Testament witness should perhaps contribute to our overall confidence in the reliability of the manuscript tradition. And this from a relatively objective set of data. On this point, it is noteworthy that a manuscript witness like Codex Vaticanus exhibits a high proportion of all three of these characteristically “Roman” scribal conventions. It has ιωανης as opposed to ιωαννης roughly 90 percent of the time (in the New Testament). It also frequently exhibits both ει for long ῑ vowels and unassimilated συνπ- forms: e.g., κρεινω “I judge” (John 5:30); συνπαθησαι “to sympathize” (Heb. 4:15). And we are able to ascertain this characteristically “Roman” character of the scribe without any appeals to particular phraseology, omissions/additions, or anything else that requires a subjective judgment. The relative distribution of certain spelling patterns is an objective statistic. It either correlates well with those spelling conventions of the Roman period or it does not.

The relative distribution of certain spelling patterns is an objective statistic.

Future of the field

These examples show why I call epigraphic and papyrological spelling “the most objective textual critic you’ll ever meet.” Giving careful attention to the scribal conventions of contemporary epigraphy and papyri should become more and more a part of the work of the textual critic as time goes on.

It is telling of just how long the field has minimized the importance of spelling that The Tyndale House Greek New Testament was perhaps the first critical edition of the Greek New Testament to give careful attention to reproducing the spelling conventions used in the manuscript witnesses themselves. This is a major step forward in this regard. Many other critical editions just generalize the “standard” spelling even if the manuscripts have a variant or “non-standard” spelling. And yet, even in The Tyndale House Greek New Testament, we still have ἰωάννης instead of ἰωάνης.

Notes

1
See §7.9.3.1.X in The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek for the full linguistic discussion.

Part 5: The Servant Who Sees Light after Anguish

Some ancient manuscripts of Isaiah 53:11 say the servant sees light after his suffering. Does this predict Jesus’ resurrection?

Anthony Ferguson

During Holy Week, Christians often turn their attention to the servant songs of Isaiah, and to Isaiah 53 in particular, because these passages depict the work of God’s salvation through a coming servant, a servant the New Testament writers identify as none other than Jesus (1 Pet. 2:22; Luke 22:37). In this series, we have reflected on several textual issues related to the servant’s identity and work.

As today is Easter Sunday, we turn our attention to the beginning of Isaiah 53:11 to ask whether Isaiah’s prophecy includes not only the servant’s death, but also his resurrection. A quick survey of a few of our English Bibles illustrates the nature of this textual problem and highlights the issue of what the servant sees.

ESV         Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied
NASB     As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied.
CSB         After his anguish, he will see light and be satisfied.
NIV         After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied;

These four English translations take a slightly different approach to identifying what the servant sees. They range from an unidentified object to a specific object. On the one side, the ESV does not specify what the servant sees. The NASB identifies the object imprecisely as simply it.The CSB is more specific by describing the servant as seeing “light.” Finally, on the opposite side of the continuum, the NIV not only identifies the servant as seeing light but as seeing the “light of life.”

Witnesses

The difference between our English Bibles at the beginning of Isaiah 53:11 illustrates for us an ancient variant that scribes and Bible translators have considered for at least two thousand years. Here is a survey of how Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Syriac scribes have approached this variant.

Reading	Witness	Text
1. He shall see	MT	From the anguish of his soul, he shall see; he shall be satisfied מֵעֲמַל נַפְשׁוֹ יִרְאֶה יִשְׂבָּע
	Theodotion, Aquila	he shall see; he shall be filled ὄψεται ἐμπλησθήσεται
	Symmachus	he shall see; he shall be filled ὄψεται χορτασθήσεται
	Vulgate	Because his soul labored, he shall see and he shall be satisfied pro eo quod laboravit anima eius videbit et saturabitur
	Targum	He will deliver their soul from the servitude of the nations. They will look on the vengeance of their enemies. They will be satisfied with the plunder of their kings. מִשִׁעבוּד עַמְמַיָא יְשֵׁיזֵיב נַפשְׁהוֹן יִחזוֹן בְפוֹרעָנוּת סָנְאֵיהוֹן יִסבְעוּן מִבִזַת מַלכֵיהוֹן
	Peshitta	And from the labor of his soul, he shall see and he shall be satisfied ܘܡܢ ܥܡܠܐ ܕܢܦܫܗ ܢܚܙܐ܂ ܘܢܣܒܥ
2. He shall see light	1QIsa^a	From the anguish of his soul, he shall see light and he shall be satisfied מעמל נפשוה יראה אור וישבע
	1QIsa^b	From the anguish of his soul, he shall see light; he shall be s[atisfied מעמל נפשו יראה אור יש֯[בע
	4QIsa^d	From the anguish of his soul, he shall see l[ight] and be satisfied מעמל נפׄשו יראה או֯[ר ]וׄשבע֯
	LXX	From the pain of his soul to show him light and to form ἀπὸ τοῦ πόνου τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ, δεῖξαι αὐτῷ φῶς καὶ πλάσαι

A survey of witnesses to Isaiah 53:11

Although we could discuss multiple textual issues here, we will focus on the problem of what the servant sees. These ancient translations provide us with two basic options.

“He will see” MT, Theodotion, Aquila, Symmachus, Vulgate, Targum, Peshitta
“He will see light” 1QIsa^a, 1QIsa^b, and 4QIsa^d, LXX

External Evidence

The first reading is widespread, occurring in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac texts. Moreover, it is early since Aquila dates to the second century AD, and Theodotion probably dates to the first century. Despite these facts, it is not surprising that these texts agree with the Masoretic Text (MT) since they were all translated from a text very close to the MT. The Targum interprets an MT like text by adding the phrase “on the vengeance of their enemies, showing the textual difficulty in this verse.

The second reading is also widespread, occurring in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew parent text of the LXX. It is even earlier than the first reading since the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa^a) dates to the second century BC. 1QIsa^a is, in fact, our oldest biblical manuscript preserving this verse, and it reads “light.” Unlike the first reading, the external evidence for this second reading can be described as “surprising” since three Isaiah manuscripts from Qumran attest it. Most surprising of all is the testimony of 1QIsa^b, a first-century BC manuscript, that usually reads very closely with the MT. Here, however, it agrees with the LXX and two other Dead Sea Scrolls against the MT.

Overall, the external evidence favors the second reading: the servant sees “light.” Now, we turn to the internal evidence.

Internal Evidence

When considering internal evidence, we are asking the following questions: which reading was more likely to derive from a scribe, and which reading was more likely to derive from the author? We can answer these questions by comparing the reading of 1QIsa^b and the reading of the MT.¹ The use of the Masoretic vowel signs didn’t develop until the fifth through seventh centuries so we will only compare the consonants.

MT מעמל נפשו יראה ישבע
From the anguish of his soul, he shall see; he shall be satisfied

1QIsa^b מעמל נפשו יראה אור יש֯[בע
From the anguish of his soul, he shall see light; he shall be satisfied

Could the MT have lost the word “light” (אור)?

First, let’s consider if the MT lost this word by scribal error. Scribes, at times, omitted text when their eyes skipped over words. This is known as parablepsis (lit. “to look beside”). Parablepsis can be caused when words start with the same letters (homoioarcton) or when they end with them (homoioteleuton). These are not uncommon scribal errors. Yet, when we compare the reading of the MT with the reading of 1QIsa^b, parablepsis is not a likely explanation. Notice how the words אור (ʾôr) and ישבע (yiśbāʿ) do not begin with the same letter, ruling out homoioarcton. Likewise, יראה (yirʾeh) and אור (ʾôr) do not end with the same letter, ruling out homoioteleuton. Thus, the scribe of the MT likely did not commit parablepsis. If this was a scribal error, the error was simply a “random omission.”²

What about an intentional omission? At times, scribes could intentionally omit words for the sake of clarity. But this cause, in my experience, is rare. Moreover, the immediate context of the MT does not provide a basis for omitting this word. That is, the effect of omitting this word does not achieve any apparent goal like providing greater clarity; if anything, it makes it less clear. This explanation seems unlikely.

Could the other witnesses have added “light” (אור)? First, could the word have been added through scribal error? At times, scribes accidentally add words. Reasons for adding content include errors such as dittography (a scribe writes a word twice instead of once), but the letters of the word “light” are not written twice so that explanation does not account for the data. In other instances, scribes may incorporate marginal readings into the text, but there is no evidence for that happening here. It is improbable that the other witnesses added this word by accident.

Second, could the other texts have added this word intentionally? This explanation is possible since the verb “to see” (ראה) often takes an object. People see “something” or “someone.” Even though this verb often takes objects, objects are not always specified.³ It is possible that the lack of an object led a subsequent scribe to add an object. Although this is possible, several witnesses have this object. How did this reading become so widespread if it was a scribal addition?⁴

To See Light or Not?

Finally, we should ask what’s at stake. What would it mean for the servant to “see light” here? There are two idiomatic phrases in Hebrew that are especially relevant. First, the phrase “see light” (יראה אור) is an idiom for describing life while the phrase “not seeing light” is an idiom of death.⁵ Job 33:28 and 30, for example, describe life—resurrected life—as “seeing light.” Moreover, in Psalm 36:9, “seeing light” is associated with the “fountain of life” which is the opposite of death according to Proverbs 13:14 and 14:27. Furthermore, death is described in Job 3:16 and Psalm 49:19 as “not seeing light.” Second, a related Hebrew idiom means “to regain strength” (תארנה עינים).⁶ This idiom is used by Jonathan to describe the effect of honey. Although famished and weak, the taste of honey caused his eyes to be bright (1 Sam. 14:27, 29).⁷ Overall, the idea of “seeing light” describes life. And not just any life, but specifically the revival of life or resurrected life.

Isaiah describes the servant as smitten, afflicted, pierced, crushed, and oppressed. He is described as a lamb led to the slaughter. The climax of this suffering is none other than his death (Isa. 53:8) and being buried (Isa. 53:9); yet, out of this anguish, the servant “sees light” and is satisfied (Isa. 53:11). The reading of 1QIsa^a, 1QIsa^b, 4QIsa^d, and the Hebrew parent text of the LXX describes the servant’s death and resurrection idiomatically as “seeing light.” Thus, what’s at stake, is nothing short of the servant’s resurrection after death.

The question remains: which reading is more original? The two (opposing) explanations with the best support are that:

the reading “light” was lost due to a scribal error
the reading was added for the sake of clarity

Among these options, my conclusion is that the more original reading is likely “he shall see light” because it is more likely that the small word “light” was lost in the MT tradition because of scribal error rather than the reading being a secondary addition preserved in three early Hebrew manuscripts from Qumran and the LXX. The fact that the reading “light” appears in 1QIsa^b is especially important since this text aligns closely with the MT tradition but disagrees here.

Conclusion

The textual problem in this text concerns the resurrection, a matter of first importance for the gospel according to Paul. He says this happened according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3–6). Without the resurrection, humanity is still lost and under the curse of sin. Without the resurrection, we stand before God still under our first father, Adam. The servant, however, as a new Adam, rewrites our past and gives us a new history through his resurrection.

The servant, as a new Adam, rewrites our past and gives us a new history through his resurrection.

This idea is taught in Isaiah 53 since the servant is “cut off from the land of the living”—an idiom for the curse and spiritual death (Isa. 53:8). Remarkably, Isaiah’s servant receives the covenantal blessings of an inheritance (Isa. 53:12) and, despite dying, he “shall see light” (Isa. 53:11). The dead can see light, and this is our hope for this Easter season. He is risen!

Notes

1
Although 1QIsa^a is older than 1QIsa^b, we will compare the MT to 1QIsa^b because this is the only difference between these texts. 1QIsa^a has other minor differences when compared to the MT.
2
Tov uses this language to describe this error in TCHB, 221.
3
See DCH, s.v. ראה.
4
See Dominique Barthelemy Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, Textual Criticism and the Translator 3 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 399.
5
John Meade mentioned this connection to me in a private conversation.
6
See DCH, s.v. אור.
7
Moreover, in Ben Sira 13:26, the author describes the happy heart as a “bright countenance” פנים אורים.

Topics

Levels

Advanced

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

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Conclusion

Notes

Terminology

History

Related

Print resources

Related

Online resources

The best resource of all

Conclusion

Notes

The Samaritan’s and their canon

The study of the Samaritan Pentateuch

From the 17th c. until 1947

Related

Research since 1947

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The text of the Samaritan Pentateuch

Expansions and harmonizations

The Samaritan tenth commandment

The Samaritan Pentateuch and Christian Bibles

Conclusion

Notes

The value of spelling

The most objective textual critic

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Spelling John’s name

The quest for “Roman” scribes

Future of the field

Notes

Witnesses

External Evidence

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Internal Evidence

To See Light or Not?

Conclusion

Notes

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