I've had to search my heart and pray to God
that I would be objective. You already know from Vlog 131
that after 18 years I was convinced that my Amillennial end time views
were wrong.
And you know from Vlog 149 that I believed Tischendorf
was telling the truth for 30 years before finding out he was a liar.
I'm still going to have to change the next printing
of some of my books because of all this.
So you know I was serious when I told God,
"Please, show me the truth. Was there a BC Septuagint?"
You see, lots of people through the ages have claimed
that Jesus read the Septuagint, a Greek Old Testament,
and that His apostles did, as well.
They say that if Jesus and the apostles
trusted the Septuagint, then so should we.
But the Septuagint also includes the Apocrypha,
where we find writings in favor of praying (or paying)
for the dead, purgatory,
committing suicide, an angel of God lying,
sorcery and magic. (I'll tell you more about that
in another vlog.) You can also read some of it
in Chapter 15 of Why They Changed the Bible.
Also, the Greek Septuagint is the basis for
the Roman Catholic Latin Vulgate.
So actually this is a very important question.
If I was wrong, it would just be one more change
in a world of changes. I promised God I would change
whenever I was proved wrong. That's why I've stood for the KJV
for the last 17 years, against my formal training
in Bible college, seminary and SIL.
So let's deal with the issue squarely. Is there proof of a BC Septuagint?
Now I've about finished double-checking my research,
maybe triple-checking. What is the best evidence
for a BC Septuagint, and is it a mountain of evidence,
or a molehill?
You may want to press pause right now
and put on the subtitles, 'cause here we go!
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
First, I had to find the "best evidence." You can't find a lot of
Septuagints around. The main two are here in my hand:
Lancelot Brenton's Septuagint from 1851,
based, he supposed, upon the Vaticanus
and Alexandrinus.
The other is the Ralhf's-Hanhart Septuaginta
from 1935 and updated in 2006, based upon the blending of
Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus.
It also claimed to have some readings from the Hexapla,
the 6 Old Testaments in columns done by Origen in the 230s-240s AD.
That's all fine. But none of that is BC.
All of that is AD.
Only one document claims to tell the full story
of the creation of the Septuagint. It's called the Letter of Aristeas.
There are two main English translations
of the whole Letter of Aristeas: RH Charles' from 1913, and
Henry St. John Thackeray's from Cambridge in 1903.
Thackeray also made a 1917 book, "The Letter of Aristeas,
Translated with an Appendix of Ancient Evidence
on the Origin of the Septuagint."
That sounds like "best evidence" to me!
So let's start there.
I've wondered for years if there was anything else available
to testify to this BC Septuagint. I, and probably you,
have assumed so much, for so long.
It's like when you go into any class, from elementary school to college.
The teacher says, "When did the dinosaurs
roam the earth?"
And they'll say, "Millions of years ago."
It's rote memory. It doesn't mean it's true.
Everybody just assumes it is.
It was the same in Bible college. The teacher could ask,
"When was the Septuagint written?"
And we'd say, "285 BC." My wife Deborah remembers it.
You probably do too, if you went to Bible college
or had one of those scholarly Sunday school teachers.
Again, we assumed it was true. It just doesn't mean that it was.
Nobody actually checked it.
So let's do that now. But let's save the actual
Letter of Aristeas for afterward.
Let's talk about the other supposed testimonies
for a BC Septuagint first.
This comes from Thackeray's Appendix,
entitled "The Evidence of Some Ancient Jewish
and Christian Writers on the Origin of
the Septuagint Version."
First are the rabbinic Jewish writings.
Witness number 1 is the Megillath Taanith,
The "Roll of Fasting," written between 41-70 AD,
3 centuries after the supposed Septuagint,
during the revolution of the Zealots.
It says "On the eighth (or 7th) day of Tebeth (December-January)
the Law was written in Greek" (or it could simply mean
they put the Hebrew into Greek characters)
"in the days of King Tolmai (Ptolemy), and 'the darkness'
(like in Exodus 10:21) came upon the world for three days."
That's an interesting quote, but it doesn't tell much.
First, which ruler named Ptolemy? Starting with Alexander the Great's
General Ptolemy, there were no less than
15 generations of Ptolemies who ruled over Egypt
between 305 and 30 BC.
Second, was it started, finished, or all done on the 8th of Tebeth?
It doesn't say.
Third, was it translated from Hebrew to Greek,
or was it just Hebrew words
written in Greek letters-- transliterated?
Fourth, where did the story of
darkness upon the world for three days
come from? We have no such story
anywhere else in the world. It would be rather obvious,
if it happened. Somebody would have recorded it.
So I don't trust this story, at all. It sounds like a folktale,
not solid evidence.
Witness number 1 is excused.
Witness number 2, Masseketh Sopherim,
The "Tractate of the Scribes," from the 700s AD,
almost 1,000 years after the supposed Septuagint.
These are snippets of Part 1, Section 8:
"It happened once that five elders wrote the Law in Greek"
(which could mean again, Hebrew words written
in Greek characters) for one of the 15 Ptolemies;
"and that day was a hard day for Israel,
like the day on which Israel made the golden calf...."
Then it basically says that on another occasion,
one of the Ptolemies put 70 elders in 70 cells
(private rooms) without telling them why.
Then he said, "Write me out the Law of Moses your master."
Then all of them were "of one mind" and wrote out the Law,
evidently without a copy of the Hebrew Law,
"but they altered 13 passages." And it lists them in detail,
7 in Genesis, 3 in Exodus, 1 in Numbers, and 3 in Deuteronomy...
which is weird, because that adds up to 14,
not 13. Going on...
Masseketh Sopherim also says that the Hebrew names for God
in that scroll sent to Alexandria were all written in gold letters.
But it says the wise men replied, "Put it away."
They commanded that the scroll be stuck into a geniza --
a storage room -- because the gold letters made it
unfit to use in a synagogue.
So now we have a different story. We still don't know which Ptolemy.
It was only 70 elders, not 72, like in Aristeas.
And they all wrote the same exact words
in their private cells, even in the 13 verses (or 14)
where they disagreed with the Hebrew...
without even one Hebrew text in their possession.
Remember, according to this account,
the king didn't say why he was putting them
in separate cells, so they had no way
to prepare for this.
Masseketh Sopherim also says that just the names of God
were written in gold -- but guess what?
The Letter of Aristeas, Section 176 says
the whole scroll was written in gold! So that testimony doesn't match, either.
I don't trust this account. Neither did the Jewish scholars.
They wouldn't accept it as true Talmudic writing.
They just printed it as an addendum" at the end.
In other words, it wasn't important to them.
Witness number 2 is excused.
Witness number 3, Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud,
350-400 AD, over 600 years after the supposed Septuagint
was made.
This is from Megilla I. 71 d (bottom).
The Jerusalem Talmud account says pretty much the same
as the Masseketh Sopherim. So you can't trust this story, either.
It has the same problems I just listed.
Witness number 3 is excused.
Number 4, Babylonian Talmud, Talmud Bavli, from around 499 AD,
almost 800 years after the supposed Septuagint
was made. Megilla 9a.
It matches the story of the Masseketh Sopherim,
but changed "seventy" elders to "seventy-two."
It also declares that it was only permitted
to translate the Hebrew into Greek. The Hebrew text may not
be translated into any other language.
And it had some other differences.
So it corrected one part of the "Septuagint story,"
but the rest has the same errors.
Witness number 4 is excused. That's all the witnesses
from Rabbinic Judaism. None of them passes the test.
Now for the Hellenistic Greek Jewish writings.
Witness number 5, the letter of Aristobulus of Paneas,
was supposedly written around 186-145 BC,
100 years after the supposed Septuagint,
because it is addressed to King Ptolemy VII Philometor
during his reign. However, so many scholars
have disputed this letter that they actually call it
Pseudo (fake) Aristobulus. The only one who
claimed it even existed was Eusebius of Caesarea
in the 300s AD, in "Preparation for the Gospel,"
Chapter 13, Section 12. It took me a while
to track this one down. I verified the wording
in a 1903 translation by EH Gifford.
The letter of Pseudo-Aristobulus claims that Plato, who lived in the 300s BC,
was a follower of the Laws of Moses and "studied all their details."
"But," he said, "the complete translation of the Law
and all its contents" was made under king Ptolemy Philadelphus,"
ancestor to Ptolemy VII, "who displayed the greatest zeal,
while Demetrius of Phalerum busied himself with
the necessary arrangements...."
Anybody who reads Plato knows full well that
Plato did not follow the Laws of Moses.
That's just bogus. And the fact that so many scholars
don't believe for a minute that this document is real,
pretty much settles it. Besides, again,
we only find this letter in Eusebius of Caesarea's writings
in the 300s AD, and Eusebius had a personal,
vested interest in promoting Origen,
plus the Septuagint with the Apocrypha.
Eusebius copied that from Origen's 5th column
right there in Caesarea Maritima, where he lived.
And this same Eusebius became Emperor Constantine's lapdog.
Witness number 5 is excused.
Witness number 6, Philo of Alexandria,
25 BC-50 AD, was a Hellenistic Jewish man
who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. He was born into wealth and society,
educated in Greek and Roman and Egyptian, as well as Jewish, culture.
He believed that the scriptures cannot be understood literally.
He started up the "allegorical" (non-literal)
method of understanding the Bible that Origen later copied.
Philo said God was too marvelous and complex to take Him literally.
So, of course, Philo could not take God's words
of scripture, literally, either.
Philo's story of the Septuagint, found in "On the Life of Moses,"
Part 2, Sections 5-7, is the most complex one yet.
Here are some highlights:
First, he waxed eloquent, saying that King Ptolemy II Philadelphus
(who reigned from 285-247 BC) was the greatest of all the Ptolemies.
Philadelphus had such a "passionate desire"
for the Laws of Moses that he sent ambassadors
to the high priest and king of Judea,
who were the same guy. So the high priest/king
found Hebrews trained in Hellenic Greek learning,
as well as Hebrew. Then Philadelphus made feasts
and asked them philosophical questions.
They passed all these tests with flying colors.
So Philadelphus found the purest and cleanest
undiseased location in the land, the island of Pharos,
for them to live and commune with God
while they translated.
Here's how Philo described the translation:
"In secret they sat, with none present
save the elements of nature -- earth, water, air, heaven --
whose origin it was their first task to expound
(for the cosmogony [origin of the universe]
holds the first place in our laws [meaning Genesis 1-2]);
and, as men possessed, they produced
not divers interpretations, but all alike used the same words
and phrases, as though some invisible prompter
whispered in the ears of each."
Then he said that they exactly defined
every Hebrew word with its corresponding Greek term.
And when people read both the Hebrew and the Greek,
"they call those men not translators but priests of the mysteries
and prophets, to whom it was vouchsafed
with sincerity of mind to enter into the spotlessly pure
spirit of Moses."
Then Philo claimed there was a yearly festival on Pharos Island
to thank God for the Greek translation.
So what do we make of this testimony?
First of all, Philo was not a Bible believer.
Second, he claimed that the Jewish high priest
was also king. That would mean either
the high priest Onias I, high priest until 280 BC,
or his son Simon the Just, 280-260 BC.
But neither high priest was called or treated as a king.
(Remember those names when we come to
the Letter of Aristeas.)
Third, how expert in Greek culture could the Hebrew translators
of the story have been,
who had spent their entire existence keeping separate from pagans?
Fourth, who would have taught Jewish people
Greek philosophy in Israel in the 280s BC?
Fifth, more importantly, how believable is it
that every translator, who worked in secret,
translated all five books of Moses -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers and Deuteronomy -- with the exact same Greek words?
Or that every one of them had memorized all 187 chapters
of those five books? And calling them
"priests of the mysteries" and "prophets"? Really?
That's assuming direct, divine inspiration
on every person, simultaneously.
Sixth, there is nobody else who verified a yearly festival
out on the isle of Pharos, which means "lighthouse,"
where the famous 400 foot tall lighthouse of Alexandria stood
from around 280 BC for 1500 years. And you can bet
if there were such a festival, it would be pretty exclusive
on that small island. And even if there were one
in Philo's day, you couldn't know
when they started doing it. We have no records.
Without corroborating evidence, it sounds like something
that was added to make the story sound more legitimate.
I could go on. But Philo is saying
too many unbelievable things. Either somebody gave
this bogus story to Philo,
or Philo made it up himself.
Either way, I'm setting aside, but not excusing, witness number 6.
I will recall him later.